Category: Traumafessions

Growing up this time of year – as close as it is to the holidays – it was almost daily that I would return home from elementary school to find an errant rain check for a Christmas toy waiting for my parents in the mailbox; or to find the house toasty warm against the cold, snowy afternoon; or to see yet another screening of Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas on HBO. And one year, for at least that holiday season, it was the cinematic milk & cookies that accompanied every school day afternoon. I all but came to expect Emmet & Ma and their timeless story of family & holiday cheer waiting for me when I got home. 

The short film – based on a 1971 children's book by Russell Hoban and inspired by O. Henry's “The Gift of the Magi” – was directed by Jim Henson (yes, that Jim Henson) and imbued with all the magic of the maestro’s muppetry. It tells the story of young Emmet (an otter) and his widowed Ma (also an otter), both working odd jobs in order to make ends meet in Frogtown Hollow, even when they're taken advantage of for the work that they do. The two are possessed with an unwavering love for one another, but they're also quietly consumed this year by memories of Christmases with their deceased Pa. He taught them to ensure the happiness of the family, even when his own longing was greater than his entrepreneurial plans.

And Christmas is only days away. Emmet yearns for a new $40 guitar, and Ma dreams wistfully of owning a piano again. Good fortune comes in the form of a local talent contest, then, and both Emmet and Ma commit to winning the grand prize, even if they must secretly compete against one another. To that end, Ma hocks the tool chest used for Emmet's odd jobs so that she can sew a nice dress to wear on the night of the contest. And Emmet, meanwhile, punctures a hole in the base of Ma's wash tub (also used for her work as a laundress) so that he can put together a jug-band with his friends.

From there, the 1977 children’s film is wrought with enough dramatic irony and existential dread to trouble any young person who watches it, even when it's laced with charming backwoods duets performed by the show's two protagonists. (And what grownup viewer hasn't felt some sort of existential dread during the holiday season?) But the film seems to save its greatest nightmares for the narrative’s musically-gifted villains: the Riverbottom Nightmare Band. When they're not obnoxiously revving their motors in town or gleefully terrorizing the citizens of Frogtown Hollow with their overall apathy and disregard for order, they're also a hard rock band not to be underestimated by anyone …

… Especially those hoping to win a talent contest.

Led by the surly Chuck Stoat, Stanley Weasel, Fred Lizard, Howard Snake, and "Pop-Eyed" Catfish also enter the local talent show. The band appears to be the only obstacle standing in the otter family's way for a merry Christmas. Yet what makes the band so horrifying is their complete antipathy to everything that the otters – and the viewer – appreciate. Family, hard work, optimism, devotion – these are foreign concepts to the likes of the Riverbottom Gang, who sing that they despise everything they don't understand, which included young me then .. and even you today.

To the young viewers watching this puppet-populated plot unfold, Chuck and his entourage embody a garish, rebellious response to everything that represents normalcy, especially the spirit of the holiday season. The Riverbottom Nightmare Band doesn't apply to the talent contest out of a heartfelt need to nourish good will, like that of Emmet or Ma. There is nothing selfless and charitable in their desire to perform. Rather, their performance looks and sounds like something that will simply win – and it does (spoiler alert!) – because it can. Like the most unconscious slasher in a horror film, the band outperforms our lovable, musically ambitious heroes simply because that's the way this particular story was meant to end, as a scary story more akin to Halloween than Christmas Eve.

Especially today.

It can sometimes feel today as if the bad guys are always going to win, that the good guys can do nothing to save the day. What's worse, we're sometimes made to feel this way not because we – the good guys – lack the heart or skills or talents or tools, but because the darkness seems to so frequently nudge out the light, no matter how bright its glow.

So even as we reflect upon those childhood moments that taught us that the fight against evil was an insurmountable one, we should try to remind ourselves that no evil truly triumphs when we embrace the strength that we have with friends and family. Perhaps it's only natural that we're reminded of the power of those near & dear at this time of year, even when we sometimes forget that that power is with us throughout the year, not exclusive to the holiday season.

And would that every day be like the one demonstrated in this children's film, however mature in its storytelling. Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas dramatizes a message that should resonate with us all:

Where we simultaneously hope to win an impossibly challenging talent contest and discover that everything we ever needed to be happy was always within the reach of our own open arms.

Every now and then I get a little re-obsessed with The Amityville Horror. I can’t help it. Even though I realize that the lion’s share of Jay Anson’s novel is completely fabricated, It made such a strong impression on me in my youth that I’m willing to shelve my doubts and just bask in the creepiness of the tale. There’s no denying that even if George and Kathy Lutzes’ account is hokum, young Ronald DeFeo, Jr. still murdered his entire family while they slept which is absolutely horrifying in and of itself. I have to admit too, that a part of me still holds a space for the possibility that the Lutz’s did experience something supernatural even if it wasn’t as extreme as they claim. After all, both of the Lutz sons Dan and Chris (youngest child Missy is keeping mum) who are now adults, still claim as much. Additionally, I do find it very easy to believe that if something truly awful happens in a home that some kind of bad energy lingers. Perhaps no other family who has lived in the house has experienced such things simply because they were not on the same dysfunctional demon-baiting wavelength as the DeFeos and Lutzes. On the other hand, life experience and common sense tells me that George Lutz, who (according to the book) was having financial troubles at the time, most definitely stole his brother-in law’s envelope full of wedding money. Ghosts have little use for cash.

I was probably about twelve when I first read The Amityville Horror and was born around the same time as the Lutz’s middle child Chris. Re-reading the book now brings me back to a specific time period that is so familiar and nostalgic for me. I remember absolutely believing every word because the cover of the paperback clearly said, “Based on a true story” and I readily assumed that the publishers would not be able to make such a statement if it wasn’t! I was further swayed by the fact that a great deal of the book involved a priest and everybody knows that they of all people are not allowed to lie. Plus the book had a map of the house, photos of George and Kathy and a drawing of Jodie by youngest daughter Missy. Further proof! For those who don’t know, Jodie was a giant pig who only deigned to appear or speak to the youngest child. Although there are two instances in the book (and movie) when the scamp materializes in a window and both instances are high points for me (I have to admit I’ve always been infatuated with Jodie and wish he could have his very own exhaustive franchise).

As adorable as Jodie may be there was another presence in the book that I recall terrifying me. During the Lutzes very last moments in the house (how I vibrantly recall laying on the dining room floor in our old home, on my stomach with the book in front of me speeding with great anxiety toward the book’s climax), father George looks up the staircase to see a faceless man in a hooded white robe pointing at him! The image that the book conjured in my imagination chilled me to my very core. After so much hemming and hawing on whether the pumpkin-eyed house was truly haunted, this scary dude made it a concrete, indisputable fact in my mind. Folks, you never want to see a guy in any color hooded robe ever and it’s especially not a good sign if said figure decides to point right at you! This guy solidified the book for me and so much so that when I finally was able to coax my parents to take me to the movie, I remember being very disappointed that no such scene occurs within the film. How could they leave out the best part of the book? I can't stay mad at the movies(s) though as they are responsible for two absolutely iconic Amityville scares. The priest vs. housefly confrontation and the babysitter trapped in the closet bit are pure Hollywood design and nowhere to be found in the book!

I recently re-read The Amityville Horror to see if it could scare me once again and although I’m still enamored with Jodie, much of the book doesn’t quite hold up. The robed figure still has a bit of bite left in him (could Jodie and he be one in the same?) but I’m not shaking in my shoes at the thought of green slime, levitation, and loud marching band sounds shaking the house in the middle of the night. At one point, when Kathy looks in a mirror and is repulsed to see an old version of herself looking back at her, all I could think was, “Welcome to my world.” Sadly, as an adult reading the book, the most upsetting part to me now is that in the heart of winter, as the Lutzes complain about the house being impossibly cold, they keep their poor dog Harry chained up outside (by a river no less)! I know things were different back then but this knowledge makes me think that maybe the Lutzes deserved whatever befell them! Hey, now that I think about it, I hereby curse everyone who mistreats animals to be visited by a scary hooded figure with an accusatory finger (I finally understand why he was pointing after all these years!) Huh, maybe, I can be one of these ghostly animal defenders in the afterlife! Dear Jodie, where do I sign up?

Natalie’s version:

One night in the early ‘80s, my big sister Stacy, my mother and I were watching primetime TV on KTUL, Tulsa, Oklahoma’s ABC affiliate. For those too young to remember the time before digital, affiliates like KTUL showed programming from major broadcasters, but did so with their own style. In KTUL’s case, that style was local and weird, and sometimes so desperate for something to fill air time that they would run ten-year-old PSAs to fill a few seconds. KTUL was an especially magical station, my sister and I thought. They had the nightly sign-off with the Native American guy, the locally produced kids’ show Uncle Zeb, and Don Woods, the weatherman who drew a cartoon character called Gusty to illustrate his forecasts. But that night, KTUL’s magic would become dark, and it would be lodged in my memory as the channel I could never watch again–because they showed Hate Hurts You.

Picture it: a bluish gray background fills the screen, against which a little yellow man who looks vaguely like the Reverend Horton Heat sidles toward the viewer. A window opens into his chest as he walks, revealing what looks like an inside-out recycling symbol lodged in his torso. From the inside of his neck, blood rains down onto the symbol, causing it to rotate. Industrial music accompanies this bizarre scene, but not the fun, dance-club stuff. This is grinding, scraping metal that sounds like “Hirnsäge” by Einstürzende Neubauten. As the little man gets closer to the screen, his face filling more and more of it, a narrator with a baritone voice delivers a grim warning: “Hate is a poison that corrodes, an acid that erodes.” Horton’s head begins to inflate, ++++lumpily, and turns bright red as his features, now filling the entire screen, contort into anger or pain. As the announcer barks the last words–“When you hate, who do you hurt the most? HATE HURTS YOU!”–Horton’s head explodes. In our living room, my sister and I are bawling as our mother tries to comfort us. (She even contemplated calling KTUL to complain, or maybe she actually did. I remember this one way, Stacy another.)

My memory of Hate Hurts You was off in some pretty major ways.While I recalled the visuals more or less correctly, my memory of the audio was completely off. In the real version, there’s no baritone narrator, no droning industrial noise. Instead, it’s a very ‘70s folk tune, minor chords strummed over a Rhythm Master backing track. A nasally voice sings the lyrics I remembered being ominously spoken. Even the exploding head isn’t as sudden as I remember it being. The little yellow bigot’s inflated head fills the screen for a couple of seconds before finally bursting, which probably explains why of all my memories, that enraged face was the most vivid.

It’s not news that memories frequently fail us, but I am fascinated by how my memory failed me in this case. As a very small child, Hate Hurts You was the most intense thing I had ever seen. Its climactic jump scare might not seem like much in this world of Five Nights at Freddy’s and James Wan movies, but to a naturally timid girl roughly five years old who had grown up on nothing more shocking than an airing of King Kong, it was life-altering. For years after I saw it, I avoided my beloved KTUL out of fear that they might air it again. Once I became an adult who loved confronting her childhood terrors, it was my holy grail. If I had remembered it as just a mellow folk tune and simple animation, I would have realized that it’s not nearly as horrifying to an adult as to a sheltered child. I wanted it to still shock me like it had back then. And so, I assume, my mind took over and recreated the much scarier version I remembered, all clanging and portentous, with a head explosion to rival the one from Scanners. 

Only one question remains now: what is that symbol in the man’s chest, and is that really supposed to be blood dripping down onto it? I suppose it could symbolize self-perpetuating cycles of hatred and violence, but a wheel of arrows being turned by blood is a decidedly odd way to make that point in an otherwise completely unsubtle PSA. Now that the full cut has made its way to the internet, perhaps someone can finally figure it out.

Stacy’s version:

When I was in art school getting my MFA, my thesis project was all about nostalgia. I made interactive pieces based on distant memories; you could examine my childhood collection of plastic monkeys from 1970s Sonic cups, or listen to a recording of the ghostly voice from the Milton-Bradley game Seance. But the most blood-chilling piece, as far as I was concerned, was the wooden box lined with flocked wallpaper on one side and velour couch fabric on the other. It was just big enough to fit your head inside, and when you did (if you did), you felt the fabric and wallpaper on your cheeks. That was what I felt the first time I ran and hid from the TV, when I first saw the Jewish Chautauqua Society’s hate PSA.

Sure, there were plenty of other creepy things on TV during my childhood – the Sylvia episode of Little House on the Prairie, the Changeling episode of The Waltons, the Wonderful World of Disney movie Child of Glass – but while those things had kept me awake at night, nothing had ever made me want to scoop out my own eyeballs and bludgeon my eardrums with chopsticks while vomiting all over the living room untilI saw the hate PSA. Reality split into the time before the hate PSA and the time after, when I learned there are horrors you can never unsee.

Unlike my little sister Natalie, I remembered it perfectly, except that I thought the final lyrics were, “HATE…THE ONE IT HURTS THE MOST…IS YOU!” I remembered the little yellow man and his horrifying turned-out feet and block-heeled shoes. I remembered the churning recycling symbol in his belly and the indigestion bubbles rising above it (which Natalie clearly remembered as drops of blood dripping down, which is significantly more horrifying than heartburn). I remembered the weird Spanish-style music, which invoked a lifelong phobia of the Spanish-style stucco house near my elementary school, with its arched doorways and wrought-iron gates. I imagined that the yellow man lived in that house, and stomped around inside it being pissed off and exploding all the time.

For as long as I’ve been a citizen of the internet, I’ve looked for this godforsaken PSA; until a few days ago, I’d never found it. But there were a couple of Reddit threads of people searching for it, hoping to exorcise their own childhood trauma. I only remember seeing it once; it obviously wasn’t on very often, probably because local TV stations received reports of children scooping out their eyeballs, bludgeoning their eardrums with chopsticks, and vomiting all over their living rooms. But the rare few of us ‘70s kids who saw it were scarred for life, looking for others on lost-media forums who shared our specific terror.

Nine years ago, a YouTube user by the name of Just Some Random Person uploaded a 10-second clip of the ending, and seeing that exploding head again made Internet People even more determined to find the full-length version. For almost a decade, there was nothing, and then, in March 2023, a Reddit user named Delchi posted in r/lostmedia, “I was able to locate a copy of what I believe is the 30-second version on a 16mm reel in a collection of television history.”

For four months, other Reddit users waited for Delchi to upload a digitized version, but Delchi went silent. In July, they finally commented on the thread again, saying there were “legal issues” with “the location that has it,” where “the media is disorganized and the index is incorrect.” It had all the makings of an urban legend, and at that point, I doubted it had really been found.

But then, on August 13, 2023, an iPhone video of the 16mm film, projected on a wall, suddenly appeared on YouTube. It was like the sky broke open and a faded warning against anti-Semitism rained down on a sea of acoustic guitar chords accented by a haunted cajon that was also, no doubt, just big enough to hold a human head. 

(Natalie, a musician, says this was actually something called a Rhythm Master, so while I defer to her, I still prefer to imagine a box with a head in it.)

Seeing the hate PSA again confirmed that there were definitely two versions, as Reddit and YouTube people had speculated – according to Delchi, one was made in 1974, and the other in 1982. In the ‘74 version, the man’s red face fills the screen and holds for a few seconds, and a roar of sound builds before it explodes. In the ‘82 version, the face explodes as soon as it fills the screen. One assumes the Jewish Chautauqua Society heard how many unsuspecting children had been traumatized by this thing and decided to make a less-scary version rather than pulling the ad altogether – an admirable dedication to the message, but dude, there was still a big, red exploding head. 

Rumor has it that there’s another, even longer, spoken-word version, but for now, that one remains in urban-legend land. Until someone finds it, the little yellow man will haunt YouTube in his 30-second incarnation, just like he haunted the Spanish house in my hometown, slowly stomping on his pointy-toed, high-heeled boots into the minds of children yet to be traumatized, becoming a kindertrauma for a new generation.