kindertrauma

The Worst Witch

Posted on By unkle lancifer


I'm pretty sure J.K. ROWLING must read Kindertrauma every day , so I must pose one question specifically to her: J.K., is there anything you'd like to say to the class about where your ideas for the HARRY POTTER series came from?….No?… Anyone you might want to tip your wizard's hat to as acknowledgement for inspiration?… No, really?… Are you sure? It's O.K., you're allowed to be influenced by others…No, nothing? O.K. J.K, we'll just let it go, but I must say I'm very disappointed in you. Now that that's not settled, let's talk about THE WORST WITCH whose synopsis can be read on the back of any of J.K.'s HARRY POTTER books. THE WORST WITCH stars born outsider and traumatot legend FAIRUZA BALK (RETURN TO OZ) and is as impervious to critique as it is to human understanding. It may be grossly unprofessional, feature alarmingly sub-LIDSVILLE flying sequences and gamble on the assumption that a viewer can withstand dual roles AND a MUSICAL NUMBER by one CHARLOTTE RAE, but when all is said and done, it makes that other child training in the black arts seem like he has an enchanted broomstick stuck up his ass. Why is THE WORST WITCH the best movie that takes place in a magic school for kids? Because it actually has magical powers! POTTER's movies may be 3 or more hours in length, but I guarantee WITCH's mere 70 minutes will have you wondering if you have been watching it for days! Plus it has a message, which as far as I could make out was something like, "Keep sucking at what you suck at, but suck at it in your own sucky way!" Unlike most films aimed at kids, here we are not advised to gain power through acquiring a ROWLING-esque money pile or by being flashier than our peers. Real power comes from passively shrugging off adversity, having the ugliest cat in the room and intuitively knowing who deserves to be transformed into a pig or a snail. I don't really don't know how to describe TIM CURRY's sanity stealing musical interlude, you can either watch it HERE or take a cheese grater to your eyeballs, I'm not sure if there is a difference. To sum it all up, J.K. ROWLING is a dirty plagiarist with no conscience, CHARLOTTE RAE is even more certifiably insane than previously understood, TIM CURRY has the power to burn a permanent hole in your retina, and budgets of over one thousand dollars are for chumps. Keep doing what you're doing folks, eat, sleep, go to work, pay your bills, if you have not experienced THE WORST WITCH you will go to your grave unenlightened, having lived only half of a life. Sure that four-eyed POTTER may receive all the attention and laurels but in my backwards spell book WORST is best!


Name That Trauma :: RATSAWGOD on Hairy-Handed Hitchhiking Hag

Posted on By unkle lancifer

name that trauma!

I'm looking for a short film that I saw as a teen that was based on the famous urban legend "The Hairy-Handed Hitchhiker." A woman picks up an seemingly innocent old lady hitchhiker late at night. She is soon unnerved by the old lady's odd behavior and then the sight of her hairy arms. She tricks the old lady into getting out of the car and then takes off, leaving the old lady behind. She realizes the old lady has left her large purse in the passenger seat. She looks inside and discovers a large, bloody axe or machete.

The short film I saw pretty much follows this to a T. It changes up the ending a bit by having the woman driver call her boyfriend after ditching the old lady hitchhiker, feeling guilty and foolish for having tricked her and leaving her stranded in the middle of nowhere. The boyfriend agrees to get in his car and find her. The woman driver goes into the local sheriff station to report the poor abandoned little old lady so any patrol men might find her and drive her to safety. She hands the sheriff the purse that she left behind. The sheriff opens the purse to search for ID. Out comes the machete. The young woman's eyes widen.

The film cuts back to the boyfriend in his car pulling up to the old lady at an intersection. He opens the passenger side door and the old lady gets in, clutching another purse in her hairy hands. The light changes from red to green. The car doesn't move. The little old lady gets out of the car and shuffles off. The light changes from green to yellow to red. The car is still.

I've found plenty of info about this urban legend on-line, but NOTHING about this very cool short film made from the mid-to-late 80's. It was around ten minutes long. Does anyone know what it was titled and where I might find it to see again?

UNK SEZ: RSG, I would absolutely love to see this but like you, I had no luck in finding it on the interwebs. Coincidentally I am very familiar with this tale because as a young teen, my older brother actually had the gall to tell me it happened to HIM! His tale occurred at our local mall, King of Prussia plaza, THE greatest (and apparently most dangerous) mall in the world. In his big fat stinking lie, the old lady pretended to have misplaced her car and asked my brother with a recently acquired driver's license if he would drive her about the parking lot and aid in her search. Once in the car, my brother noticed that the old lady had very hairy legs and asked her to get out. As she was departing the vehicle (luckily this was the type of psycho who takes orders from 16-year olds) a hatchet that she/he was concealing by clutching it between the legs (!) fell out of her/his dress and onto the parking lot floor…I of course thought this was the most incredible event that had ever taken place and sadly fell for this tranny fish-tale, hook line and sinker. (In my own defense, I never fell for his story about being asked backstage and wooed by JANET JACKSON!) If anyone out there reading this knows either the name of the short film that our beloved RATSAWGOD is speaking of, or even why in the name of God my brother is such a big fat stinking liar please contact either Aunt John or myself via comment or email (kindertrauma@gmail.com).

UPDATE!! Mystery trauma solved! (see comments) Thanks to Seethingblue!

Kinder-Art :: Stephanie Metz

Posted on By unkle lancifer


How nice is that above image? Those are sculptures made out of wool and they're of teddy bear skulls!! That is the artwork of Stephanie Metz who I learned about from my pal RATSAWGOD's blog !!! If the idea of a teddy bear's skull isn't interesting enough, the idea of bones made out wool just throws the coolness factor of those pieces straight into the hemisphere! Me likey and me likey big time. Stephanie can explain herself and her beautiful art better than I can, so go to her SITE and read her artist's statement if you're so inclined. I myself must now go rip to shreds every teddy bear in my extensive collection and see what makes them tick!

The Good Son

Posted on By aunt john

Life just served young Mark Evans (preternaturally saucer-eyed ELIJAH WOOD) a steaming shit sandwich with a heaping side of SUCK! After his mom succumbs to cancer, Mark's tall drink of Philly tap water father (DAVID MORSE) jets off to Japan on business and dumps him off at his uncle's house in scenic Maine. Unfortunately for Mark, his temporary housing situation involves living under the same roof with his mildly depressed aunt Susan (WENDY CREWSON), she's grieving/ blaming herself for the loss of a toddler son who mysteriously drowned in the bathtub, and his psychotic cousin Henry (America's then box-office golden child playing against type, or was he?, MACAULEY  CULKIN). At first, relations between the boys are pretty cool, and Henry includes Mark in his favorite pastimes of taunting the neighbor's dog and dropping a dummy off a highway overpass. Henry's sinister behavior escalates, and Mark tries to warn any and everyone that will listen that Henry is a full-blown whack-a-doodle. Of course no one believes Mark's wild accusations, and he ends up being sent off to therapy. Aunt Susan finally manages to put two and two together when she stumbles across her late son's rubber duckie in Henry's woodshed workshop. Without spoiling the action, the ending is a real cliffhanger (literally), and Aunt Susan is forced to make a cinematic choice normally reserved for the likes of MERYL STREEP.

On the surface, THE GOOD SON has all the elements of a camp classic. CULKIN takes a page from the PATTY McCORMACK/Rhoda Penmark playbook and knows how to turn on and off the crazy at the drop of a stuffed dummy onto a crowded expressway. The lack of actual kills by CULKIN though, is what keeps THE GOOD SON from being an actual contender in the killer kid genre. Sure, he tries to ice his sister, but she lives. He tries to shove his mom off a cliff, yet fails. He doesn't even manage to take out a single motorist with the appropriately named effigy Mr. Highway! Yeah, he cops to drowning his unseen younger brother in the bath, but we never even get a flashback! If you're going to base a whole movie around a pint-sized psycho, you really need to give him or her a measurable body count.

  • Henry causes an interstate pile-up with the help of his pal Mr. Highway
  • Crack-the-whip with little sis results in a scene that was sadly overlooked on our ICE SAFETY LIST . Doesn't anyone ever listen to WALKEN?
  • Mark freaks out when he thinks Henry has poisoned the family's food and goes apeshit on the refrigerator
  • Lil' Mac drops the F-bomb


Kinder-News :: Unkle Lancifer Spent 1992 in a Coma

Posted on By unkle lancifer


One of my favorite things about co-hosting the seventies throw-back variety show KINDERTRAUMA is that I learn something new everyday, either by researching traumafessions or by the comments left by you, our dear readers. Yesterday, after one of my favorite people on Earth, cousin KITTY LECLAW, mentioned TINA YOTHERS in a comment, I went about finding a suitably embarrassing clip of YOTHERS to send her way. I inadvertently fell into a youtube k-hole that resulted in my discovery of the video game NIGHT TRAP. How did I miss out on this? What the hell was I doing in 1992? (I shudder to think, was that the year I was a frequently blacking-out, devout CURVE groupie or a well-paid white lotus yoga instructor?) The late DIFF'RENT STROKE's DANA PLATO starred in this live action video game where players attempted to save slumber party girls from roaming vampiric marauders with the use of security cameras and hidden traps. The game was banned for being indecent, is partially responsible for the video game rating system used today, was ranked the twelfth worst of all time by ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY, and was even publicly lambasted by none other than CAPTAIN KANGAROO. Again, where was I and what was I drinking when all this was going down? If I'd only known I would have been all over this like a suicidal pigeon on rice! Check out this scene from the game and tell me the cackling evil "adult" characters are not right off of ELM STREET…


Yeah I'll admit it, I've watched that clip about ten times now. That bed-trap lady cracks me up, and hows' bout that rad music score? This game looks way too awesome to me. It smacks of that rarely found perfect mixture of oddly creepy and patently ridiculous. Oh 1992, I'm so sorry that I ignored you, apparently you were not so boring after all!

MORE ON NIGHT TRAP:

  • A fascinating mini-doc about the controversy HERE
  • The amazing, beyond reason slumber party scene that includes the NIGHT TRAP theme song HERE
  • NIGHT TRAP on Wikepedia HERE
  • The NIGHT TRAP "movie" in 5 parts HERE

The Possession of Joel Delaney

Posted on By unkle lancifer


In this pre-EXORCIST possession thriller, well-to-do New York divorcée socialite Norah Benson (SHIRLEY MACLAINE) is horrified to discover that the younger brother she dotes on Joel (PERRY KING) is possessed by… wait for it…a poor person! (Her repeated, panicked complaints that Mr.Tonio Perez has "entered" her brother's body also suggest that she's worried that he might have gone gay too). Forget that this no longer roaming spirit also has a nasty habit of decapitating women; Norah seems more taken aback by the fact that he's Puerto Rican and hails from the wrong side of town. This is one deranged movie folks. The first half, with its bizarre cuts and awkward freeze-frames comes off as so early-seventies twisted that you're tempted to forgive the slacky pace (a Santeria ceremony scene goes on for what seems like centuries). And for most of the running time, lil' bro PERRY comes off as your average pouty, privileged, ne'er-do-well with a hangover rather than any real threat to Norah and her kids. Then BAM! The film's final act, which takes place in an isolated beach house, has got to be one of the most eff'd up things ever allowed to be filmed. KING suddenly appears clad in leather with a thick accent and a switch blade and begins smacking Norah around, forcing her son to dance a naked jig on a coffee table and her now crying daughter to eat dog food out of a bowl on the ground. This circus of the mental scars is all observed by his decidedly ineffective psychiatrist's decapitated head which rests dripping on the refrigerator. I've seen many an insane movie before, but this eleventh hour lycanthropic switch from JACKIE COLLINS to JACK KETCHUM is like being bitch slapped across the face by a granny you believed to be comatose. This film's relative obscurity can be blamed on its overshadowing by the cultural Juggernaught THE EXORCIST, but the truth is its overall tone is defiantly alienating and MACLAINE's spoiled, arc-less character is difficult to route for. It's hard for me to diss a movie that is so liberal with the beheadings, but what's missing here that THE EXORCIST had in spades is a real sincere belief in the supernatural. MACLAINE is warned as much by a man who offers to exorcise the lingering lout from her brother. He tells her "You have to believe to make it work" and I think the same applies here. THE POSSESSION OF JOEL DELANEY is not without effective and certainly shocking scenes, but like its main character, it seems to be more terrified of poverty, discomfort and earthly unpleasantness than the world of the unknown.

Kinder-News :: It's a Hard-Knock Death

Posted on By unkle lancifer


If you're like me than you've spent countless hours wondering why, oh why, the creators behind the fantastic FACES OF DEATH advertising campaign and the makers of the runaway box office hit ANNIE don't set aside their multiple differences and manufacture a line of commemorative plates that will appease the rabid fan-base of both films at the same time. Such a day of peace and understanding where folks put aside personal egos in order to create a larger harmony is far off indeed. Hence, I fired up the kindertrauma kiln this past Sunday and produced a line of plates that I plan to utilize at our next extravagant dinner party. There are only eight, and two of course are reserved for myself and Aunt John, that means most of you will have to use the far-less special GREMLINS PAPER PLATES left over from last year. I'm sorry, but if you want to sit at the big kid's table you most be prompt! (And no Mickster, unlike at our last fiesta "I came all the way from Alabama" will not be accepted as an excuse to arrive fourteen hours late with a biker gang in tow!)