Category: Traumafessions

The plot was some dumb thing about kids being turned into zombie-like killer munchkins by toxic waste, then going around hugging their parents to death in a cloud of flesh-dissolving chemical fog. Much like WHO COULD KILL A CHILD?, in this one the adults had to defend themselves by murdering the kids–by cutting off their hands, or something, I believe. (Don't ask me, I didn't write it.)

Something about this movie just GOT me as a kid–maybe it was the creepy, CARNIVAL OF SOULS makeup on those innocent little faces. Maybe it was the idea of Mommy reaching out for a hug from her beloved daughter and instead of warm fuzzies getting SCREAMING CHEMICAL DEATH! Or maybe it was the emotionally gut-punching notion that in order to survive, the parents had to kill their own children–an idea so distressing to my 9-year-old mind just thinking about it made me cry. Whatever the case, this movie got into my brain and stuck there. Anyway, I loved my parents, and I knew they loved me…so the horrification of that love, even making that love DEADLY, was truly traumatic.

I rewatched it years later and found (as I figured) it wasn't a well-made or well-acted movie–and yet I still had the same visceral emotional reaction to it! So there's still some scar tissue, obviously.

Afterwards, I called my Mom.

• Thanks V.O.V. The Vicar of VHS can be found holding court over at MAD MAD MAD MAD MOVIES, a great spot with an eclectic mix of cinematic oddities. Visit often!
• For more on THE CHILDREN check out this KINDERTRAUMA REVIEW!

Have you checked out the Kindertrauma Channel yet? What are you waiting for an invitation? Well, here it is: We invite you to check out the Kindertrauma Channel. You'll find stuff you'll wish you hadn't like reader Ian here, who was re-traumatized when he stumbled upon the trailer for IT'S ALIVE…

I nearly shat myself with evil old memories when I saw the movie trailers on the KINDERTRAUMA CHANNEL! The worst offender has got to be IT'S ALIVE. LARRY COHEN is in need of serious psychiatric help. I remember the first time I saw that trailer…I was 11 years old, May 1977, on an afternoon after I'd just got home from school. My mother kept going "what the hell is that?" I was so freaked out she had to dose me with NyQuil just to sleep…my school attendance improved markedly because I didn't want to see that trailer! Now, at 42, I still can't bring myself to look at pix from that movie…and I'm bloody dreading when the trailer for the remake hits TV… I thought I was the only one who got warped by these trailers…

THE PIT used to freak me out when I was a kid. Those trolog things that lived down in a hole in the ground that the kid, Jamie, started talking to and then started feeding people to them. I remember just being scared of the trologs, glowing eyes and all that, kinda hairy Bigfoot type creatures. Also the talking bear with glowing eyes was pretty creepy too. Some funny parts to me as I watch it now are the grandma getting thrown into the pit after Jamie pushes her there in her wheelchair, and just Jamie being a pervert peeking at girls all over the place.

Uncle Lancifer says: Devon, that Jamie kid was an oddball, and THE PIT is one of our favorite "Kids Who Kill" movies. Expect to see more of him in these pages in the future, good pick!

The holidays may be over but here is one last creepy seasonal greeting care of a reader in Iceland whose name we are afraid we may have mangled. (It's not our fault our lowly keyboards don't even have those fancy letters and that's the closest we could get! ) Oh well, serves you right "P.I." for being so late with your holiday gift!

Sure, Americans have stuff like SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT and CHRISTMAS EVIL, but old Icelandic folk tales speak of 13 yulemen, not the ho-ho-ing Saint Nick you all know, but mean spirited demons that stole and killed. Their mother, "Gryla" was a cannibalistic ogre that stole naughty kids and put them in her bag. Her humongous cat ate them. These old stories have been fed to us icelandic kids for centuries, and no one has really thought about how seriously fucking disturbed they are and how traumatizing they are! Heres a trailer for a recent horror-short on the subject, "UNHOLY NIGHT"

"P.I" even sent us a video! (Not to mention the above pic). How cool is he? O.K., we promise by next Xmas we'll have spruced up, Icelandic friendly keyboards to accommodate our new pal!

I was an easily scared kid, so horror movies were off limits which was fine by me. I was allowed to watch sci-fi, and since my dad was a huge Trekkie I was exposed to that stuff all the time and I was fine. That is until I saw STAR TREK 2: THE WRATH OF KHAN. Chekhof is captured by Khan, and Khan sticks some disgusting worm in his ear to control him. This freaked me out for a long time, and I used to try to sleep with my hands over my ears to protect myself. I can watch horror movies now but that worm thing I still have a problem with.

When SUSPIRIA first came out, I remembered seeing the trailer for it on TV. All you would see is a woman brushing her hair from behind and her singing, "Roses are red, violets are blue, the iris is a flower…..(something, something) SUSPIRIA!! After that, every time it came on, my sister and I would run from the room. Needless to say, since my mom was a horror lover we ended up seeing it at a matinee. I was 9 and my sister was 6.

Editor's note: That "something, something" was "The iris is a flower…that will mean the end of YOU!" as far as trailers and TV ads go this is one of the creepiest ever. Check it out!

Back in the day, there was a short series of old school horror story anthologies called SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK. Now, if the stories didn't scare you shitless as a kid (and they usually did), then Stephen Gammel's horrifying illustrations sure as hell got the job done. To this very day, there's a particular drawing that I can't bring myself to look at. The story was about a girl whose nightmare was coming true, and the illustration was that of a hideously obese woman with thin gangly arms, oily black hair, tiny black eyes, and an enormous smile. It doesn't sound so bad when I describe it, but trust me, it's pretty damn traumatizing for an eight year old. The book is sitting in my bookshelf as I type, and there's no way I'd take it out at night.

This isn't technically about a movie. It's about a documentary, which ran on Cinemax or HBO, called THE MAN WHO SAW TOMORROW. The documentary was narrated by ORSON WELLES, which is creepy enough.

It was about 1982, I was about 10 years old. I must have been at that very impressionable age, but this movie changed my life. The show started out saying that all Nostradamus' prophecies had come true: He'd predicted Napoleon, the US revolutionary war, Lincoln's assassination, Hitler and the Holocaust, Hiroshima, and the JFK assassination. So I had to believe that this guy was legit!

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In the summer of 1969 my twin sister and I were nine years old. My father took us to the drive in for a double feature: WILLARD and NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. I thought it was bad enough that the mean teenaged boys made rat noises when we walked to the concession stand during intermission, but that was nothing compared to how I felt when my father drove us through a cemetery on the way home and pretended to run out of gas. We screamed and screamed and screamed. To this day he insists that was the best way home, but we had never seen that cemetery before that night, and we never drove through it again. I can't watch NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (a personal favorite) without chuckling over that memory.

 

I was just watching FROSTY THE SNOWMAN for the millionth time this evening and remembered how it traumatized me as a child. The part where Professor Hinkle locks Frosty in the greenhouse to melt made me cry every year. I just knew he was melted forever and I was crushed. Also, Santa took his sweet time explaining that Frosty would be okay.

Thanks Mickster for the great Traumafession! And thanks to all who have sent in traumafesssions this year, you are the magic hats that keep Kindertrauma alive! Happy holidays to you all from Uncle Lancifer and Aunt John!