Name That Trauma :: Reader Fred N. on a Basement Incest Baby & a Snagged Scarf

Kindertrauma,

I just discovered your site, and thank goodness, because I have been trying to think of the name of this movie for years now.

I saw it on HBO in '86 or 87', I think. The story is told in flashback. A brother commits incest with his sister, spawning a monstrous creature that lives in the basement of their mansion years later. The brother is middle-aged now, still living in his boyhood home. He has imaginary conversations with his long-dead father. In his flashback the father has discovered the incest and is trying to have a heart-to-heart with his teenage son…"I know you're very popular with the girls," he intones in a fatherly way, as an opener to accusing his son of incest. "Your sister was beside herself. She was in tears," or something like that. After being confronted, the brother relives murdering his father so many years before.

Meanwhile, there is a female visitor to the house. She knocks a bowl of fruit to the floor, and then bends down to pick it up. She is right over a floor grating. Cut to the offspring inside the floor grating, looking up at the pretty lady, breathing heavily. The ends of her long scarf are on the grating. We see them get slowly pulled inside the grating. As she tries to stand up the monster starts slamming her face-first into the grating, over and over again, using the scarf as a handle. I don't think we see much gore, just her hand squeezing some grapes to mushy pulp, and then going limp as she finally dies. Her face is, we assume, fully pulped as well. Isn't this how Isadora Duncan really died?

Does anyone out there know what this movie is called? This scene is this movie gave me nightmares. So naturally, I want to see it again.

Many thanks,

Fred

UNK SEZ: Fred, the floor grate and the bowl of fruit give this one away. It's 1980's THE UNSEEN which was recently released on DVD. Check out our review HERE, it's a Kindertrauma favorite!