Hello, first of all let me say that your website is a cracker! I love it! Made me remember so many good ol' scares.
I have one myself but I cannot, for the life of me, remember the title, nor I can find it with generic searches on Google. It was a sci-fi B-movie, early ‘90s with an alien or some sort of bio-mechanic monster that looked like a vacuum cleaner with a trunk which could suck a bird out of its cage (a scene which was in the film) or a person's internal organs via his mouth. I know it sounds like a mad plot, but it was one of those crappy titles that can only scare you as a very young child.
If you could help remind me of which film it could have been, I'll be extremely glad, and I'll be able to write a new entry for your website. All I remember is that this monster was going around a house, while a geeky kid and his family were hiding from it in a closet. The monster in the meantime ate (or "sucked") stuff out of the fridge, the bird from its cage and I believe someone who entered the house at the wrong moment.
Thanks again,
Errico
AUNT JOHN SEZ: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! After initially writing in, Errico followed up with the answer:
OH MY GOD I FOUND IT!!!
It's actually not a film, but from a T.V. series.
TALES OF THE DARK SIDE, the episode is called "Hush!" It would be great to be able to watch it again. No idea how I could find it.
This is the description (I wonder if it would be still scary to watch nowadays):
Season 4, Ep 18: "Hush"
A babysitter is called in to take care of a sick boy. As a game, the two make up a pretend creature out of household parts, one that eats sounds. The creature comes to life, sucking the sound and the life out of everything in the house. The two try to evade it, but the boy's uncontrollable coughing gives him away. The creature then becomes sensitive enough to the girl's heartbeat to find and kill her too, then goes out into the world for more "food."
Man, as soon as I read the first part of this post, I broke into a sweat. Because I knew exactly what you were talking about.
Thanks for finding it! I will now watch it, huddled up in a blanket, while my kids declare me "LAME."
Hey, I was right! I thought that sounded like the short story "The Noise-Eater," and it turns out Tales from the Darkside made an episode out of it. Damn, that was a seriously creepy tale, especially since it was probably one of the very first horror stories I read with kids as main characters who didn't escape from the Big Bad.
this is one of my fav eps next to "the last car" and "the new man". i got thee ol' box set boot-leg joint.. its saaweet
After enjoying this site for about a year I knew I finally had to comment because of this post. It's kind of a full-circle thing for me since it was this "kindertrauma" that led me here. About a year ago I had posted this "vacuum machine monster memory" on a different site and they had correctly answered (but no clip – loved watching that just now!)  They were unable to identify my other trauma.  But in the comments section someone mentioned Kindertrauma and am I ever happy to have been pointed this way! Someday soon I'll send in my own "name that trauma," but for now I'm basking in the warmth of seeing this post on here.
@Rabs: Now that you've dipped your foot in the kindertrauma pool, please send us that NAME THAT TRAUMA! Between us and our readers, (okay mainly our readers — they are amazing!) someone will figure it out.