Official Traumatizers :: The Aliens from V
Wouldn't it be cool if nice aliens came down to earth with tons of cool gadgets and advanced technologies to share with us? Wouldn't it suck if they were big fat liars with lizard faces who wanted to enslave us and eat all our adorable pet hamsters alive? Such is the predicament in the 1983 miniseries V, a sci-fi action bonanza that fired the imaginations of the playground set and created much speculation and debate around junior high water fountains across the country. Writer/director KENNETH JOHNSON was wise enough to know that you don't have to have a face like a Gila Monster to be a douche and liberally borrows from our planet's own history to show how propaganda, fascism, oppression and ultimately resistance and rebellion operate. Why even as I write this now, I feel an urge to go and march against Lizards! Not only did these jerk's ultimate plan include swiping all our beloved H20, it also turns out they were turning folks into frozen dinners to be chomped on like Hot Pockets on some future date! Two scenes from the original miniseries are particular crowd pleasing traumatizers, one involves the super bitch alien "Diana" doing something to a rodent that would make even RICHARD GERE feel faint, and the other involves BEASTMASTER MARK SINGER ripping off the human disguise of an alien guard to reveal his long slippery snake like tongue. Even those who had an inkling that there was something too good to be true about these visitors couldn't help but be shocked by these scenes that were above and beyond what anyone was used to seeing on broadcast television. Putting aside some outdated dialogue, some giant '80s style hairdos and some less than convincing, mostly matte painted special effects, V and its lizard people still carries quite a punch. Like JOHN CARPENTER's THEY LIVE, it may have you looking closer at the talking heads on your own T.V. set, waiting for their skin to peel off or a fleeting glimpse of a devilish serpentine tongue.
Note: These cool original T.V guide ads were swiped from HERE
UPDATE: Kindertrauma readers are never wrong. It seems the most traumatizing scene in the "V" universe occurs in "The Final Battle" when two little baby visitors are born to a human girl. (Thanks to reader Turnidoff for the reminder.) It really is a great scene that starts with a seemingly normal birth that turns out to be not so normal and a surprise second birth that's even worse. This is all while sweet lullaby music box tunes play on the soundtrack!. Way to turn the screws"V", and props on the expert use of a "To be continued…"
Traumafessions :: Reader Ben S. on the Nairobi Trio
When I was very young my dad called us all to the TV to watch an old rerun of THE ERNIE KOVACS SHOW, which featured the Nairobi Trio – three men with ape masks and long-haired wigs, dressed in winter coats and derbies. They sat very stiffly and did a strange little musical routine. Dad laughed. They terrified me to my very core.
Traumafessions :: Reader Renee N. on Levitating Sphere/Blob-Shaped Monster
Remember a little while back when reader Tom B. had a Traumafession about an electric talking octopus in a movie of whose name he had no idea? Well, one of our other readers Grokenstein solved that mystery right quick, identifying the movie as THE ATOMIC SUBMARINE.
Almost immediately a strange new feeling wafted through the Kindertrauma offices. It was a feeling of gratification and purpose. Maybe with the help of some of our knowledgeable readers like Grokenstein we could help people not only talk about their childhood traumas, but also identify them as well. As luck would have it, it didn't take long for another opportunity to I.D. a traumaic memory to surface. Here's a nameless trauma from reader Renee N., neither Aunt John nor myself has any idea what this kind lady is speaking of. Maybe one of you guys do? Leave a comment or write in to kindertrauma@gmail.com if the following rings any type of bell with you. Let's try to help the long-suffering Renee get some closure!!!
Hi! I love your site, kindertrauma, and I'm really hoping you can help me out with identifying a movie I saw when I was a kid that I only barely remember (but it scared the shit out of me and still haunts me with this one image…) I very hazily remember that the plot centers around these 2 kids, and they end up traveling to this magical city or something, maybe it was in the clouds? Everything seems fine in this place except for one thing (this is the part that scared me) – in the center of town there's this big pit or well, and in it lives this giant, levitating sphere/blob shaped monster. It looks like a big floating grayish ball with a face on one side, and the people in the city make sacrifices to it or something. The only other thing I remember is that the kids eventually get away and go back home or to the real world or wherever it is they came from.
I saw it when I was pretty little, so it was probably made in the early to mid eighties? I know that's basically nothing to go on, but if it rings any bells please let me know, it's been driving me crazy for almost 2 decades! I have to know what the hell was up with that blob-thing and why in god's name would a kid's movie show something so scary?
UPDATE: Reader Sébastien M. just wrote in with the following answer:
The movie you're looking for is called THE GREAT LAND OF SMALL (1987). It's a French Canadian movie that I remember seeing on TV here in Québec under the French title "Ce n'est pas parce qu'on est petit qu'on ne peut pas être grand".
In this movie a leprechaun takes two kids from our world into a magical realm that includes a floating boulder-thing called Slimo that transmogrifies creatures into butterflies. So that blob monster you're referring to is probably Slimo.
Matthew was really close to find it when he came across THE PEANUT BUTTER SOLUTION (Opération beurre de Pinottes) because both films were created by the same production company Les Productions La Fête. THE GREAT LAND OF SMALL was directed by Vojtech Jasny and it is the 5th installment in the Tales for All (Contes pour tous) series of childrens movie. You can find the movie on DVD on the first box set of the Contes pour tous which was released in Canada in 2006. Unfortunately, I don't think this release has the English audio and subtitle.
I remember being scared of that movie too as a child and this is really a great Traumafession! It brings back so much memories. There was always something really odd and creepy about those French Canadians children movies made in the 80's. You have to see them to know what I mean. Maybe it was the low budget factor!
Happy Fourth
A werewolf with a firecracker lodged in his eye? That can mean only one thing. It's the fourth of July, kids. Happy fourth from Kindertrauma! United we stand against lycanthropic clergy!
Traumafessions :: Mickster on the "Horror Cave" at Six Flags Over Georgia
It is summer time, which makes me think back to summer trips from my childhood. This always included a week-long trip to Gulf Shores, Alabama without fail. However, it is a day trip to Six Flags over Georgia in the summer of 1975 that left me scarred for life. Sounds like fun right? A day trip to an amusement park, what could be terrifying about that right? Well, any child that visited Six Flags over Georgia in the 1970's already knows the terror that was waiting there.
So here was the family of six (Dad, Mom, oldest sister 17, evil older brother 14, older sister 11, and me 4) ready to enjoy a summer day at the park. For some unknown reason that I have never been able to fathom my parents decided that we would all go through the Horror Cave. Yeah, that's a great idea! Take a four-year-old through a "haunted house" nothing could possibly go wrong! Well, it is 33 years later and here is what I remember from the Horror Cave. Entering through the mouth of a monster the first scene I remember was a bubbly, foggy bog where not one but three Creature from the Black Lagoon monsters rise up (okay, now I am climbing my mom trying to escape this place and get passed to my father), next scene simply made me go mad, there was a woman's bedroom and she is lying across the bed, then I notice that the two creepy looking men in the room are holding her head that they just cut off (now I am climbing my dad attempting once again to escape), the scene that followed was like Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory with a creature strapped to a table and a mad scientist throwing the switch on some electrodes or something (so now I have figured out I can't escape so I close my eyes), so the last thing I remember looking at were two caskets one contained Dracula and the other the Bride of Dracula it looked as though they were breathing, and then you had to walk over a suspension bridge to get to the exit. To exit you had the choice to walk down some stairs or slide down a slide.
After that, I could not handle going through haunted houses. Over the years, I began to wonder if I remembered the Horror Cave accurately. I started searching the Internet in hopes that others had accurate descriptions of the terrors of the Horror Cave, better yet pictures from the cave. I wasn't disappointed because I found the FOLLOWING with PICTURES. I discovered that I wasn't crazy after all. My memories of the events from the summer of 1975 are accurate.
The Godsend
A young British family with three kids and a baby meet a creepy pregnant woman in the park. For some reason they allow the obviously oddball preggers dame (ANGELA PLEASENCE, DONALD's DAUGHTER!!!) to follow them home. Once there she secretly destroys their phone and goes into labor. The next morning they discover the new mother has split the scene like a frat house one night stand and didn't even bother to take her newborn with her. The family adopts and raises the baby as their own, and the child systematically kills all her siblings in order to get the full attention of the parents. Sounds pretty good huh? Well, it's not. THE GODSEND has got to be one of the feeblest horror flicks ever made and chronically prunes away any and every possibility for a scare. If you were ever insane enough to fantasize about a G-rated thriller starring Mattel's discontinued line of "Sunshine Family" dolls, where all the kills occur off screen and where most of the action takes place in gauzily filmed parks where birds chirp non-stop, then your dream and my nightmare has come true. Maybe they were going for a PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK meets SAVANNAH SMILES vibe or something. Whatever the intention was, the outcome, though watchable, is an exercise in cinematic passivity. Tons of interesting themes about sibling rivalry, preferential treatment, mixed families and, most especially, maternal mourning linger on the outskirts but are never allowed entry into this film. I could go along with the absence of blood if there was at least some attempt to delve into anything remotely unpleasant. This is like an Ivory soap commercial where every once in a while someone gets up and walks off screen and you're told later that they died mysteriously. The little girl who plays the menace (at her oldest) WILHELMINA GREEN, is suitably Nazi-esque and evil looking, but 10,000 close ups of her staring into space like an inbred Persian cat provides little in the chill department. There is a climactic kill near the end involving somebody being pushed out a window but, trust me, it's too little too late. At some point I realized that there was no kill aggressive enough to save what I had already witnessed and began praying for a nuclear bomb to drop instead. From what I've heard, the book THE GODSEND by BERNARD TAYLOR is actually a good read and delves much further into the psychological ramifications of witnessing your entire family wiped out in front of your eyes by some kid who got dumped in your lap. Hopefully, unlike the movie, it's also brave enough to get its hands a little dirty.
Traumafessions :: Reader Matthew H. on Jim Henson's 'The Storyteller'
When I was about 7, there was a great prime-time childrens' show by the name of THE JIM HENSON HOUR. It had a memorable motley '80s cast of new Muppets (many of you may remember Digit) and some old favorites . There was one segment that had a detrimental affect on my perception of death. It was a segment titled THE STORYTELLER, staring JOHN HURT as a wizened, well, storyteller. In the particularly traumatic story, "The Soldier and Death," JOHN HURT regales us with the story of a kindly soldier returning home after a long war. He happens upon many strange circumstances and comes into possession of magical affects: a deck of cards that he cannot lose with, a magical sack that will hold anything that he commands into it, and a crystal chalice with which he can see whether death is going to claim the life of a person lying sick in their bed. The soldier returns home with the tools that he had scored upon the way, and becomes a king. One of the reasons was that he could tell people whether or not they would die, by using said magical crystal chalice. There was the effect that the Henson studio had whipped up that gave the viewer the same perception the soldier had through the chalice to show the most chilling creation of death. This episode had its share of frightening JIM HENSON creations, the waxy snarling demons standing out. But none were as frightening as the infantile, globe-eyed, hoarse-voiced death in his tiny, shiny robe. The bony grimace and scythe of the traditional death, even INGMAR BERGMAN's SEVENTH SEAL incarnation seems comical and approachable to the HENSON creation. When they first showed him through the chalice, my younger brother ran from the room, without speaking. I couldn't take my eyes away, locked into his giant, creepy blue eyes. I got the entire collection of THE STORYTELLER on DVD this past Christmas, and that awful little Muppet still chilled my heart 18 years after the fact. There have to be others out there who were just as shaken by the blue-eyed child Death from the HENSON studios…
UNK SEZ: Matthew I am sure you are correct! Something tells me that intentionally or not, JIM HENSON is second only to STEPHEN KING in the trauma delivery department. THE STORYTELLER is home to some of his darkest work simply because it stays true to the tone of classic fairy tales. Besides the appearance of death itself and those hideous winged demons in the episode you mentioned, there's something to ignite bed time jitters for the wee ones in just about every episode…
…thank god we had this cute talking dog to lighten things up a bit!!!
The Creepy Kids of Star Trek
Let's get this straight right off the bat, I'm not a Trekkie. My allegiance has always lied with the Galactica (c'mon, there was a monkey in an orange robot dog suit in it, what choice do I have?) Much of my resistance to GENE RODDENBERRY's creation had to do with the fact that when my brothers and I played STAR TREK, I always had to be "Bones" McCoy. (Actually I guess I chose to be the good doctor not knowing that it was such a lackluster, mostly phaser-less role). That being said, I have always had a fondness for an episode from S.T.'s first season entitled "Miri" in which the gang visits a planet not unlike Earth, except that the adult population is dead and children rule. Needless to say, this episode has Kindertrauma written all over it. Actually it turns out that the kids are like 300 years old and because of some funky virus that was created, they age about a month in a hundred years. The down side is when you hit puberty, you get blue blotches all over you and turn into a whack job. Hold up a second, a "failed" experiment that lets you live 300 years? That sounds kind of like a successful experiment to me. So what if you turn into a crazy lunatic that spouts nonsense at some point, that would have happened when you got old anyway! Characteristically mac daddy Captain Kirk and company set out to "cure" these kids and return them to a normal, blue-blotch-free life cycle. I guess they are inspired by the fact that the crew of the Enterprise are all past puberty, have caught the disease and are perilously close to freak out time (Spock is immune, but may be a carrier). Speaking of freak out time, this episode contains my favorite SHATNER line in history. When the kids respond to Captain Kirk's attempts to resolve their differences by chanting "Blah, Blah, Blah," over all his words, Kirk's brilliant retort is " NO, BLAH BLAH BLAH!!!" This is around the time one of the uglier kids "bonk-bonks" "Mr.Lovey-Dovey" on the head with a wrench. I'm really not doing this episode justice and I apologize. Even cooler than the prerequisite freak out by my man SHATNER is the presence of a young KIM DARBY, who would later battle tiny walnut-faced imps in the Kinder-fave T.V. movie DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK and get a deadly dose of M.M. rage in HALLOWEEN 6. Furthermore you are treated to the lovable, Mr. Mxyzptlk looking AMERICAN GOTHIC alum MICHAEL J. POLLARD as the kid's ringleader. Even if you're not a Trekkie you may still enjoy this highly entertaining CHILDREN OF THE CORN-like S.T. episode. Those interested can find it in its entirety HERE
The U.S.S. Enterprise runs afoul of yet another group of deadly kids in the season three episode "And the Children Shall Lead." They go to a planet where a bunch of adults have just committed mass suicide JIM JONES style and find a bunch of strangely unbereft tykes there, which they take aboard the ship. The children are actually following the lead of a super fat alien in a moo-moo and with some kind of hand jive routine are able to make the crew hallucinate that their worst fears are reality. Sulu imagines giant swords are floating in space, Uhuru envisions herself an old hag in her handy computer board vanity mirror…
…and Captain Kirk becomes so insecure that, I swear to God he seriously almost made out with Spock in the elevator!!! If either they or I was a little more drunk I think it would have happened!
This episode guest stars puppy activist and official Traumatot PAMELYN FERDIN and is pretty damn good as well even though it is usually considered the WORST episode ever made by most STAR TREK fans. (You can watch it HERE). I guess the truth is the only thing really keeping Unkle Lancifer from becoming a full-blown Trekkie is actually watching the show because I sorta loved both these episodes. Well, it's too late for me to change my Colonial spots now and there ARE Cylons a' calling. Maybe if that make-out session in the elevator had actually materialized it would be a different story.
UPDATE:It seems my mission to go where no Galactica fan has gone before is not quite over. I was alerted to yet another creepy STAR TREK kid by a kind reader (Adam Ross of DVD PANACHE, who I suspect IS a Trekkie!). Having just viewed it, I'm here to report it is indeed another stellar episode. In "The Corbomite Maneuvre," our favorite ship gets blocked by something that looks like a lone spinning D&D die in outer space (just how nerdy am I prepared to go?) After they blow it up, a giant Christmas tree ornament attacks and begins making ballsy threats about destroying the Enterprise. An ugly alien even appears on their screen to talk more smack; he's pissed off and he won't listen to reason. Spock suggests that the battle of wills that ensues is comparable to a game of Chess. Probably never having played chess, Kirk likens it to playing poker, which gives him a brilliant Blair Warner idea, why not bluff (i.e. lie) his way out? Kirk then makes of few grand threats of his own. Telling the alien that basically the Enterprise is rubber and he is glue and that whatever he does to them…well, you know the rest. There are more idol threats and some camera tilting "action" and then rather than more smart talk they get a distress call from their foe. When Kirk, Bones and some nobody who has been bitching all episode beam aboard the enemy ship, they find the alien they saw previously on screen was just a fake dummy and this guy Balok lounging around like TRUMAN CAPOTE getting wasted on something called "tranya."
From A Whisper To A Scream a.k.a. The Offspring
FROM A WHISPER TO A SCREAM a.k.a. THE OFFSPRING may not be the best horror anthology in the world, but it does put VINCENT PRICE and SUSAN TYRREL in the same room together and that's good enough for me. Happily, the first and last of the four stories (The PRICE/TYRREL bit serves as a wraparound) end up being particularly well suited for the pages of Kindertrauma. The first tale involves a stalker with a heart of blech (RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD's CLU GULAGER, remarkably unrecognizable) who goes a bit too far trying to win the affections of a co-worker (and by a bit too far I mean killing her and doing the wild thing with her corpse!). After nine months a baby is born to the buried, dead woman and immediately sets about filling this anthology's small creature on the rampage slot (which usually is the last story). CLU is great and so is the little monster, but TRILOGY OF TERROR this ain't and as soon as the action gets good, the story is over. Next we have two tales about witchcraft gone wrong. They both have satisfying conclusions, but each takes its own sweet time getting there. (I like to think of myself as a patient viewer, but c'mon there's no time for lollygagging in an anthology movie!) The final story is a Civil War CHILDREN OF THE CORN with an anti-war message that brings to mind WHO CAN KILL A CHILD? Starring the great CAMERON MITCHEL (THE TOOLBOX MURDERS) and featuring some morbid sight gags, like a bunch of kids playing pin the tail on the donkey with human body parts, it's a pretty cool addition to the whole murderous-children-have-taken-over sub-genre. In this case, the children follow the lead of a mystery being called "The Magistrate," which turns out to be something pretty damn gruesome. I especially enjoyed the scene that involved a child telling a tied up adult, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" as he bashes him on the head with a human bone. This segment could also win an award for "Most Repulsive Use For a Severed Eyeball." Overall, there's enough originality and go-for-broke gusto to warrant a viewing from any horror fan, but stand warned that the pacing is a bit off and that you may see the various comeuppance conclusions coming from a mile away. Whatever the film's weak suites, its cast more than makes up for them, time and time again.
