Traumafessions :: Reader Jergy on Halloween is Grinch Night
Since Halloween is fast approaching I thought I'd write in with my trauma. I was (and still am according to my wife) a bit of a scaredy cat, which is amazing considering how Halloween is my favorite time of year. My favorite part was the specials. Kids today will never understand the EVENT that was catching THE GREAT PUMPKIN or GARFIELD the night it aired. But Halloween specials were not as plentiful as the amount that would hit you as Christmas so they were more treasured and rare. And they all used to scare me. I think I even covered my face watching the FAT ALBERT HALLOWEEN SPECIAL (that old lady that lived by the cemetery was creepy!)
The trauma I wrote to tell you about came eleven years after the Grinch terrified me while ruining the Who's Christmas. Old Grinchy was so popular they threw him a new special. The original name of the program back in 1977 was HALLOWEEN IS GRINCH NIGHT. And I had no idea the absolute terror I was in for. First thing I noticed was that this Grinch wasn't anything like the Grinch I saw carving the roast beast with the Whos eleven years ago. This Grinch was much more sinister. To keep the synopsis brief, what I gather is the same time every year (around Halloween) the Grinch comes down from Mount Krumpet and scares the sh*t out of the Who's. He was sort of like Jack Skellington, but more of an asshole. His heart was no longer "3 sizes bigger," it was gone completely.
So one small Who decides to delay the Grinch as he heads towards the town. He approaches him and asks to be scared. What followed are images I'll never shake from my head. I can't believe this special actually won an award back in 1977. And even more surprising was that the teleplay was written by Seuss himself. I know he's known for bizarre sometimes frightening images, but this seems above even something he would conjure.
Luckily this show didn't air very often, but it never had to. Those images were burned in my brain the rest of my life. So fast forward 32 years later when I picked up a DVD of GREEN EGGS AND HAM for my daughter and flipped it over. As an 'extra feature' they included HALLOWEEN IS GRINCH NIGHT. Needless to say my daughter was excited to see it. So I sat next to her last week while asking over and over again while watching it, "Are you sure you want to watch this? We can turn it off if you want?" When I should have just told the truth and said, "Daddy peed his pants."
Awesome site guys, love it!
Jergy
Wrong Turn 3: Left For Dead
2003's WRONG TURN may have not set the world on fire, but for many horror fans it was a welcome return to grittier, gorier terrain after years of clean cut thrills. Mere months after it exited theaters, the TEXAS CHAINSAW reboot would sweep in to gather all the glory, but for those fortunate enough to catch it during its poorly advertised run, WRONG TURN was the first sign that the hills were no longer alive with the sound of muzak. Home video caught stragglers up to speed and by the time WRONG TURN 2: DEAD END was delivered in 2007, a welcoming audience was waiting for a second course.
What horror fans could not possibly be prepared for was the fact that WT2, a straight to DVD venture starring HENRY ROLLINS and involving a phony reality show was (holy crap) actually pretty awesome. Whatever drop in quality there may have been from the first film was made up for with shear ingenuity, buckets of blood and a too rare awareness of what makes a horror film fun. Suddenly from a theatrical film that barely made a dent, it looked like a worthwhile series could be forming…
Well, there's a bit of a roadblock now in the WRONG TURN franchise and it's called WRONG TURN 3: LEFT FOR DEAD. Unless it was solely created to point out just how rare a treat PART 2 was, PART 3 of WRONG TURN fails wildly. After a lively opening scene that had me wishing that those handling the reigns of the FRIDAY THE 13TH franchise were watching and taking notes, it's pretty much a downhill downer whose mantra seems to be, "Less, less, less!" Let me tell ya' something DECLAN O'BRIEN, director of WRONG TURN 3, if you can't keep yours truly's attention with a bus load of burly escaped convicts then there's more than one mentally handicapped mutant in them there woods (the other would be you). Geez, if I have to see another movie where constant bickering and bellyaching passes as dialogue, I'm going to throw my television set out the window. What am I watching here, THIRTYSOMETHING? (Actually Hope and Michael Steadman could have beat the crap all of the "hardened" criminals featured in WT3)
Whatever your fears may be of renting a direct to DVD sequel, they are all fully realized here. The writing is snorable, the acting is mostly horrible (main guys TOM FREDERIC & TOM McKAY are decent enough even when forced to deliver a regrettable epilogue) and the special effects, which a film like this could have ridden on, look outlandishly amateurish and hobbled by CGI. Most mind blowing of all is a reliance on what looks like ancient blue screen for almost all of the shots involving a moving vehicle. Seriously I haven't seen anything this bad since Granny rode on top of the car in THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES.
This could be a worthwhile rental if you are looking for something to rip to shreds with your friends and have a desire to throw emptied beer cans at the screen but, as a follow-up to the first two films, it's a bit of an embarrassment and a definite wrong turn in an otherwise promising series. Poor "Three Fingers," you deserve more!
Traumafessions :: Reader Theresa G. on The Fugitive
For years I suffered with the same recurring nightmare. I couldn't figure it out, didn't understand what it could have meant. Years later, as an adult, I told one of my sisters about it.
It was dusk and I was running, someone was chasing me and I was so scared. I could see it even as I explained it. The man chasing me had one arm and he was chasing me through an amusement park.
My sister laughed and told me that was from the show THE FUGITIVE.
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Traumafessions :: Reader Smidget on Phantasm
I was so scared of this movie because of commercials that I never saw it….the commercials scared the heck out of me as a kid where my brother would tease me undyingly about it even though we'd never seen the movie!
Now, I watched it today.
Yawn.
To me it's SO SO STRANGE how things can be SO SCARY to you one time of your life and a joke another. Clearly the whole "Tall Man" thing was spooky…but that metal ball that chases people, that one was what got me in my youth. Of course, the final scene is a good shocker….reminiscent of FREDDY KRUEGER's moves which of course CAME AFTER…..all in all it's a '70s classic with tempera paint for blood in two colors, yellow and red.
UNK SEZ: Funny you should mention "The Tall Man", it's his 30th Birthday!
