kindertrauma

Traumafessions :: Reader Eric Z. on Son of Blob (a.k.a. Beware! The Blob)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Back in the mid-'70s, my town library showed movies for kids on Saturday afternoons: rows of chairs, reel-to-reel projector, the screen that you stretch open and hook at the top, etc. One Saturday (I was probably 7 or 8), the librarians walk around before the film with a bowl of candy. Thanks! I'll have a Tootsie Roll, please. Then, the feature started: SON OF BLOB (a.k.a. BEWARE! THE BLOB). Harmless enough for an adult to watch, but when GODFREY CAMBRIDGE sits back in his easy chair, not knowing the Blob is waiting for him…let's just say that the following scene of CAMBRIDGE, covered in Blob up to his neck screaming his head off, traumatized me for years to come.


UNKLE LANCIFER SEZ: While certainly the unfortunate demise of GODFRY CAMBRIDGE, both in real life and in SON OF BLOB, is lamentable, may we take one moment to consider the horrible fate of perhaps the ultimate Arbogastian "One you might have saved." Yes, I'm speaking of this baby kitten whose curiosity gets him yanked out of a nearby kitchen window shortly after an ill-advised investigation of that damn blob with his wee little kitten paw! He never even got to fulfill his destiny of napping all day and begging for food all night. Why even a dog gets it in this movie, is nothing sacred?!!

Traumafessions :: Reader Eric Z. On Kingdom Of The Spiders

Posted on By unkle lancifer

kingdom of the spiders

The cheese-tastic TV movie KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS (1977), starring famed thespian WILLIAM SHATNER, traumatized me in a way that I was only able to shake after revisiting the source last month. There's a scene where WOODY STRODE's character gets attacked by the spiders as he's driving his truck, causing him to roll his truck down an embankment. When Sherriff SHATNER and his partner get to the truck and try to open it, STRODE's lifeless body flops into frame. Either he's covered in spiderwebs or the blood's been sucked from his body. Either way, this image affected me for years to come. I had nightmares of this corpse peeking at me from my bedroom doorway while I was in bed, tiptoeing across the doorway to the other side. I was actually a little scared to watch this clip again as research before I sent you this TRAUMAFESSION. But after revisiting it as an adult, I've been able to laugh it off (thank God).

Traumafessions :: Reader Jessica M. on The Mouse And His Child

Posted on By unkle lancifer

What's glaringly absent from your bucket of kindertrauma fun is a wonderful animated children's movie entitled THE MOUSE AND HIS CHILD. Oh gosh, how can you lose in a movie about a little wind up mouse and his wind up mouse son going on an adventure to become real and have a family? Oh I don't know, how about being beaten and whipped by city rats, enslaved in the gutters of the world, and a delightful scene where a toy donkey is torn apart for being a poor worker, screaming for his life as rats pull his limbs off and kill him.

Fun for the whole family. My father made me watch it because he said it was a "quality" children's story. Only WATERSHIP DOWN is more violent in terms of "delightful cartoons".


UNK SEZ: Sorry I missed this movie but I do remember reading the book as a kid. Besides all the severe hardships those toy mice went through (Now that I think about it they were sort of like the replicants in BLADE RUNNER searching for a way to wind themselves and take control of their destinies.), I'll never forget the illustration of a can of dog food that had a picture of a dog carrying another can of the same dog food that had a picture of a smaller dog doing the same, over and over and smaller and smaller presumably until infinity. That head trip freaked me out more than the rats, and I used to stare at it for hours!

Traumafessions :: Reader Tom B. On Electric Talking Octopus?

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Dear Traumameisters: I don't scare easy. Most horror stuff bores me or makes me laugh. Even back in the day. But there was this one thing on TV… Don't ask me what the show or movie was. I googled and found a couple old movies from the '50s, one by Corman, about octopi that went postal. But all they did was get big and beat on stuff. This was different. I was no more than ten, probably, which puts this event in the late '60s. Broad daylight, some black-and-white movie or show is on.

SCENE: Underwater. Several divers confront a big octopus. Octopus TALKS! Something like "What the hell are you doing in my domain?" or "I rule your sh%t!" Octopus points a tentacle at one diver and shoots LIGHTNING! The man melts to a sizzling skeleton before my unbelieving eyes. Graphic detail. Smoke coming out of eye sockets, if I remember correctly. Octopus says something like "See what happens when you F with me?" All I can tell you is that I went ape and begged my mother to change the channel and make that nightmare go away. I have never seen anything scarier, except maybe ALIEN. Good thing I was 20 when that came out. If I had seen ALIEN when I was ten, I would probably have put out my eyes.


UNKLE L. SEZ: I am stumped to say the least. Does anyone out there have any idea what our pal Tom is talking about? Is he insane? Is he trying to drive me crazy? Is it a waking nightmare or reality that he has witnessed? Please help Tom. I know I can't!

KINDER UPDATE: Our Genius reader Grokenstein solved the mystery!!! The movie has got to be ATOMIC SUBMARINE (1959)! The movie is in black and white and features a squid like underwater alien that shoots lightening and smoke, all while talking smack to his prey. In fact, some believe that the one eyed bully may have been an inspiration for the aliens KANG and KODOS from THE SIMPSONS! Thanks Grok, for being the smartest guy in town and I think I owe our pal Tom an apology for implying that he had lost his marbles!!!! Get ready folks here is a picture of the dreaded creature!!!!

Holy Mackerel ! He kinda looks like this guy:

Traumafessions:: Unk on Vice Squad, Silent Rage, 10 to Midnight and The Exterminator

Posted on By unkle lancifer


While the preteen Unkle Lancifer spent his pale-skinned youth devouring every horror movie available at the local video shop, his older, more violent siblings lived on a steady diet of martial arts and action movies. In the early part of the 1980s, the slasher tide was so high that it couldn't help bleeding into these other genres. Lines blurred and soon throwing a showcase decapitation into a garden variety revenge flick was considered not only appropriate, but also a wise investment. That meant that some of the action movies that my brothers subjected me to were at least as violent as the horror flicks I was obsessed with and some, I must say, were even more so. The high school halls, small town homes and scenic wooded campsite locations of my beloved slashers were positively serene compared to the urban sleaze environments that most of these exploitation pictures took place in. Truth be told, they touched on similar issues of revenge, redemption and empowerment, but their moral compasses were almost always unreliable and sometimes completely M.I.A. Were people really accusing movies like HELL NIGHT where LINDA BLAIR as "Marty" repaired her own escape vehicle of misogyny when in the theater next door, an underage street prostitute was being tortured with a Vaseline dipped soldering iron? Go figure. Ironically some of these flicks had the power to disturb me far more than any of the horror movies I was watching at the time. Although both genres delighted in mayhem and leading the viewer into someplace dark, these guys sometimes left you there without a flashlight!


VICE SQUAD
Directed by DEAD AND BURIED's GARY SHERMAN, VICE SQUAD rarely shows any actual violence but the inevitability of it hangs over all its proceedings like a heavy fog thanks to the tour de force career defining performance of WINGS HAUSER as psycho pimp Ramrod. Relentless, sick and brutal, Ramrod operates like a human terminator with his sites set on ho killing and not much else. Not many films can make the claim of producing their chills by one performance alone, but WINGS' efforts here are so unflinching and seamless that you can only tense up in recognition of his authenticity. He's that gym coach who's about to snap, your friend's abusive father, the weird gun collecting neighbor that keeps vigil at his window just waiting for some kid to step on his lawn, a true blue time bomb built to ignite. Filmed almost entirely on location, VICE SQUAD in general has a raw energy almost as vibrant as HAUSER's. It revels in the dog-eat-dog, kill-or-be-killed red light district nightlife whose denizens wake up knowing each day may be their last. The climax does sort of degenerate into a standard cops and robbers shoot out, but that in no way erases the unquestionable power of all that proceeded. Laced with highly quotable dialogue, ("Blink your eyes and you die in the dark!," a pre-SUDDEN IMPACT "Make my day!"), to die for cameos, (FRED "Rerun" BERRY, CHERYL RAINBEAUX SMITH and first-generation MTV V.J. NINA BLACKWOOD getting the wire hanger treatment!) and a rare opening and closing credits song sung by the movie's villain, (NEON SLIME, download it HERE). VICE SQUAD may not be horror but thanks to WINGS, it scared the crap out of me.


SILENT RAGE
What's to be afraid of when the infallible multi-talented legend CHUCK NORRIS is around to save the day with a few karate chops? Well, thanks to one of the worst decisions in medical history, an insane, dead psychopath who just hacked to death two people with an axe is given a second shot at slaughter thanks to an under-explained experimental drug that makes him invulnerable. (SILENT doesn't insult your intelligence, it just ignores it completely). Cribbing left and right from HALLOWEEN, SILENT RAGE gives us a speechless maniac complete with coveralls and P.O.V. camera shots, and throws in a victim hanging on a door for good measure. By golly there's even a hypodermic needle kill a'la HALLOWEEN 2! Face it kids, this is more of a HALLOWEEN sequel than HALLOWEEN 3 (or 5 for that matter). The CARPENTER cribbing takes a momentary break when CHUCK clears out a local bar full of rowdy raping and pillaging bikers, but it isn't long before we're back in the hack-and-slash saddle again. As far as action horror hybrids go, this is pretty much the pinnacle. Why its formula was not repeated a dozen more times I will never understand. You're basically getting CHUCK NORRIS vs. MICHAEL MYERS here. If you want any more out of life, you're just being greedy. How does CHUCK get rid of this non-stop killing machine? Why he throws him down a well that looks an awful lot like the one our SHATNER-mugged buddy ended up in at the end of HALLOWEEN 4, which SILENT predates by a good six years. Now who's stealing from whom?



10 TO MIDNIGHT
TRAUMAFESSIONS never lie and I have to agree with Richard from DOOMEDMOVIETHON that 10 TO MIDNIGHT really delivered the creeps, at least back in the day. CHARLES BRONSON stars as a cop on the hunt for a Ted Bundy like murderer (he drives a V.W.!) who's got some serious issues with women. Most of the ensuing savagery can be blamed on BRONSON's shoddy police work. Planting evidence is fine, but admitting to it so that the crazy killer is allowed back on the streets is just all kinds of dumb. 10's murders are particularly sadistic and focus on the victims' horror of what is about to happen to them. The scene that Richard cites in his TRAUMAFESSION is exactly the one that gets to me. I'm all for people getting murderized on screen, but when you have to hear them crying and begging for their lives before hand it really takes the fun out! But let's get down to brass tacks shall we? All of this is all the more disturbing because the killer insists on operating completely in the nude. Yes, even your Unkle Lancifer has some sense of propriety. Attacking coed nurses without a traditional mask on is forgivable, but at least put a towel on!



THE EXTERMINATOR
O.K., this vigilante DEATH WISH rip off is one that really got to me, and for the life of me I could not remember why. All I could remember was the gruesome beheading in the first scene that presumably spurs the EXTERMINATOR's revenge driven nature. Now I understand my brain in all its wisdom blocked out the rest because THE EXTERMINATOR is just one f'd up movie. Thankfully, my adult mind can also now decipher that it is also a highly ridiculous movie. That first beheading is still a doozy, credited to both our pal TOM BURMAN and the recently deceased STAN WINSTON, it's just about as realistic as it can get. The way the severed head just flops to the side? It's seriously twisted and it's made all the more grim because it's a war scene and the movie hasn't completely destroyed its credibility yet. I don't mean to be too harsh on THE EXTERMINATOR, but I can't help approaching it like a bully that I have suddenly grown taller than. All the sadistic gruesome kills are present and accounted for, including a death by lowering someone into a meat-grinder, but now that I see THE EXTERMINATOR's apartment I can only chuckle.
Who is his decorater? Henrietta Hippo from THE NEW ZOO REVIEW?

Granted it's still pretty harrowing when we have to witness a prostitute's torture by a fat balding New Jersey congressman or an old lady getting kicked in the stomach and her glasses stomped on, but it's all kind of tempered by the sight of CHRISTOPHER GEORGE cooking a hot dog with a MacGyver device he created out of a reading lamp and two forks. Have I told you lately how much I love CHRISTOPHER GEORGE (GRIZZLY, PIECES, GATES OF HELL)? If I had to see him paired up with someone (other than LYNDA DAY GEORGE and besides myself) SAMANTHA EGGAR (THE BROOD) would be my first choice. Well, here she is folks, but don't get too excited, she shows up to join GEORGE for a late night picnic in the park and to give some absurd medical advice and then she just up and disappears. I thought for sure she'd get tangled in THE EXTERMINATOR's web or at least put in harm's way in some capacity, but no dice. Did she wisely quit mid-production? It makes sense because this movie uses so many weird voice overs and drastic leaps forward in time that it seems they had to just make do with what little they had. Which brings me to my major beef with THE EXTERMINATOR, whenever he wants to kill someone, they just appear before him tied up in some warehouse and the movie never deigns to show you how he got them there. If it were that easy I'd try my hand at being a vigilante too. Ultimately, THE EXTERMINATOR is some pretty shoddy, poorly put together trash, but I have to give it credit for following its strong suits and keeping the shock devices coming at regular intervals. It also has one of the coolest movie posters ever made even though the guy never really uses a flame thrower in the movie…


I'm sorta disappointed that THE EXTERMINATOR over the years has somehow slid into camp. I was kinda hoping for that nauseated, itching-to-turn-the-damn-thing-off feeling that I hardly get any more unless I'm watching SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH reruns at seven in the morning. I was going to say they just don't make um' like these anymore, but then I remembered RAMBO was just in the multiplexes…I love you SLY but you're no CHRISTOPHER GEORGE!


What say you? Do you guys have any action flicks that gave you a trauma-wedgie? Let me know in the comments section and I'll get my big brothers to beat them up after school!

TRAUMAFESSIONS :: Kinderpal Mickster on the Kiss "Blood" Comic Book

Posted on By unkle lancifer

I could do at least a hundred TRAUMAFESSIONS related to things my older brother did to me as a child, but really, who wants to read that? I will just share how my brother's preoccupation with the rock group Kiss traumatized me. It was the ‘70s and my brother was crazy about Kiss, so of course he had all their records, etc. However, it was the purchase of the 1977 Marvel comic book that both terrified and intrigued me at the same time. As many children of the seventies recall, this comic book actually contained blood from all four members of Kiss. At the age of six, I found this concept frightening. Okay, it wasn't really the blood from Paul, Peter, and Ace that I was scared of, it was Gene's blood. I mean, at that point in my life I really thought he was a demon. Naturally, Gene Simmons was my brother's favorite member. He use to stick his tongue out like Gene to freak me out. Anyway, even though I was scared I couldn't stop myself from constantly peeking at this comic book. I would have nightmares about that stupid thing, but then I would find myself looking at it again. Recently I started thinking about the comic book again and found a website where someone had scanned all the pages. Now I can relive my childhood trauma whenever I want.


UNK SEZ: Mickster, we must lead parallel lives, I too remember the salad days of KISS before the airing of KISS MEETS THE PHANTOM OF THE PARK when they were still kinda terrifying. I also remember seeing KISS graffiti when I was a wee lad and thinking they were a mean gang who were going to kill me soon. I was particularly in awe of the album LOVE GUN both for it's awesome COVER ART and this noise making toy surprise inside:

Too bad that they soon got so commercialized that it completely rubbed that mystique clean off. Let this be a lesson to all you aspiring scary rock stars out there, there is such a thing as over exposure. KISS eventually did recover from THIS and THIS but there's no guarantee you will!

TRAUMAFESSIONS :: Reader Amalia on "Higglety Pigglety Pop! Or, There Must Be More to Life"

Posted on By aunt john

Higglety Pigglety Pop! Or, There Must Be More to Life

While Maurice Sendak's more popular "Where the Wild Things Are" involves fanged monsters who are oversized and eyeball-y, it has a brave young hero who is relatable to a four-year-old and also features a happy ending. Unfamiliar British vocabulary, references to pill popping, colorless ink drawings of anthropomorphic animals with giant heads sipping tea, tangible sense of discomfort? Less relatable. An easily deceived, morose dog isn't the way to go when choosing a protagonist for a kid's book. I can still recall the suffocating feeling of terror I experienced while listening to my mom reading it.


AUNT JOHN SEZ: Thanks for sharing Amalia! Although I missed out on this SENDAK chestnut, I do remember being creeped out by his mid-70's collaboration with songstress CAROLE KING called REALLY ROSIE. My elementary school music teacher thought it would be a great idea if she taught us the SENDAK/KING traumatizer THE BALLAD OF CHICKEN SOUP. We ended up performing it, along with a medley of other questionable songs, in the gymnasium at the end of the school year as a special treat for our parents. Imagine the looks on their faces when a stage filled with off-key grade schoolers began pantomiming this ditty:

The Car

Posted on By aunt john

the car james brolin

Aside from having an oddly large police force, the arid mountain town of Santa Ynez is home to a murderous muscle car who does not like to share the roads with bicycle riders or French-horn playing hitchhikers. As the police investigate the series of vehicular murders, the killer car accelerates the body count by plowing down the Sheriff (JOHN MARLEY). Handlebar mustachioed and helmet eschewing motorcycle cop Wade Parent (JAMES BROLIN) assumes the role of Sheriff while juggling relationships with his assertive girlfriend Lauren (KATHLEEN LLYOD), and criminally underutilized daughters (Kindertrauma faves KIM & KYLE RICHARDS). When the car disrupts the marching band practice for the annual parade, it is loud mouth Lauren who questions the manhood of the car's unseen driver. Silly Lauren learns soon enough that this car suffers no attempts at emasculation lightly when it comes crashing through the front window of her elegantly appointed bachelorette pad. Rather than grieve the loss of Lauren, Wade gets together a posse, consisting mainly of cops and the town's domestic batterer/explosive expert, and heads out to nearest canyon to trap the car and blast it back to the hell from whence it came.


Imagine if you replaced the great white shark in JAWS with a 1971 Lincoln Continental Mark III, switched out the JOHN WILLIAMS' foreshadowing music with a blaring car horn, and moved the whole production from the beach to a dusty desert. This is the basic construct of THE CAR and, sadly, it ends up stalling halfway through the picture. There's a huge pothole in its plot, like a basic explanation of where the car came from and why it is so damn evil. I would have settled for a used car salesman who set up a dealership on an Indian burial ground. Despite otherwise fine performances from BROLIN, and a supporting turn from WALLY COX as a deputy who falls off the wagon, THE CAR left me running on empty.

  • Ominous, and utterly irrelevant, title sequence quote from ANTON LA VEY
  • The car makes quick work of co-ed bicycle riders
  • Roadblocks are no match for this car
  • The orange-red camera gel used for the car's demonic P.O.V. shots
  • How great is Lauren's interior décor? Let's count the ways:

  1. Macramé hanging planter
  2. Wood paneling
  3. Lemon rotary phone, matching table lamp and coordinated easy chair
  4. Unfinished portrait of JAMES BROLIN

In Memoriam

Posted on By unkle lancifer

In Memoriam, STAN WINSTON

Special effects and make-up artist STAN WINSTON is responsible for some of the most incredible monsters ever seen in film. We're talking big time blockbusters like ALIENS, PREDATOR and the JURASSIC PARK series. He not only designed the nightmare creature PUMPKINHEAD, but he also did a beautiful job directing that picture as well. The incredible dog kennel scene in THE THING? Yep, Stan was all over that too. One of my fondest, not to mention Kindertraumiest, movie memories is seeing DEAD AND BURIED in a drive in with my cousins. WINSTON's work in that movie helped to make your Unkle Lancifer the shell of a man he is today. He will be sorely missed and there is not enough CGI in the universe to replace the likes of him. Please visit Stan's IMDB page for a full list of his remarkable contributions to the world of film.

TRAUMAFESSIONS :: Reader Mike P. on Prince of Darkness

Posted on By unkle lancifer

john carpenter's prince of darkness

I know some may find it silly, but the character in JOHN CARPENTER's PRINCE OF DARKNESS that is most frightening to me is the student who gets bruised and then ends up absorbing the most liquid from the jar. When she wakes up she still has her cute outfit and cute blond ponytail, but her teeth are black and her skin looks like an unbaked pizza. You may laugh, but her childlike wide-eyed glee as she "opens" mirrors and hisses, "Father!" always gives me the willies.


UNKLE LANCIFER SEZ: Mike, I'm not laughing! PRINCE OF DARKNESS has a haunting quality all its own. Both unusual in the CARPENTER canon and an almost perfect blending of all his most recognizable themes, the "Darkness" in PRINCE is surprisingly pitch black and the stuff real nightmares are made of. Some of that often-silly imagery you mentioned only adds to the creep factor! I, like apparently many other people, have always been taken aback by the film's disturbingly ambiguous end scene(s). Shrouded in static interference and accompanied by barely audible voice transmissions, its apocalyptic fever dream warning from beyond has always gotten to my core. Although hard to pin down, hard to focus on, faulty, digital imagery has been utilized in many movies post BLAIR WITCH, in 1987 this message from this future was suitably ahead of its time. (It should be said, RIDLEY SCOTT used similar staticy, vague visuals to great effect in early scenes of ALIEN as well) If you think about it, recent flicks like CLOVERFIELD and [REC] are all over this first hand, message from ground zero vibe. In the lone case of PRINCE OF DARKNESS though, the techno "transmission" is invading a dreamy subconscious state and involves a supernatural ultimate evil…scary stuff. Interestingly, CARPENTER thinks of PRINCE OF DARKNESS as the second film in an "apocalypse trilogy" that also includes THE THING and IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS. I'm sure there's many viewers who began the film laughing at JAMESON PARKER's massive porn mustache but found themselves later in bed, in that weird blurry state between awake and asleep, wondering where the images in their own dreams originate from.

"This is not a dream..not a dream. We are using your brain's electrical system as a receiver. We are unable to transmit through conscious neural interference. You are receiving this broadcast as a dream. We are transmitting from the year one, nine, nine, nine. You are receiving this broadcast in order to alter the events you are seeing. Our technology has not developed a transmitter strong enough to reach your conscious state of awareness but this is not a dream. You are seeing what is actually occurring for the purpose of causality violation."

NOTE: Audio "samples" from this ominous message are found on DJ SHADOW's album "Endtroducing" and MARILYN MANSON's version of "Down in the Park." Although there is no direct connection, to me, NINE INCH NAIL's entire album "Year Zero" seems cut from the same cloth as well. While we're at it , it also reminds me of one of my favorite record covers, THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN's "April Skies" which, like PRINCE OF DARKNESS, came out in 1987.