TERROR IN THE AISLES is a film that has had a profound, lasting effect on the way I feel about horror films and some non-horror films that they, for some reason, included. It turned me on to NIGHT HAWKS, VICE SQUAD and one of my all time favorite's PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE. I took it in to my middle school and for some reason did a report on horror films. Everyone cracked up when LINDA BLAIR did the rolled-back-eyes  hoochie coochie dance (even my teacher cracked up). I had just started buying Fangoria magazine (CELLAR DWELLER was on the cover) and brought it to school,this movie made me want to seek out more gore films and especially makeup effects people like TOM SAVINI and ROB BOTTIN (This is the first time I saw the clip from JOHN CARPENTER'S THE THING and even THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE ). The way DONALD PLEASANCE and NANCY ALLEN hosted the film, it seemed like an infomercial for the worst nightmare that you could not escape from.

Right after I watched THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK I came down with a nasty cold, and my illness induced several nights of nightmares in which I was an underpowered Luke Skywalker, stranded on Dagobah. As it turns out, Dagobah didn't have a DAMN thing on the San Fernando Valley. For a long list of reasons I was sent, two summers after Empire hit the theaters, to live with foster parents in San Antonio. That might've been tolerable, if… I wasn't from Portland. Seriously. Name two places in these United States of America that are more different.

…So of course, there I was, 2000 miles from my family and everything I knew worth a damn, still feeling totally stranded, going through hell in school because OF COURSE I'm a discipline problem (gee, really???), when E.T. goes into theatrical release. Using a Speak & Spell to "phone home" when home is zillions of miles away? Getting dreadful sick and lying dying in the sterile beating heart of a funky polypropylene tent, surrounded by guys in positive pressure suits? Jesus on a pogo stick, talk about isolation piled on isolation.  I had nightmares for weeks afterward, in spite of spending a good part of the film with my eyes screwed shut.

…The guardianship arrangement that had caused me such grief was ended in the summer of '83.  Even after 25 years of chances to get over it, I've never watched it again, and if I go the rest of my life so bereft, I'll be okay with that.

You remember AMAZING STORIES, right? The mostly schmaltzy and occasionally entertaining brainchild of STEVEN SPIELBERG. Well, my favorite episode, "Go To The Head Of The Class", premiered in November of 1986 when I was ten years old. Oh, it's only my favorite now because the terror it inflicted on me has only now finally subsided. For years, I've hated its director, ROBERT ZEMECKIS, for really messing me up (and for BACK TO THE FUTURE PART III). Luckily, Movieplex has been running the AMAZING STORIES "movies", which are just some episodes slapped together, and I have finally faced my fear.

In the episode, CHRISTOPHER LLOYD plays Professor B. O. Beanes, a dictator of a high school teacher who takes great pleasure in punishing his students. When loser goofball Peter Brand, played by SCOTT COFFEY, starts flirting with bad girl Cynthia Simpson, the lovely MARY STUART MASTERSON, in class, they both run afoul of their jerky teacher. In order to get even, Cynthia convinces Peter to practice a little black magic on old Mr. Beanes. They accidentally kill the guy and then try resurrecting him. But, of course, they screw up while casting the spell, tear the head off the photo of the evil teacher, so he comes back from grave headless and very pissed off.

The promos for "Go To The Head Of The Class" had me bouncing off the walls for its premiere. Looking at it now, I see what I loved about the episode. It's campy, sexy in a teenie bopper '80s kind of a way, creepy in a non-threatening way, and fun as hell. But nothing could have prepared me for the surprise ending (which I'm going to ruin here). When all of the severed head business appears to have all just been a dream, Peter Brand arrives late to class to find Cynthia balancing dictionaries on her upturned hands as punishment. He also finds Mr. Beanes with his head reattached to his neck. Unfortunately for Peter (and for me), Beanes removes his scarf to show that his head has been very messily sewed back on.

This completely freaked me out. You see, I had just had my appendix removed and I still had the staples in so I was a little sensitive about seeing sutures. My imagination starting working overtime as I imagined CHRISTOPHER LLOYD's sewed on head stretching backwards and snapping its stitches in a fountain of blood. This didn't happen but I started thinking about my own scar ripping open and my guts falling out. Now I know it sounds convoluted but in a matter of seconds, I had totally ruined this excellent little one hour horror special for myself. I turned off my TV and sat in stunned silence, afraid to move. Needless to say, I had a very sleepless night ahead of me.

UNK SEZ: Thanks Richard, we always love to hear from you. We here at Kindertrauma are big fans of your DOOMED MOVIETHON! Your traumafession got me thinking about something I witnessed on television around the same time which I thought was also an episode of AMAZING STORIES. After a bit of searching, I found out it was an episode of the new TWILIGHT ZONE's first season back in 1985. It's entitled PERSONAL DEMONS and it is directed by PETER MEDAK who did THE CHANGELING. The story is about a writer named O'Bannon who has writer's block and starts seeing this scary guy and others like him everywhere he goes…

They're sorta like evil Jawas or the guys from PHANTASM except all they do is laugh hysterically and tear all his shit up. They trash his car, attack him in a bar and nobody can see these dudes besides him. Anyhows, I was happy to discover that if you act now, you can view it on the youtube before some dillweed takes it down. Here are parts ONE and TWO. I don't want to ruin the story for anyone, but it ends up being a great analogy of the creative process (whatever you do, make sure you read the closing credits). This episode has stuck with me for years so I'm so glad I got a chance to view it again. Oh, how I love my computer.

At six years old, I assumed that cartoons were all for kids. Maybe that's why I was so shocked by what my father had fallen asleep in front of. I walked in on him watching THE WALL right at the start of the trial scene. Just the voices in that song haunted me halfway through puberty, until I finally sat down and watched it. The one scene that really hit home with me was the sequence during "Another Brick in the Wall Part 2" where these little kids were being marched into a food grinder. I think between that scene and the "trial" sequence, it took my dad over an hour to calm me down.

My most vivid memories are about things that scared me when I was a kid. When I was little, about 7 or 8, I saw the movie LEPRECHAUN. It completely terrified me. In the middle of the movie I finally got up the courage to leave the room and ran to my bedroom and jumped on the bed from 3 feet away so anything under the bed couldn't grab me. Then I spent all night lying awake terrified that leprechauns would come up the side of the bed while I was asleep. A couple of years ago when I was about 23, I watched LEPRECHAUN on T.V. and I couldn't believe how cruddy it was. It's amazing what crap will scare a kid. To this day I've never been a fan of leprechauns.