Category: Traumafessions

My name's Grant, and I write a blog called FIRE BREATHING DIMETRODON TIME where I watch wonderfully fun old adventure shows and movies with my son, now five, and see how he enjoys them. Since he's still small, we haven't hit anything like the heights of horror that you all celebrate, but he's been mildly frightened by various threats like the Sleestak and a couple of Batman's enemies.

I'd like to share a ridiculous traumafession of my own. I get the impression that quite a few people were traumatized when Annie Ross got turned into a cyborg in Superman III. It rocked me as well, but perhaps in not quite the same way as most.

I saw Superman III in theaters, but I'm pretty sure it didn't give me the creeps until a year later, when it showed up on HBO. So this is 1984, and my best buddy and I had pretty impressive collections of Mego's 8-inch tall superhero dolls. He and I really were, in the words of parents, "too old to be playing with dolls," but I enjoyed being a kid and was in no hurry to discover girls and guitars yet. I had superheroes and Shogun Warriors to play with.

Mego dolls had been out of production for at least five years by that point, but we were still scouring garage sales and anywhere we could think of to find new Mego bodies – Star Trek, Dukes of Hazzard, Emergency, whatever – to customize into new characters for our various Justice Leagues. Of course, since we were 12, we didn't have the skills necessary to make good costumes for the toys, but we did have lots of paint, multi-colored electrical tape, duct tape, and imaginations.

So one day that summer, I was playing in my room and decided that Superman was going to get grabbed by an indestructible robot – Biotron from the Micronauts – and turned into a cyborg like Annie Ross in the movie. So I interrupted the action and spent about an hour carefully cutting out detailed little duct tape circuitry for Superman's hands and face, planning to sic the Man of Steel on his low-powered colleagues like Falcon, Human Torch, and Green Arrow.

And somehow, admiring my handiwork, it suddenly sunk in that this was really terrifying. I was actively bothered by what happened to Annie Ross's character in the movie… and my toys weren't fun anymore so I quit playing that adventure. I remember having this sinking feeling in my gut, and the next time HBO showed Superman III – because we watched favorite movies every single time HBO showed them, probably within a week – I started dreading her conversion so much I couldn't enjoy the movie anymore. Then I started having nightmares. Then I packed up the toys and started paying attention to girls and guitars.

Sadly, very few of those toys have survived into adulthood, although my Mego Supergirl is still with me, her shoes long lost and replaced by spare Batgirl boots with red electrical tape, and my Shogun Warrior Daimos still looms from atop a bookshelf, with a little bit of 40 year-old duct tape to help on its sides where a previous owner tried peeling away the sticker from around its massive robotic waist.

Waaaay tooooo long, no talk.

Many moons ago you posted a few confessions from me (Reader Walt – way back in 2008). I've been away for a long time, but I haven't forgotten you guys! Over this time I had a complete trauma happen that finally put a button on a nightmare from when I was a little kid. This was really a "Name That Trauma" for me for years until recently.

I remembered watching a movie when I was REALLY young where a man's face crashes through a car's windshield and scares a boy sitting in the car. I know I had nightmares for years because of this. This image was seared into my brain. It wasn't until a few years ago when my wife wanted to re-watch "Burnt Offerings" with me (of course I married a horror movie fanatic). We get though most of the movie OK until the end when Oliver Reed jumps out the house window and "spoiler" crashes through the car's windshield with his son in the car.

At this moment, I stood up, moaned and pointed at the screen, much like Donald Sutherland in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." 'That's it!" I yelled. "That's the scene!"

My wife stared at me, unaware of the childhood trauma that was caused by this movie and how this almost cathartic moment has brought both closure and utter dread to me.

After explaining how this was an ever-running scene in my head and how I never quite knew if it was something I made up or an actual movie my parents let me watch when I was 7 years old, she was actually more upset that I hadn't watched such an iconic movie like "Burnt Offerings" in the last 25 years than the impact it had had on me.

I was just glad I had solved this KinderTrauma mystery.

I'm back to reading your site regularly and want to atone for being away from my favorite Aunt and Uncle for so long. Assume that Our Father's and Hail Mary's aren't going to be enough…

Hey all,

Long time reader, first time submitter. I thought of you guys recently when my kids were watching The Secret of NIMH. I had forgotten how frightening the giant owl is in that movie. I remember being terrified of him as a kid. There's something about those glowing yellow eyes. My children (who are 7 and 9) watched him totally unfazed. I guess they are not scaredy-cats like their mom. What is wrong with them?

Thanks for listening,

Leslie

UNK SEZ: Leslie, I love me some SECRET OF NIMH! I agree, that owl is scary and he should be because he's voiced by horror legend JOHN CARRADINE! I say, you are right and your kids are wrong.

Hello, Kindertrauma. I'm 14 years old, a bit younger than everyone else on this site, but I was scared of some things as a kid as well, and I only want to confess fears I've gotten over. Today I want to bring to your attention a scene from SpongeBob that used to scare me as a kid. It's from the episode "Karate Choppers".

Now, in this episode, SpongeBob and Sandy are karate fighting. During their match, Sandy grabs SpongeBob's tongue and takes out a bottle of hot sauce and starts to pour a drop on his tongue. SpongeBob is terrified, as he's freaking out, we zoom in on the drop of hot sauce, and all of a sudden, the screen goes dark and this creepy as hell human face appears on the drop, laughing evilly and rolling its eyes around. Then it says in a gravelly voice, "BY THE POWERS OF NAUGHTINESS, I COMMAND THIS PARTICULAR DROP OF HOT SAUCE TO BE REALLY, REALLY HOT!" and then we go back to SpongeBob and Sandy like nothing happened.

Yeezus on a bike, did that scare me! I remember when I first saw the episode 10 years ago, I actually started crying when the face showed up (granted I cried when I was scared a lot) and didn't even remember the whole "powers of naughtiness" bit until four years later when I would browse transcripts on Spongepedia. I only saw the scene twice as a kid, and I remember the second time, my mom told me the face was Tom Kenny (which it is) but I didn't care! Every time the episode would come on after that, I'd change the channel or leave the room, I seriously avoided the episode for ten whole years!

Last year, though, I decided to voice my fear of it and tried to get myself over it, but when the episode came on again, I couldn't do it, I was scared! Fortunately, the scene appeared on the SpongeBob subreddit on Reddit and I made myself click on it and I got over it. Now I love that scene, but I will always remember avoiding the episode like the plague due to it. On the comments on that scene on YouTube, there's a lot of people who were also scared of it, so I'm not alone.

Cheers!

Hi guys.

My movie trauma is the ending of the James Bond film Live and Let Die. I have never got over seeing Baron Samedi on the front of the train, laughing his head off! Just no!

ENCOUNTER WITH THE UNKNOWN is a largely forgotten 1973 anthology horror film that today's viewers will dismiss as cheap, stupid, boring and clumsy.

But many Kindertrauma readers will remember Mrs. Davis. (Either from the movie or previous posts.)

ENCOUNTER makes the most of its unknown actors, because it's a 70s docu-drama (like those low-budget Bigfoot movies where they feature documentary style re-enactments with supposedly true stories.) Actress Fran Franklin doesn't have any other credits. She IS Mrs. Davis, the same way Billy Redden IS the banjo kid from DELIVERANCE. You wouldn't want a famous actor like Meryl Streep in the role, that would just remind you it's "only a movie."

So here's my super-cut of every one of Mrs. Davis' moments in the film. She has one line in entire movie. But the filmmakers must've known she was the breakout star, because they kept going back to her with flashback after flashback. (Seriously, this movie has more recaps than an episode of the E! True Hollywood Story!)

ENCOUNTER is obsessed with the number 7: the power of the 7-sided heptagon, she's the 7th daughter of a 7th son. And while making this super-cut I realized: she comes back in 7 flashbacks (!!!!!!!)

Without a doubt Mrs. Davis is the most memorable part of the film. She's even featured on the cover of the DVD.

Anyone who grew up watching this movie is probably haunted by the Davis monologue (which is fitting since this segment of the movie is about being haunted by the memory of that very moment.) Probably because SHE NEVER BLINKS!

She holds the camera's gaze for 31 seconds with her wide-eyed stare. That's longer than cinema's longest stare-downs like Vincent D'Onfrio in FULL METAL JACKET, Jake Gyllenhall in DONNIE DARKO or even the Diner-lady in THE BIRDS.

Anyone with access to Snopes.com can blow-off the 3 urban legends that make up this anthology movie. But I saw this when I was 9 years old. (Oddly enough, it was the first movie my Dad rented when we got our VCR. Not STAR WARS, not E.T., but ENCOUNTER WITH THE UNKNOWN.) I believed every word that Rod Serling narrated and I bought into the supernatural mysteries. Today I know better, but I still get the chills from Mrs. Davis unblinking stare.

NOTE: This video was edited as part of KEVIN GEEKS OUT ABOUT DEADLY WOMEN. KEVIN GEEKS OUT is a monthly video variety show in Brooklyn, NY.

Hello. I have been reading your site for years and have always enjoyed all your features and quizzes. Your Sunday Streaming links have led me to a lot of great, underrated movies. I would like to share a traumafession (and also, not to be too self-serving, I hope you can share a link to the blog I started recently). Here goes with the traumafession:

The most traumatizing thing I ever saw as a kid–and I saw it repeatedly–was the TV spot for Wes Craven's Deadly Blessing with the spider falling into the woman's mouth. (I know this has been mentioned before on Kindertrauma as a Name That Trauma, but I think it's traumatizing enough to bear repeating.) The unbearable suspense of the spider descending toward the wide-open mouth still gets to me today. In my memory, it lasts a long time, but I'm sure it was really only a second. It wasn't just that the image itself was so horrifying, and obviously real; it was the fact that you could be watching your little black and white TV in the afternoon and your harmless show could be interrupted, with no warning, by this scene that was intensely creepy and repulsive. I couldn't believe they were allowed to show such a disturbing thing on television! And yet every time it came on, I couldn't look away.

On a different note, I have great memories of watching Hammer movies (on that same black and white TV) with my father when I was young. We would stay up late and watch Christopher Lee as Dracula, trying to catch as many of those Hammer Dracula movies as we could. When my father died a few years ago, that was one of my fondest memories.

Now for the self-serving part. I started a blog last month called Senseless Cinema , a response to comments that movie reviewers sometimes make about films that are so weird or poorly made they seem to come from another universe. The conceit of Senseless Cinema is that those movies are in fact from another universe, and I have traveled from that universe to set people straight about the brilliance of these films. I defend movies that are generally considered terrible in a way that comes across as (I hope) pompous and at least occasionally humorous. So far I have covered movies like The Nightmare Never Ends, Demon Wind, and Shriek of the Mutilated (another Name That Trauma).

Hi Kindertrauma,　

I've been batting this particular admission around for a while now while trying in vain to find a full recording of the source, scary bits included. No luck. The closest I can find is the admittedly perfectly innocent song that followed the traumatizing two-second snippet. Oddly enough, or maybe not oddly at all, the fact that I can't now find the trauma fuel for a relisten has made the memory all the worse. Yes, this trauma has lingered for twenty-five years or more. Brrrrr!

The song in question is 'One Potato, Two Potato',' as recorded on one of many cassette tapes of nursery rhymes, songs and stories I used to listen to as a kid. The song itself wouldn't have scared me – fairly gentle tenor male voice, simple instrumentals, harmless lyrics about counting potatoes out of a basket – but it definitely took on a menacing quality due to it being right on the heels of something that did flat-out terrify me. In the immediate lead-up to the song itself, a man suddenly yelps "Ouch! That's a hot potato!"

… Good gosh.

I don't know if the sudden yell, the content (as a child, I was petrified of hot things and the possibility of being burned) or the intense tone of voice this particular gentleman used – it sure sounded intense to me! – or some combination of all three did it, but whatever it was, the end result was that I full-on dreaded that segment of the tape every time it came around. I remember burying my head in the couch cushions or plugging my ears more than once, then trying to time it so I didn't unmuffle them until the scary segment had come and gone… which often led to misjudged timing and yells of abject dismay. aaaah! I remember deliberately asking to listen to the full recording once in a brave attempt to get over my fear of it, subsequently scaring myself silly and making myself cry, much to the confusion of my parents; I had *wanted* to listen to the full tape, after all. I hadn't explained my plan of facing down terror to them before getting on with it, so I can understand why they were bewildered. It was pretty hard to explain after the fact, let me tell you.

I now have the shivers. If I ever do find a full recording of this one, I am *not* sharing it with my niece, who's now about the same age I was when first traumatized by the thing. Yeeeek!

Hi Kindertrauma folks,

Great site! I've just recently found it while looking up the "Bunyip Moon" sequence from "Dot and the Kangaroo", and I love that you are covering things that used to spook us kids something fierce.

Below is my contribution…

Kings Dominion- The Haunted River commercial (1980)

WHEN MICHAEL CALLS (1971)

As a kid growing up in the late 60s/early 70s, they actually used to show movies at 6:00 pm on weeknights on regular network TV (channel 21, 27 and 8 in Harrisburg PA). I know, hard to imagine these days. Some of these were horror flicks that scared the crap out of my sisters and I. The all-time biggie was a TV movie that they showed every October titled "When Michael Calls", starring Ben Gazzara and Michael Douglas. This was fitting as it took place around Halloween. The plot involved a woman who starts getting phone calls from a nephew that disappeared some 20 odd years ago. The guy would be in his 40s or whatever now, but sounds like he did when he ran away. He has a really creepy kid voice and calls her "Auntie-my-Helen"(?). He asks why she hasn't come to pick him up at school, says its dark out, and other creepy things, which get progressively more sinister. Then people start turning up dead: An elderly relative dies as a result of a bee attack! The Sheriff is strangled and falls from the rafters of a stage, during the school Halloween carnival–right in the middle of the pumpkin contest no less! All of this was very freaky to little kids such as us, but it was those creepy-voiced phone calls that really got you! This made us afraid to answer the phone for a few weeks after!

THE DEADLY BEES (1967)

Sure, the mid 70s was rife with killer bee flicks, i.e. The Swarm, originating from alarmist news stories about killer bees from Africa set to invade the US mere months from now (which they never did, BTW). But the original "bee-movie" was the 1967 The Deadly Bees. The plot involves a Brit pop singer trying to get away from it all on a secluded isle, only to face a horde of hostile bees. This was scary enough for us kids–after all you saw bees every day in the summer (at least you used to). BUT, on or around January of 1975, while my parents and I were busy watching the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Super Bowl, my sisters and their friend were down in our basement watching TV, watching this movie specifically. Lo and behold, some real bees who had infiltrated the basement tile ceiling, and must have chewed a hole in one of the panels, dropped down on top of them during the movie! It was like a William Castle movie for real! They freaked out and came running up the steps screaming for their lives! Even though we'd seen this film a few years before on that ubiquitous 6:00 pm movie, this really, really got to them.

X THE UNKNOWN
A pretty much forgotten Hammer film from the early 50s (which predated The Blob by several years), this B&W SciFi movie scared the crap out of me when I caught it on that aforementioned 6:00 movie. The story revolves around this living radioactive mud that crawls out of a crack in some swampy stretch of land. It seeks out other radioactive materials and absorbs them, growing larger and larger. It also burns anything in it's path and makes giger counters go crazy with that ticking static sound they make. It leaves and comes back several times, finally attacking a nuclear power plant. However, by this time authorities can track it since its now so big, and they issue a warning to everyone in its path to get out. The big scene occurs when the killer blob is moving through a small village and a everyone takes refuge in a church. Of course, a little kid somehow gets left outside in the panic. As the deadly goo spills over a stone wall in the church yard, the toddler ambles right up to it, ready to be incinerated in seconds. The priest, realizing what's occurred, dashes out and saves the youngster in the nick of time. The thing that really got me about this movie was, how do you fight living mud that burns up everything it touches? Its not a vampire that can be staked or a big bug that can be destroyed with the military!