kindertrauma

Name That Trauma: Reader Craig's Friend Meg on an Aggressive Amulet

Posted on By aunt john

Hi guys,

Long time reader, first time writer. When I was a kid, my friend would have sleepovers and rent horror movies that haunt me to this very day. The one I am seeking today may have been double-billed with BEYOND THE DOOR II, a movie that made me sleep with clenched fists for years afterward – the thought of waking up with a crumbling hand in mine was so terrifying.

The movie I am looking for was watched on video sometime between 1983 and 1989. It featured a man who had obtained an amulet that allowed him to psychically act outside of his body as he slept. I think he received the amulet from a man in prison. I remember two crimes that he committed. He caused a big crate or a piano to fall on someone by snapping the rope it was swinging on. He also scalded a woman in a shower by increasing the water temperature and seizing the glass door closed. She ultimately breaks through the glass door and is covered in cuts – I can't remember if she lives. In the end, he is captured as he sleeps and incinerated – he wakes up as he burns.

One final question, where the hell were my parents when I needed them?

— Craig's Friend Meg



UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Special thanks to readers Leoben & halekotsi for solving it with PSYCHIC KILLER!

Name That Trauma :: Reader Stickmann on a Diabolical Desert

Posted on By aunt john

There was what I believe to be a made-for-TV movie in the mid-late 1970s, and I suspect it was some type of supernatural anthology thriller. Promotions for it involved an RV in the desert, a woman in a wheelchair patting a dog or something only to fall down an exterior staircase, and a kid popping up from a circle of plastic milk crates or the like.

The striking portion of the film I saw on T.V. involved the RV: a middle-aged couple on vacation in the desert were attacked by large boulders rolling across the flat desert landscape. The genuinely terrifying part for me was that the husband first was trying to find out what these heat-blurred dots on the horizon were by repeatedly walking further and further away from the safety of the camper to get a closer look with his binoculars.

I think even back then, I suspected the massive boulders were "fakey," but that was just inconsequential to the terror I felt at knowing something is completely and hostilely amiss and yet still being compelled to find out what it is at the expense of your protection. The fact that the distance between the man and his means of escape in their presumably safe RV was shown in a long shot just psychologically added to the danger.
Eventually this RV would also be telekinetically commandeered while the husband was on the roof and the wife was helpless to override the steering wheel of the speeding vehicle, if that's any help in identifying this.

Does anyone know the title of this film?

Thanks again for your help! Take care.

Sincerely,

Stickmann


UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Special thanks to NurseKrud for solving it with GHOSTS THAT STILL WALK!

Kinder-Flix:: Watch Satan's Triangle!

Posted on By unkle lancifer

UNK SEZ:: Howdy Kinder-citizens! If you're a regular reader of Kindertrauma then you have no doubt heard me mention the 1975 television movie SATAN'S TRIANGLE numerous times. It's the first movie that ever truly scared your lil' Unk to the core and it happens to be the main inspiration and catalyst for this site (and perhaps my love of horror)! Someday I'll write an extensive traumafession to give this creepfest its proper due but in the meantime, I just found it in it's entirety on YouTube! Now, SATAN'S TRIANGLE has been particularly hard to track down over the years and who knows how long it will remain on YouTube so I just had to give you all a heads up. If you enjoy television movies from the seventies this is a must see and if you enjoy scary supernatural mind screws it's a must see too. I gotta say, the final moments of this one still hit me right where I live. I'm going to throw the film into the comments section for your convenience and hopefully you'll check it out and be traumatized for life too!

Scissors

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Before she snatched the world's attention in BASIC INSTINCT, a young SHARON STONE (DEADLY BLESSING) starred in what has got to be one of the most amazingly bizarre psychological thrillers ever made. I assume that only the lack of availability on DVD can be blamed for 1991's SCISSORS not being an established cult classic. It's just wall-to-wall insanity and if you get past the obscene improbability of it all and relish rather than reject STONE's comical wide-eyed hysterics, it's a mesmerizing midair collision that mutates into a baroque mad tea party. It's so nuts it might make you nuts too.

STONE portrays peril-prone Angie Anderson, a 26-year-old sexually repressed, virginal freelance doll restorer who sleeps on her couch. One day while returning from shopping for a pair of scissors to add to her vast collection, a man with a dubbed voice wearing a long fake red beard tries to rape her in an elevator while calling her a bitch. She stabs him with her scissors and he replies while exiting, "I'll be back!" She meets and is taken in by her neighbors, twin brothers both portrayed by STEVE RAILSBACK. One brother is a neat and presentable soap opera star named Alex and the other is a scruffy longhaired artist confined to a motorized wheelchair.

Angie and Alex soon develop a thing for each other but their love is curbed by her fear of sex, her fear of his creepy brother and her fear of men with long red beards. Her pushy hypnotherapist Dr. Carter (RONNY COX) who is married to an ambitious politician (MICHELLE PHILIPS) is little help with anything besides dredging up Angie's repressed memories of sexual abuse with a pig puppet. Eventually Angie is invited to a doll restoring job interview in an apartment apparently decorated by DARIO ARGENTO and she finds herself trapped there with a dead red bearded man, a scale model of the city, artwork and television screens reflecting her life and a black raven that keeps screeching, "You did it!" From there things get weird…

I caught SCISSORS on late night cable while I was a young pretentious art student and I lapped it up. It was beautiful, the creepy dolls, the pig puppet, the carnival music, (not to mention the age inappropriate virginity) all spoke to me at the time. I returned to it again ten years later when I was a know-it all -video clerk and could not believe how ridiculous the plot was and how over the moon atrocious the acting was. Seeing the film now (it's on Netflix streaming and it looks fucking amazing) as a cynical, shut-in cat herder I have come to the understanding that I was right on both previous accounts. The movie is beautiful and it is wretched and together those two things equal super awesome. I'm now pointing the blame for my affection of SCISSORS directly on Italian horror films. Italian horror films have taught me that something can be supremely entertaining and still not make a lick of sense. Slap some subtitles on this bronco and presto! A masterpiece!

SCISSORS was directed by FRANK DeFELITTA who authored AUDREY ROSE and THE ENTITY and directed the kindertrauma classic DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW. Who would have ever thought he was such a lunatic? Dude is obviously smitten with HITCHCOCK and DePALMA and must have viewed SUSPIRIA at least once. The story may be all over the place throwing MacGuffins and red herrings about like confetti, but it's always compelling and there is always something indescribably peculiar in the air. When STONE goes to grab the doorknob of the space she shall find herself trapped in, she discovers it is squishy rubber and when it falls from her hand it bounces away. It's a moment of simple surreal dread and it's absolutely aces. Once trapped, there are many such dream logic visuals and the use of color and light wonderfully compounds the unnerving effect.

As I more than implied before SCISSORS can easily be taken in as gonzo b-grade camp. On the other hand, there's nothing stopping you from taking it seriously either. I'll leave that up to you. STONE may be embarrassingly amateurish in this, but if you can take your eyes off her you're a bigger man then me. STEVE RAILSBACK plays twins, can I stress that enough? Twin movies are always of interest and I have to say the twin effects, though not DEAD RINGERS caliber, are still pretty impressive.

Anyway if you want to watch a movie that reeks of crazy and is a smidge trashy but is also undeniably easy on the eyes and you're a fan of overdone set pieces and visuals and can ignore giant gaping holes in logic, you have to check out SCISSORS; it's like visiting another planet for 105 minutes. I'm not sure how long SCISSORS is going to be on Netflix streaming so check it out as soon as possible and spread the word (especially to fans of Italian cinema.) Whatever you do though, please don't run while you watch it!

Hatchet 2

Posted on By unkle lancifer

As someone who requires a heavy body count in my entertainment diet, I appreciated ADAM GREEN's first HATCHET movie for its direct approach. It didn't have an original bone in it's corpse but at least it was committed to reveling in gore and rejected the sport of leading the viewer on. A cinematic slasher booty-call, the bloody goods were available for the taking if you were willing to forgo anything deep. The objective may have been to provide a loving throwback to classic eighties slasher films, but the end result was more of an echoing of the fun but diluted sequels that followed them. That's not a jab really, I think I'd take a low budget salute to FRIDAY THE 13th PART WHATEVER over the big budget remake any day of the week. If you want to take me on a walk down VHS memory lane you better be willing to get gritty, get bloody and most importantly drop the gloss. HATCHET II is no improvement over GREEN's first trip to the swamp but it may be slightly more worthwhile. Don't thank GREEN for that though, thank DANIELLE HARRIS.

HATCHET II, like any considerate sequel, begins at the exact point the first movie ended but miraculously, through the art of behind the scenes severed relationships, DANIELLE HARRIS replaces TAMARA FELDMAN as the surviving lead. What that means is that if you're looking for an objective review of HATCHET II, you have to go elsewhere on account of I might dig it somewhat on the HARRIS factor alone. Say what you will about GREEN (and I will shortly), but he knows how to throw horror fans a bone or two. There's plenty of pander casting in the film already (TONY TODD, KANE HODDER, TODD HOLLAND et al.) but HARRIS (who was replaced once herself in HALLOWEEN 6: THE CURSE OF YOU KNOW WHO) carts around enough heavy duty meta-baggage to keep this sometimes annoying excursion afloat. Besides the fact that I just respect HARRIS for being a non-bimbo scream queen who embraces her horror heritage fully, she's pretty good in this. She's got a more determined aura than usual and even though it's a humorless role once you get a load of what passes for humor in this movie, you'll be thankful. The catharsis she brings to the film's conclusion is a long time coming and is grander than the film itself.

Remember a while back when I was singing the praises of the writing in GREEN's other effort FROZEN? Well, you needn't worry about a repeat of that. I didn't get the humor in this movie at all. It's alienating and crude and I suppose it could be considered another throwback to bygone days, but it's not really broad or winking enough to work as such. I'm thinking a sick goofy tone similar to the SLEEPAWAY CAMP films would have been perfect but there's nothing in HATCHET II nearly as clever. I don't have a particularly sophisticated joke palette, so believe me when I say in that area the film is a lead balloon factory employed by crickets. In other wonky writing news, there's a painfully long and boring assembling the troops scene and frankly, I expect my killer to not be dead a couple more times rather than an 86 minute runtime. I know that's a cliché but I was of the understanding that that was the point of all this. Maniac Crowley's final stomping out works as wish fulfillment if you ever wanted to see Annie topple Michael in ROB ZOMBIE's HALLOWEEN movies, but this venture is already hanging on too many coattails.

I may be asking too little of movies that sometimes my only requirement is to not feel like I've been mugged in an alley when the credits roll but that's where I'm at with HATCHET II. For me, there's a permeating odious glibness that insures I'll never be passionate about it but it earns a certain space of interest just by throwing every possible horror fan hand job against the wall and watching the Pavlovian puppies roll. Some of this stinks to high heaven, but GREEN is clearly making the film that he as a fan would like to see and I commend that; thankfully some of the stuff he wants to see I want to see too; that would be imaginative no holds barred gore and DANIELLE HARRIS. I'd give him a MERCEDES MCNAB star too but the hermaphrodite joke she's required to utter kind of cancels that out. I guess ultimately this sequel is serviceable filler if you're in need of the red stuff. GREEN's FROZEN makes me know better than to write him off completely but you might be better off not thinking of this as a real movie but more as a complacent, shrug-off goof with the bonus of an upgrade in the final girl department.

Traumafessions :: Reader Rob on Read All About It & Unico

Posted on By aunt john

Dear KinderTrauma,

Your site has allowed me to put to rest the last of my kindertrauma. Discovering your April 30, 2009 post on CAPTAIN KANGAROO's sketch "Amazing Amy…" I had all but convinced myself that I had made it all up.

Other notable kindertrauma that haunted me until the advent of YouTube:

READ ALL ABOUT IT: This Canadian kids program taught me that if I don't learn to read I would be trapped in a deadly maze in another dimension.

And…

UNICO: A popular anime from the '80s staring a tiny unicorn fighting against an abused kids toy gone crazy.

Thanks for the great website!


Rob

Name That Trauma :: Reader Nicholas on Gender Morphing Mug

Posted on By aunt john

Hello,

Can you help me name a movie?

This is the movie that I thought was SLEEPAWAY CAMP, so I rewatched S.C., to find out that I was wrong. The movies are similar, but the difference is in the end. While the S.C. has the very clever "girl with a penis" ending (loved that craziness b.t.w.), the movie I'm thinking about is different.

It must have been perhaps 15 years since I saw it. It's an ‘80s movie and in the end they are chased by the killer in the deep woods (looks like a jungle) with a knife. I think the killer is one of them, and that it's a guy. But the guy's face literally morphs into a girl's face or is it the other way around?

It's really weird. And that is the big twist. I remember it scared the living crap out of me.

I would love to see it again!!

Thanks,

— Nicholas