Traumafessions :: Reader Tony on Siskel & Ebert
I would like to tell you about my first real introduction to the world of horror movies.
Up until this point in my life I had just heard whispers of these kinds of movies out on the playground. My friend Carla had an older brother who had tricked her into watching a movie called CARRIE on television with a promise that there would be cartoons afterwards. The next day she was traumatized… she told me all about the movie, blow by blow… I was shivering right there underneath the jungle gym just hearing about it. I had never seen a real horror movie (besides a Bigfoot documentary that gave me nightmares (but that's another story).
It was about 1980, I was in the 3rd grade. My mom and me were hanging out in the living room one sunny afternoon listening to some K-tel albums. After the 'Star Point' record was over we decided to turn on the TV, boy was I in for a surprise.
The show SISKEL & EBERT SNEAK PREVIEWS was on and they happened to be doing an entire segment on Slasher movies and Scream Queens… I was intrigued… I was scared out of my mind; I would never be the same.
I vividly remember being frozen with fear watching the scene from FRIDAY THE 13TH where a hitchhiking woman is chased through the woods and murdered against a tree with a hunting knife… this was then followed like a one-two punch by JAMIE LEE CURTIS shrieking inside a closet being stalked by the 'Shape in HALLOWEEN… oh my God that music was so horribly scary!! (But cool)… my little mind could not comprehend why they would make movies to scare people!
Even though I was terrified, my interest in horror was definitely piqued! Ever since that day I have officially been a devout horror movie junkie.
UNK SEZ: Tony, my brother from another mother, my introduction to HALLOWEEN and consequently real horror fanaticism was also via Siskel and Ebert (or as my friend Maggie called them, Pork and Beans). Ironically, as much as they were opposed to a lot of the slasher films of that time, I'd tune in just to watch the clips that they would show of them. They inadvertently turned me on to THE EVIL DEAD as well, which I remember them giving a negative review to. Strange that two people with such different views as my own could be such a big influence on my life and so many others. They'll both always get two big thumbs up from me, regardless of their sometimes questionable taste!
Name That Trauma :: Reader Emma on Very Bloody, Possibly Very Dead, Twins in a Cabin
I only saw this once, and afterwards I wondered for years if I didn't simply imagine it. It was a t.v. show, the beginning depicting a small cabin set in a field or else beside a lake–this has been years so I don't recall exactly–and the view pans in through the window, to show a bed inside the room, moonlight spilling across the sleeping forms of two small children–twins, if memory serves. I can't recall why it was so eerie, but I think it was because the two were either very, very bloody, or very obviously dead. A creepy-sounding voice-over guy called the program 'Night Visions.'
I didn't see much of it, just that bit and a snippet later on–a man dressed in a white T-shirt, very sweaty, was frantically trying to escape from some kind of building, apparently finding doors locking in front of him at every turn. I remember this one by the music: That song about how 'Everything's great when you're down-town' by Dolly Parton was playing in the background, and I recall thinking how clearly, everything was not great for him in this case.
Am I just going nuts or was this an actual program?
UNK SEZ: Emma your memory serves you well, NIGHT VISIONS was a TWILIGHT ZONE– type anthology show that ran for one season in 2001. Directors that lent their talent to the program included JOE DANTE (THE HOWLING) TOBE HOOPER (POLTERGEIST) and KEITH GORDON ( Arnie in CHRISTINE and director of THE CHOCOLATE WAR). Actors BILL PULLMAN, BRIAN DENNEHY and JOBETH WILLIAMS also gave the director's chair a try for this short lived series hosted by HENRY ROLLINS. If you don't mind being bombarded by commercials you can watch episodes HERE. (Forgive me, I intended to track down the specific one you mentioned, but I couldn't take the SUPER LOUD annoying ads that popped up every two minutes. Are they kidding with that crap? Christ on a cracker, Honey Bunches Of Oates, relax, I GET IT!!!! Your product is soooo down to earth and the employees that work in your factory are total ga-ga moonies who are thrilled to be there everyday. Now do you mind stepping back out of my face for a hot second? You have milk-breath.)
Communion
What is up with COMMUNION, the 1989 CHRISTOPHER WALKEN movie based on WHITLEY STRIEBER's best seller about alien abduction? A thread on IMDb's discussion board for the film entitled "Worth seeing for one scene" currently has 91 responses. Somebody hit a nerve. The scene in question takes place early in the film where WALKEN, as STRIEBER, wakes up in the middle of the night and wonders aloud if there is another presence in the room. His suspicion is validated in the form of a half obscured, dark-eyed alien face staring back at him. Many who had watched the film as children claim that this scene still remains the scariest that they have ever witnessed, some revealing that it still haunts them even to this very day. It is undeniably eerie, but its real strength lies in the fact that it strikes a familiar, recognizable cord. Who amongst us, especially as children, has not awoken in the dark with just such a feeling? Squinting our eyes, trying to make out shapes, perhaps not being too comforted by what we imagine we see lurking in the shadows.
The fact that the scene occurs early on before the movie itself has had time to lose the audience's faith in what it's selling only adds to its other worldly power. For COMMUNION is such a bizarre, I should say "experience" rather than film that many viewers certainly WILL be throwing in the towel and jumping off this runaway train before the end credits roll. I myself could never put my glowing E.T. finger on whether the movie is an out-and-out hilarious disaster of epic proportions or a well calculated assault on human consciousness. When you consider that director PHILIPPE MORA is also responsible for THE HOWLING 2: YOUR SISTER IS A WEREWOLF signs point to the former, but yet I'm still undecided. True, MORA does the unthinkable by allowing WALKEN free reign to riff and improvise as he sees fit. As endlessly fascinating as this is, and WALKEN is never more lovable than he is in this picture, the unleashing of the Mad Hatter tends to work as a reality vacuum throughout the film. Was this his intention? MORA must be aware of what he's creating, there is nary a shot in the film that does not have some sort of unsettling malevolent object hiding in the corner and there's a willful use of disjointed angles and discomforting close-ups throughout.
Exposing WALKEN's brilliant lunacy is not difficult, but MORA is somehow able to make the usually dignified LINDSAY CROUSE seem equally certifiable. Are the maddening improvisations between the two stars meant to add realism or abolish it? Trust me, if I started quoting the strange interactions between the two, we'd be here all day. By film's end, they're looking straight at the camera and babbling abstractions like drunk relatives whose car keys need to be taken away. The audience has three choices, dismiss the entire affair as trash, begin jolting down the dialogue and form a ROCKY HORROR type cult complete with sold out midnight showings, or simply succumb to this surreal, dimension-shattering celluloid DMT trip. I do believe if you allow it, this film, like the alien invaders who occupy it, will "break you." (Perhaps COMMUNION is the dreamer and you are the dream). I am prepared to back up that assertion with photographic evidence. Do the below un-doctored pictures look like they came from a film that is NOT capable of pushing sensitive souls over the edge?
Whether the film is "good" or "bad" to me, finally, is a non-issue. COMMUNION obviously exists on more than one plane at once, it's a floor wax AND a delicious desert topping. It's a jack in the box with YOUR face on it, a clockwork banana peel, a hoot owl in spats dancing the Bossa nova while singing WHITE CHRISTMAS and delivering an unwanted anal probe as a shadow passes over the moon. It doesn't make rational sense, and why should it? Neither does that presence that wakes you up in the middle of the night and stares at you from across the room…
Several films have been made about aliens and their abductees, but COMMUNION plows its own private psychological terrain, ultimately owing more to KEN RUSSELL than STEPHEN SPIELBERG. It's nuts, it's eccentric, and it's far too freaky to ever garner mainstream appeal (then again, that was probably once the consensus about WALKEN). Ironically, once you realize it is an internal rather than external journey, the universe it presents you with expands greatly. The aliens may look like strung marionettes and CROUSE's hypnosis session a discarded MAD TV skit, but no matter how hard I'm laughing throughout, I'm always left wonderfully dazed and confused. Another director could have possibly made a more distinguished film out of this material, but really what fun would that be? Besides, if the response on IMDb is any indication, COMMUNION succeeded with flying colors in at least one scene. I may hate myself in the morning, but go ahead, count me in amongst the permanently altered believers.
Note: Just like every film ever made, COMMUNION is even better in Spanish.
Traumafessions :: Kinderpal Walt on the Visible Man
As I was on my daily trip to KinderTruama, my wife happened to be in the room and asked me about "the guy with no skin" who really disturbed her as a kid. Of course she meant the trauma-causing Slim Goodbody, a topic that I knew that was covered HERE. So I search for good-ole afro-creep and there he was, in all his skin-tight, package-revealing wonder. As we watched the clip KinderTrauma so kindly offered up, a new memory surfaced, like a bloated body wrest free from its weights… THE VISIBLE MAN.
I can't remember the order of events, but I know that I owned a VISIBLE MAN when I was a kid. I know that I had touched all the bones, the vital organs and saw the veins and arteries. I also know that it creeped me out.
Back in maybe 4th or 5th grade I did a report on the digestive system and I can't remember if I bought THE VISIBLE MAN for this project or I just happened to have him lying around because I needed more nightmares. Well, I pulled the whole digestive tract from poor Mr. Man and glued it to some poster board, wrote some things about the organs (and of course giggled about the anus) and gave my presentation to the class.
I have no idea what my grade was for this project, but I do know that just looking a picture of THE VISIBLE MAN now makes me feel a little funny inside.
Traumafessions :: Readers Patrick & Alexis on Chiller Theater
Aunt John SEZ: We are in for a special treat today kids, as the proverbial traumafession lightening strikes twice at Kindertrauma Castle. Please give a warm Kindertrauma welcome to readers Patrick and Alexis as they separately recall the creep-tastic introduction to WPIX's Chiller Theater…
Reader Patrick SEZ:
It wasn't a specific movie that terrified me as a little kid, but the intro to scary movie night on WPIX Channel 11 in New York. In the '70s, on certain nights of the week at 11 pm, they would run the following bumper to introduce the flick:
Being 5 or 6 years old, I'd see that hand rise from the ground and hear that eerie music and run screaming from the room. Of course, there was no getting to sleep after that. I didn't even need to see the movie — the 20-second clip was enough to keep me awake and shaking!
Reader Alexis SEZ:
When I was somewhere between four and six there was a local channel in New York that played cheesy movies on weekend afternoons. There were karate flicks and westerns, and of course, old "B" horror movies. Whenever they played one of these films, it was presented by what the station called "Chiller Theater." It really didn't matter if whatever movie they were playing was scary or not, because, if it was Chiller, you were gonna be freaked out one way or another.
The reason for Chiller Theater's success rate was their graphic introduction, which was also used for going to commercial breaks (and, believe me, familiarity never took away from its effectiveness.) The segment was of a six-fingered hand coming out of the ground that, eventually, munched on the Chiller logo. You kinda just have to see it. And hear it. That's most important. Trust me, the sound effects are enough on their own. Seeing it again, I thought it might not have the same effect on me, but alas, I was dead wrong. It still creeped me out big time.
So thanks again, Kindertrauma, for helping me realize I might not be quite as desensitized as I thought. Keep up the good work!
Shocker
Between the genre rejuvenators NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET and SCREAM, director WES CRAVEN hit a number of fly balls, SHOCKER being one of them. Large chunks of the film work fantastically, particularly the relatively realistic family killer on the loose opening scenes and the rabid bulldog performance of MITCH PILEGGI (Skinner from THE X-FILES), as wannabe horror icon Horace Pinker. Even if you commit yourself to the fact that Craven at this point is really experimenting with dark fantasy rather than outright horror, this mishmash requires the audience to change gears and swallow an awful lot.
Personally I have no problem with folks turning into electricity and jumping through television sets and in-and-out of host bodies. Set it to some heavy metal music and you'd really have to be a stick in the mud to gripe. I just have a real problem with helpful ghosts. I'm sorry I just do.
I hate helpful ghosts.
Like in THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL remake where CHRIS KATTAN appears at the end all fluffy to save the day? It really pissed me off. In SHOCKER it's CAMI COOPER our football hero's (PETER BERG) slaughtered girlfriend who returns to set things right.
Now mind you, I don't care if the ghost gives some advice or leaves messages on the bathroom mirror and CAMI does look swell covered head to toe in the red stuff, but delivering magic love necklaces and shooting beams of light from her abdomen is just too much for your poor Unkle Lancifer. I really have to draw the line.
To tell you the truth I'm not a big fan of rule set-up scenes either, and SHOCKER has a doozey where mid-way through the film BERG somehow explains the perimeters of this movie's "logic" to his nonplussed football buddies.
Of course all is forgiven, when a little girl becomes possessed by the evil Pinker and begins spitting and swearing like a trucker and jumps into a nearby tractor in order to run down constipation-faced BERG. I did see SHOCKER in the theater and will always remember the audience howling at this scene. It certainly went over bigger than Pinker's assortment of BAZOOKA JOE meets FAT ALBERT zingers. (Did the electrically charged Pinker really say, "Care to take a ride in my VOLTZ wagon?") I know there are adamant supporters of this movie and I guess it is goofy fun in many places, but even if I could recover from the constant channel switching changes in tone and the mixed signals about capital punishment and violence in the media, there's still the attack of the massage chair scene to contend with which comes off like a deleted scene from PEE WEE's PLAYHOUSE.
I really wish I could enjoy this near miss more than I do. Here's to hoping that someday a friendly ghost will appear and tell me how.
Traumafessions :: Reader Artic1111 on Bunny Lake is Missing
BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING, with SIR LAURENCE OLIVIER.
That movie still haunts me. Disappearing little girl. That creepy antique doll shop owner. Burning the dolls. And when they finally find him with the little girl in the playground at dark.
I have to go before I throw up.
UNK SEZ: Artic1111, thanks for bringing up a film that's not talked about nearly enough! What a great, ahead of it's time thriller, and who can beat that cast? Besides SIR LAURENCE OLIVIER, you've got CAROL LYNLEY (THE SHUTTERED ROOM) and KEIR DULLEA (BLACK CHRISTMAS) on board as well. I threw up some shots of that creeped-out doll shop, but as for the ending, it's best we keep those who have not seen it yet in the dark…
Traumafessions :: Fox of Tractor Facts on Pete's Dragon
Well, I guess it's time I get this out and over with.
I was raised to whisper these kinds of things to a priest behind a one-way wicker viewer, but since I dropped my faith, I now seek penance at the knees of Uncle Lancifer and Aunt John.
I have been a mama's boy my whole life, but I think that was set in stone the day my parents took me to see PETE'S DRAGON. Others may trace their fear of backwoods people back to THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, DELIVERANCE, GOD'S LITTLE ACRE, etc., but mine began with the appearance of the Gogans in PETE'S DRAGON.
Forgive me for not remembering the scene so accurately (after all, it was traumatic… I've tried to block it), but there is a moment in the film where the hillbilly Gogans are hunting for the runaway Pete with their clubs and sticks. It made me beg my mother to take me out to the lobby. I refused to go back in, so I'm sure we just sat on a bench and she held my head to her while I waited for my sisters and father to finish watching the movie.
It was the Gogans' dirty faces, nasty teeth, filthy hats, and redneck noses that scared me so. Oh, and their voices. These were people that sounded like animals. I'd never seen such scummy looking humans before in my life.
UNK SEZ: Fox, I just reacquainted myself with those hillbilly Gogans and their non-smash hit "The Happiest Home in These Hills." All I can say is, you are correct, those folks are grade "A" trash. For a moment I thought I was watching a documentary on my pre-Aunt John dating history (which, full disclosure, does include SHELLEY WINTERS!). In the life imitates sub-art category: one of those flea-bitten, urine-stained, good-for-nothing foaming at the mouth louses one day grew up to be T.V.'s JEFF CONWAY!
P.S. : The ALWAYS sly "Fox" has got a swinging pad of his own a couple doors down that ya'll should swing by called TRACTOR FACTS!!!!
