Category: Traumafessions

I'm pretty sure the 1989 FRED SAVAGE film LITTLE MONSTERS hasn't been brought up on Kindertrauma yet. I honestly can't remember much about the plot anymore. Maybe I was too scared of the monstrous HOWIE MANDEL as a four year old to even watch the entire movie. I remember it was supposed to be a film for kids, but what were they thinking?

From what I recall, the climax of the film takes place in this perverted children's playroom (always creepy), where the heroes are confronted by a child-like monster. Then they shoot something at his face, and it rips off, exposing a horribly disfigured face underneath. I think the idea was that the monster was just wearing a "human mask," but to a four year old such as myself, it was as freaky as the end of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK.

Who greenlights projects like this, anyway?

After seeing that people were traumatized by HERBIE HANCOCK, I'm surprised there's no mention of one-hit-wonder ROCKWELL, whose video for "Somebody's Watchin' Me" used to freak me the hell out as a kid. Highlights include the shadowy floating head, the zombie guy in tighty-whities carrying a roast pig (wtf??) and the shower spouting blood (a particular childhood worry of mine). But these weren't the real traumatizers of this video; I'd been on a steady diet of horror movies practically since birth, thanks to a horror-loving mother.

No, the kicker was in the last moments of the video, where the creepy grinning mailman is seen to have a horribly deformed and strangely slimy-looking left arm, poorly concealed behind his mailbag. I suspect that it was scary because he looked otherwise normal (if a bit serial-killerish); making it worse is the way that poor ROCKWELL walks up to him in obvious relief after dealing with all the rest, only to be faced with this misshapen horror. Let me tell you, it made me suspicious of mailmen for quite some time! I would eye them surreptitiously, on the lookout for a disgusting withered claw, and all because of ROCKWELL.

O.K., this one is weird but there was this one scene from THE WALTONS where the young girl is playing on a tall triangle shaped woodpile. She is told that it is dangerous, but keeps playing. The next thing you know she falls, and she gets hurt. I don't know why I obsessed about this but I would re-enact it with my paper dolls, Barbies… whatever I could get my hands on!

Most people who know me would agree that I prefer the company of animals to that of my own species. As a child, when other kids might have had imaginary friends, I had imaginary pets. A homeless person on the side of the road might be ignored or rationalized out of existence, but seeing a malnourished dog or cat will stick with me for the rest of the day. I'm pretty immune from news stories of man's inhumanity to his fellow man (or rather, his humanity towards his fellow man), but stories of abused animals sicken me.

Anyway, when I was a child, there was a particular phenomenon that made me dread going up to the counter of most restaurants: The Crying Dog Animal Donation/Extortion Bank! If you've seen one of these, I'm sure you could instantly describe it, down to the smallest detail. You also understand why I'm writing about it. If you have NOT ever seen one of these calculated, inanimate manipulators, I'll educate you.

The Crying Dog Animal Donation/Extortion Bank was a plastic piggy-bank type device about 10 to 12 inches tall. It's form was that of some sort of yellowish hound dog, with long flowing ears, matched only by its long face. Its eyes welled with tears, with a single drop spilling onto it's cheek. There was almost always an attached placcard or business card for some local animal shelter with the following poem (which has been etched into my mind for at least the last quarter century):

"I'm so hungry I could cry. If you don't help me, I may die."

No doubt early super-computers were used to optimize the heart-tugging at work here. I'm pretty sure that the RAND corporation had some of their excess post-Vietnam War analysts work up some 10 volume set detailing the exact means to squeeze the hearts of children right in their chests. Needless to say, I was highly susceptible to this sort of manipulation. I would usually deposit money if I had any or, for days after I'd regret not having any.

I don't know if this is a Southern thing or just an '80s thing. I don't see them at restaurants as much anymore, which I am conflicted about. I like not getting depressed every time I go to the counter of A&W to pay for my Coney dogs, but I hate that a potential funding stream for homeless animals might be drying up.

If you missed out on this delightful cultural icon, don't worry. The RAND folks are still hard at work in their cramped basement offices, cranking out pure sadness and pathos. Now they'll beam it straight into your living room…and this time they've got SARAH McLACHLAN helping out.

I couldn't find this in your archives, so I decided to send it in. If you have it, well, I gotta get this out anyway.

PUNKY BREWSTER was my all time favorite show as a tyke. I developed my first unrequited crush on SOLEIL MOON FRYE, wrote her a fan letter, the whole nine yards. There was something so perfect about that show to elementary school-aged me. Perfect.

Until Season Two.

Season Two featured a very strange two-part episode called "The Perils of Punky." In it, Punky, Cheri, Alan, the dog Brandon and Margeaux end up lost in a cave during a camping trip. They get told by an old Indian about a lost princess who was captured by an evil spirit and trapped in the cave. One by one as they explore the cave, they disappear. Only Punky is left. As she sits down on a rock, all hell breaks loose:

I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I was terrified. What had been up to that point a relatively benign episode of a beloved sitcom, turned into a whole bucket of nightmare fuel for weeks to come. I stopped trusting the television, especially my formerly favorite show.

At the end of the episode, Punky fights a demon (!) and rescues her friends, but I didn't see that until the season was released on DVD. Years later.

Punky. I'll never trust you again.

I'm scared by all sorts of stuff. But the biggest scare-fest for me is Thriller, starring MICHAEL JACKSON. From the werewolf-type-thingy to the zombie that peeps into the camera right at the very end, it scares the holy crap out of me! Thanks for 16 years of trauma, Mr. JACKSON and Mr. LANDIS!

AUNT JOHN SEZ: Luckily for you Ally, the Gloved-One and/or his production company has forbidden the embedding of his seminal zombie video, so we can't display the full visuals.

Unfortunately for you, we do have the power to embed the below LEGO and BOLLYWOOD versions. Ummm… enjoy?

In THE MOD SQUAD episode "Twinkle Twinkle Little Starlet," pretty little Julie Barnes is used as bait to catch someone who uses silk scarves to strangle blond girls who get to close to a talk show host. When Julie finds herself alone in the woods with the strangler she reaches into his vest pocket thinking it's a hankie, instead she pulls out a scarf and sees it's like the ones that the strangler used on the other girls. She is frozen in fear, and my heart was pounding feeling her fear too. I was between 8 and 11.

UNK SEZ: Thanks Ian for turning me on to this creepy and obviously very groovy episode of THE MOD SQUAD. I tracked down a very informative post on just this episode at a great site called MOON IN THE GUTTER,
you can check that out HERE!

I used to literally run away crying and screaming when an older neighborhood kid would hold up the front cover of FAMOUS MONSTERS magazine. BASIL GOGOS amazing detail and crazy color scheme apparently freaked me out. I am happy to say I think that's what made me love horror movies and Halloween later on in life. I also met him in 2008 and bought his beautiful hardcover book with all those photos that made me cry.

UNK SEZ: Andrew, thanks for bringing up this exceptional artist. You can be sure that a couple of his works are hanging in the Kindertrauma Castle gallery (Not so much originals as tacked up back issues of FAMOUS MONSTERS MAGAZINE. Hey, we ain't made of money!) All you kids out there should stop by Andrew's home turf today and give it a look-see. It's called SCARESDALE MANOR!

I'm amazed that you don't have RALPH BAKSHI's classic trauma WIZARDS on your site.

Cree-py.

Oh, where to begin with WIZARDS? Someplace between a sweet faerie (dressed in a baby blue onesie, no less) named Sean getting blasted through the heart with a sniper rifle and the bad guy's machine projecting one of Hitler's speeches into the sky during a horrible bloody battle, this cartoon is supposed to have a message of non-violence.

It's an all-out battle between technology and magic, with technology being the ultimate baddie. It takes place in Earth's own future, after nuclear war has split society into good faeries and mutants. There are many up-close shots of creatures good and bad getting blown up complete with cartoon blood and guts. Loud gunshots, yelling and crying all set with Hitler bloviating in the background: it's enough to give an adult nightmares and they showed it to us in grade school.

With BAKSHI's unique drawing style, the images of their war are burned into my memory. Ultimately, with the twist ending, it's hard to say which side actually won the war.

Reading all the previous entries, I'm REALLY glad my folks were always so careful about what I could and couldn't watch as a child.

That said, there was one show I stubbornly insisted on watching, because I loved it so much and 'oh it's not scary at all!!'–

GHOSTWRITER.

It aired, as I recall, some time in the ‘90s, so I guess I was about six or seven. For those who have never seen it, it's about a group of kids that are sometimes contacted by a ghost–a spirit of some kid who died in the 1800's, I think this was revealed at some point–who writes messages to them that only they can see. How does he do this? Why, by altering text on anything they happen to be looking at, of course! So if they happen to be reading the back of the cereal box at breakfast, suddenly the cheery cartoon is glowing and the letters rearrange themselves to spell anything from 'Gabby's in trouble! Find her!' to 'Party at Jamal's!' With his help and guidance the gang solves mysteries. Cool premise, to a kid's way of thinking, and I loved it.

There was one specific episode, however, that to this day remains the only thing I can ever recall giving me a nightmare. It dealt with a gang coming into town, taking over some turf the protagonists used as a hangout. This gang was no ordinary gang, however–they wore masks. Big green rubber masks, with horridly-bulging eyes. Shudder. Worse yet, each member wore TWO masks, one on his/her face and the other on the back of their head! At one point Alex, one of the protagonists, decided to join up with the gang to infiltrate them and take them down from within. Part of his joining entailed signing an oath of some sort, and a member offered her back to him as a writing surface, her mask leering down at him all the while. I woke up screaming bloody murder that night, convinced that a dual-headed green-faced monster with bulgy eyes was lurking the closet.

Just thought I'd share. Thanks!

AUNT JOHN SEZ: Well Matthew, thank you for sharing that with us. The episode that terrified you was first show of its first season, and it's called GHOST STORY. Below are the clips for your viewing pleasure.