Traumafession & NTT:: Dustin in Minnesota on Dusty's Treehouse & HBO's Short Takes
Dustin in Minnesota again, with a two-fer.
My "Name That Trauma" was more freaky than scary, and was actually somewhat amusing. It was a film short I recall seeing at a movie theater before the movie. I also saw it as one of HBO's Short Takes. This was sometime around 1981.
It started with a young boy riding his bike and singing a song. He then arrives at home, where his older brother is mixing up a concoction of kitchen ingredients, which he then makes his younger brother drink. The younger brother turns into a chicken, but still has a human voice, begging his brother to return him to normal. The older brother mixes the correct ingredients and changes his brother back.
Does anyone remember this, and if so, do you have a title? I have searched several times on the Internet for this with no results.
My Traumafession was the ONE episode of Dusty's Treehouse that I watched in the early 1970s. If you aren't familiar with that show, as best as I recall it was puppets of squirrels and other treefolk, similar to when Mr. Rogers had his neighborhood of make-believe — except the whole show was puppets. On one episode, one of the squirrels had taken someone else's medication and was very sick. The lesson was to not take medicine unless your parents gave it to you.
The reason this episode might have freaked me out so much was because when I was about 2 or 3 I took an entire bottle of iron pills and was rushed to the hospital to have my stomach pumped.
This ties in with my first Traumafession here, the Mr. Yuk commercial that terrified me so much. Maybe the iron pills made the idea of poisoning all the more terrifying to me.
Love the site, keep it coming!
Dustin in Minnesota
Name That Trauma:: R.H. on a One-Eyed Baby in a Box
Hi Kindertrauma!
I have been looking for this one for years and could use your expert help.
One day, in the early 90s, I turned on my black and white TV to the only channel it got, which was a UHF PBS channel in Washington State, and there was a very strange film being shown. (I believe it was British, like most things on the channel.) What I saw began with two people in a car diving up to a forested hill in the country and getting out. (My memories are super rusty…) I think they may have been cops. They walked into the forest and explored until they came upon an old house/shack. They went inside and found an old box…. they opened the box and… there was a baby with one eye inside the box – alive. Just then, they saw someone running off in the woods and one of the men chased after them. I don't know why, but it gave my child mind the creep chills and I shut it off.
I vaguely remember looking it up in a TV guide later and finding something called "The boy in the box", but again, my memories are likely rotten and I'm getting it mixed up with the classic Corey Hart song.
Any ideas would be appreciated – thanks!
Traumafession:: QJS on Children of the Damned & Quatermass and the Pit
Films that scared me as a kid? No CONTEST…'Children of the Damned' (little known sequel to the ORIGINAL 'Village of the Damned')
I don't think I slept for 6 MONTHS after watching this, and I wasn't even that young!
Oh, and finally, 'Quatermass and the Pit' (AKA 'Five Million Years to Earth') There is a scene set in a bombed-out house that still rates as one of the SPOOKIEST scenes I have EVER seen!
Happy Viewing!
QjS
Sunday Viewing:: Picture Mommy Dead (1966)
Every couple months or so I check YouTube to see if anybody has uploaded PICTURE MOMMY DEAD (1966) which has eluded me for years. I once neglected to buy the VHS at a used store and clearly the film held a grudge and was playing hard to get. Happily my saint-like patience finally paid off and PICTURE MOMMY DEAD appeared before me and looking mighty good I might add! I'm glad I didn't pick up that ratty old tape that surely was wearing washed out colors and a shroud of static. This movie needs to be crunchy not fuzzy! I put my DONNA WILKES marathon on temporary hold and dived in at once. I wasn't even through the opening credits before I decided that PICTURE MOMMY DEAD is my new favorite thing that ever existed and I was bound to be obsessed for days before some other cinematic chippy came strutting around. Holy crap, it looks like a box of candy! I had that thing were I started fantasizing about eating the movie. This movie would taste delicious! It's all pastels and gold and ornate and fizzy and now I want to listen to that ABC album "The lexicon of Love." This movie was filmed in a real mansion and has ZSA ZSA GABOR in it for Pete's sake! Maybe this will be all too frilly for some horror fans but I think the relentless onslaught of prissiness creates a counter intuitive hellish atmosphere all its own. Diabetics beware.
PICTURE MOMMY DEAD is irresistible because it brings home the crazy and fries it up in a baroque, gold-plated pan. SUSAN GORDON (who's father is incidentally the director of this fine flick, BERT I. GORDON, who also blessed our world with the tonally opposite FOOD OF THE GODS) plays Jan Brady-level crazy Susan Shelly. Our Susan has just spent some time in a convent that doubles as an insane asylum because she witnessed her mother's tragic death by fire and was so traumatized that she blocked the whole thing out of her head! Am I salivating as I type this? She comes back home to her luxurious estate with her father (DON AMECHE!) and his new wife who is Susan's ex-governess; a sneaky moneygrubber named Francene (MARTHA HYER). Turns out, if Susan looses her marbles or should happen to die her inheritance will go to her father, who could really use it because Francene has expensive tastes and has already spent his share of the dough! All right. I'm not really into inheritance drama but I am really into accusing dolls that sing, "The worms crawl in and the worms crawl out", menacing stuffed animals, attacking falcons, paintings that bleed and or yell at you and giant-sized lurking groundskeepers with scars on their faces (Not necessarily in that order). Oh, and ZSA ZSA freakin' GABORas a flaming ghost!
I hate to use the word "camp" because it sounds dismissive and yet it's kind of unavoidable here. This is 1966 though and we should remember that folks acted like hysterical lunatics in most movies back then not just in low-budget horror flicks. Obviously everything was done here sincerely and not as a joke but it is funny– especially if you imagine the characters have no idea how insane they sound and are actually trapped in a surreally overstated melodramatic dimension they can't escape. And I love the heavy-handed mommy and daddy issues; it's rather like a powder puff version of HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME without all the awesome kills. In any case, the scene were the dolls begin to harass crazy Susan is now one of my favorite scenes in all of moviedom. I'm not kidding! It's like three minutes of pure grade-A Kindertrauma. I almost overdosed! And as a matter of fact, this movie gave me crazy dreams. Any movie that can grant me trippy dreams can picture itself a pal of mine for life.
Unk's Homemade Video Store Signage!
I was going through an old box of photos and found these sub-genre signs that I made for the horror section of the video store I used to work at. I took them home whenever the joint got all fancy and switched to DVD. What kind of dope gets rid of their "Scary Spinster" section? That's not progress!
Nancy Allen Funhouse
Ten images from ten NANCY ALLEN movies! How many can you identify? Extra points if you can tell me the name of the newscaster in image #10 and the name of his famous son! Good Luck!
Name That Trauma:: Bdwilcox on a Co-worker's Underground Insect Aliens
This Traumafession comes from a co-worker. He has been seeking out a movie, a single clip of which has been burned into his psyche for decades now, but all his Google-fu has come up short. He said it's a post WW2 'Earth invaded by aliens' B-movie in black and white that was released around the same time as the original 'The Blob'. In the movie, the first time the hapless Earthlings glimpse the alien invaders it's on a black and white closed-circuit TV in the subway and the aliens resemble grasshoppers or cockroaches. That's it, that's all he remembers. Please help him solve this mysteria othopterae.
Thanks!
-bdwilcox
UNK SEZ: I think I got it! I had no idea and then it hit me like a ton of bricks! I think your co-worker must be talking about QUATERMASS AND THE PIT which is rife with both subways and grasshopper aliens! If he saw it in black and white then it must have been the 1958 TV version rather than the 1967 theatrical color version from HAMMER (AKA FIVE MILLION YEARS TO EARTH). Let us know if your co-worker recognizes the video below!
