kindertrauma

TRAUMAFESSIONS :: Reader Alfred on Changing Channels

Posted on By unkle lancifer

creature double feature

I suffered through an evening alone with several trauma inducing TV shows and commercials. This was the first time my parents allowed me to stay home by myself. I was maybe 10 years old. I wanted to watch WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS on Creature Double Feature (Channel 48 in Phila. in the ‘70s). They agreed, but said, "No company, and you can't go outside." I made it through the movie fine. It was what happened next that scared me out of my wits. The next offering on Creature Double Feature was some ghost story. I decided to find something light to take the edge off since it was now getting dark outside.

I flipped channels to find something to watch. I settled on the haunted house episode of WILD, WILD WEST. The one where they wake up in the house and their guns are rusted, like they had been there for years overnight. What are the odds that WILD, WILD WEST would be scary? It was to me, so I turned again. The commercial that was playing on the next station was for the weird magazine, Man, Myth and Magic. The face on the cover was, the devil I guess. Again, scary to me. I turned again, just in time to see JULIET MILLS channeling LINDA BLAIR in the ad for BEYOND THE DOOR. Well that was it! I spent the last half hour out on the front porch. What really scared me was that the shows and ads seemed, to my impressionable mind, to be timed to each twist of the T.V. dial – just like it was done purposely.

TRAUMAFESSIONS :: Reader Joe V. on The World Beyond a.k.a. The Mud Monster

Posted on By unkle lancifer

I saw THE WORLD BEYOND A.K.A. THE MUD MONSTER on the later side of puberty, which meant that I actually wanted to sit through it. For some inexplicable reason, the local TV station sometimes programmed this in place of after school cartoons. I would get get home from school, flip on the tube expecting Tom and Jerry, and instead be treated to this claustrophobic, supernatural thriller about a couple pursued through the woods by a creature made from mud and sticks. I remember turning it on to a scene where the guy comes upon a crude man-shape dug out of the earth: the 'womb' of the monster. My mom comes into the room and nonchalantly says, "It's a mud monster. It has a skeleton of sticks". I remember thinking. "How the fuck does she know that?" The reality of watching this kind of fare in the long, lonesome, post-school hours was terrifying enough, but what really sticks in my head is the scene where the guy is anxiously carrying a bag of anti-mud monster salt through the forest — and he drops it in a puddle, only to watch helplessly as it melts. This was my defining intro to psychological terror. As I remember it, the monster itself didn't get much screen time.


KINDER UPDATE: For a full review and more pix of THE WORLD BEYOND a.k.a. THE MUD MONSTER look HERE

Official Traumatot :: Joshua John Miller

Posted on By unkle lancifer

 

 JOSHUA JOHN MILLER (sometimes just JOSHUA MILLER) worked along side some of the greatest figures in modern horror including TOM ATKINS in HALLOWEEN 3: SEASON OF THE WITCH, CRISPEN GLOVER in RIVER'S EDGE, LANCE HENRICKSEN in NEAR DARK and be still my heart, ZELDA RUBENSTEIN in the rap mangling musical holocaust TEEN WITCH! (Top That!) In addition, his father is none other than JASON MILLER a.k.a. Father Karras in THE EXORCIST, so we're talking genuine horror royalty here. His first novel THE MAO GAME was published in 1997 when he was just 21 and he went on to direct the film adaptation of it as well. No slouch in his youth and equally productive to this day, renaissance man JOSHUA JOHN MILLER certainly deserves to be recognized around the globe as an OFFICIAL KINDERTRAUMA TRAUMATOT!     

Near Dark

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Note: This review is part of THE FINAL GIRL FILM CLUB! 

While out on the town, good ol' boy Caleb Colton (ADRIAN PASDAR) meets a pouty young philly named Mae (I, MADMAN star and eighties fixture ROBIN WRIGHT) having her way with an ice cream cone. After some flirting, stargazing and hint-age that she's not your average girl, Mae realizes that time has flown and begins to panic. She's not worried about a whuppin' from her father like Caleb suspects, but is really concerned that the light of day is going to turn her into a pile of smoking ashes. Although the script by HITCHER scribe ERIC RED is careful not to use the word "vampire" Mae's nocturnal lifestyle choice is made explicit when rather than peck Caleb's cheek when she departs, she chomps on his neck. Now infected as well, Caleb's morning walk of shame across a field becomes life threatening when he himself begins to smolder in the light of the sun. Mae's maniacal makeshift family arrives just in time to offer some shade and an opportunity for recruitment, but not before Caleb's father Loy (TIM THOMERSON of DOLLMAN) and kid sis witness the occurrence and perceive it as a kidnapping. The rest of the film follows Caleb's attempts to fit in with the band of criminally minded undead rogues and his struggle with the dilemma of killing in order to survive. It ultimately comes down to choosing between the two families, the stable one he grew up with who are busy tracking him down or the obviously more exciting, dirty faced, roving pack of transgressive creatures of the night. Director KATHERYNE BIGELOW's hip, slick, blood sucking, spur twirling ode to the road is pretty impossible not to enjoy but it is NEAR DARK's incredible cast that takes it over the top. Fresh off of ALIENS is LANCE HENRIKSEN, JENETTE GOLSTEIN and never-satiated scene chewer BILL PAXTON as the charismatic killer clan (you may even notice ALIENS on the marquee of the movie theater in town). Not to be forgotten is the youngest member of the tribe, the preternaturally creepy JOSHUA JOHN MILLER from RIVER'S EDGE who plays Homer, an aging, cynical spirit trapped in a young boy's body and a cool WILLIAM BURROUGHS t-shirt. Born for cult worship, NEAR DARK is probably one of the most original vampire films ever made. Beyond the explosive action and indigo black humor, it never misses a beat showing the internal consequences of vampiric infection not only on the bitten but those that surround them.

  • There's no forgetting the honkey tonk siege, violent and disturbing but always strangely humorous as well.
  • The daytime shootout at the motel packs a wallop. You may actually find yourself concerned about the safety of these merciless, nearly unkillable maniacs.
  • lil' Homer ignites

     

TRAUMAFESSIONS :: Reader Cyndi on Visiting Hours

Posted on By aunt john

 

visiting hours!

When I was little, all I knew about my Dad's job was that it was in a high-rise office building somewhere in the city. While watching T.V. one Friday night with my jerky older brother, we caught the ad for that movie VISITING HOURS where the lights in the side of the building slowly turn off to eventually reveal a skull face at the end. My older brother said that it was the same building where my Dad worked. Of course, I believed him and I started wailing hysterically. My mom couldn't convince me otherwise, nor could my brother who was forced to admit he was just kidding. I kept crying until my Dad got home from work. 

Official Traumatizer :: Mr. Horton (Gordon Jump)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

An entire generation is still trying to cleanse itself from the creepy psychological residue left behind by a two-part "very special episode" from the multiple shark-jumping sitcom DIFF'RENT STROKES' fifth season entitled "The Bicycle Man". GORDON JUMP, who was well on his way to being remembered fondly as the simpleton station manager from WKRP IN CINCINNATI, erased his entire previous incarnation in one fatal swoop when he appeared as a pedophiliac bicycle shop owner named Mr. Horton on the alleged comedy. To make a real dent as a traumatic presence in the DIFF'RENT STROKES universe is no small feat. The alternative dimension that the Drummond family resides in is a perpetual seething cesspool of various terminal illnesses, near constant attempted kidnappings, seizure prone pan handlers, extortion, evil alternate sex doppelgangers from Holland, and school visits from Nancy Reagan. Armed with an arsenal of cheap wine, Boston cream pies, and cartoon mouse porn the suspiciously attentive Mr. Horton lures young Arnold Jackson (GARY COLEMAN) and his long suffering pal Dudley (SHAVER ROSS who fared better battling Jason in FRIDAY THE 13th: A NEW BEGINNING) into the back of his creepy bike shop. Once alone with the boys, Horton introduces them to a world where jumping on the bed is no longer forbidden, horsey rides are mandatory, and out of date THREE STOOGES jokes run rampant. Arnold is able to escape before he is introduced to Horton's ominous sounding final game "King Neptune" but not so "collateral damage" Dudley, who the DIFF'RENT STROKES writers have no problem throwing to the wolves teetering drunk and partially clothed. More frightening still is the show's diabolical insistence on milking the grotesque situation for would be chuckles that would never occur without the existence of it's notoriously unconvincing and trigger happy laugh track. Hiding behind the veil of public service, the episode is book-ended with a universally ignored call to arms for parents to talk openly with their children about the abomination masquerading as entertainment that they just witnessed, a fate perhaps more traumatizing than the episode itself if any parent were insane enough to take it seriously.

Traumafessions :: Reader Eric S. on the Beautiful Day Monster

Posted on By unkle lancifer

In the first season of Sesame Street, a full decade before that re-tard Elmo showed up, JIM HENSON's Muppet monsters were decidedly creepier and scarier. Cookie Monster didn't eat cookies, he just slinked up on Kermit and ate all his props (and almost him!), Grover was a sickly brown-ish green color and spoke in a weird, hushed tone, and there was this big scary green dragon's head Muppet that popped up suddenly a few times. But most of all, there was this big, tall, bug-eyed, eagle-beaked, fang-toothed, gaping-maw of a monster. He never got a real name (he was named BEAUTIFUL DAY MONSTER by fans) which made him seem even scarier. The other Muppet characters were either scared or downright terrified when he showed up, and so I think, were the kids at home! Plus he spoke in FRANK OZ's deepest baritone monster voice. Not surprisingly he disappeared from SESAME STREET after the first season, never to return (he showed up once or twice on The Muppet Show with a less frightening design).

The Incubus

Posted on By unkle lancifer

 

 At turns too classy and too sleazy for it's own good, 1981's THE INCUBUS flirts with being a distinguished marriage between the occult thrillers of the seventies and the slash-fests of its day but ends up falling a hair short on both accounts. Director JOHN HOUGH (THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE) has a superior eye and many scenes have a rustic gothic vibe perfect for the supernatural detective story. He's not done any favors by the repetitive script based on a RAY RUSSEL novel of the same name which spends much of its time discussing the qualities and quantities of seminal fluid found in various victim's bodies. Celebrated rogue director and ROSEMARY'S BABY alum JOHN CASSAVETES is his usual mesmerizing self as Dr. Sam Cordell who's bound and determined to make sense out of the quiet town of Galen's string of unexplained rape murders. His uncomfortably close daughter is portrayed by CLASS OF 1984 pixie chick ERIN NOBLE who is well up to the task of holding her own with the veteran actor's quirky naturalism. Out of place is the too glamorous KERRIE KEANE in an archaic and hammy nosey reporter role (her otherness may be explained by the film's ending, but by then it's too late). When it's working on all cylinders THE INCUBUS can be compared to the underrated EXORCIST 3, with its aging protagonist, vague dream inserts and relentlessly grim, uncanny tone, but its inconsistencies are hard to ignore. Information is repeated needlessly and some sections just seem randomly put together or completely out of order. Most frustrating is the ending, which is an admittedly surprising twist that deserves a much more aggressive presentation. Actually I'm not sure there's anything wrong here that an inspired editor could not fix, most horror fans have certainly done worse and there is definite talent on display, but ultimately the film's strong suites only serve to highlight its weaker ones, leaving the viewer lamenting the classic film that might have been.
indelible scenes 

  • A scenic gorge in Elora, Ontario Canada makes a memorable impression as a location for the first demonic attacks
  • The Galen witchcraft library/museum is a suitably creepy spot 
  • The slaughter of a father and his two daughters (one is showering, one is wheelchair bound) may feel tacked on, but it certainly helps fill the horror quotient
  • Heavy metal god BRUCE DICKINSON has fun with fog and laser lights during a pre-bathroom stall rape musical interlude but the results are more FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD than IRON MAIDEN
  • Ending is spoiled by too short visit with title monster

 

  

Traumafessions :: Fewdio Edition

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Howdy kids, your Uncle Lancifer and Aunt John have decided to spend the day fishing for piranha in the moat that surrounds Kindertrauma Castle. Not to worry though, the Fewdio guys are here to babysit. You remember them; they're the fine chaps who brought you THE EASTER BUNNY IS EATING MY CANDY not so far back. Behave yourselves and listen to everything they say and don't tell them that we marked all the bottles in the liquor cabinet to insure against hooch thievery!

First up, who is Fewdio? Fewdio is a new entertainment company committed to scaring the crap out of people the old fashioned way… creeping them out. We're five film makers (a motley mix of screenwriters, directors, actors and producers) who have together and separately worked with STEVEN SPIELBERG, LAWRENCE BENDER, JERRY BRUCKHEIMER, BRETT RATNER, TONY SCOTT, RICHARD KELLY, CHRISTOPHER NOLAN and… gulp… even the antichrist of film himself, EWE BOLLE (don't ask). With our minds set firmly on horror, terror and the celluloid to share those feelings with everyone we know, we set about making the films ourselves during the lengthy writers' strike since no one was working. Now, with a horror anthology feature consisting of fifteen 2-to-11 minute shorts, we're ready to show the world our labor of (twisted) love, called, appropriately enough, NIGHTMARE HOUSE.That said, we found Kindertrauma through one of our favorite horror journalists PETER GUTIERREZ over at Firefox News and it got us to thinking… "Why are we obsessed with scaring people with our films?" The answer that came up around the table, was resoundingly that we had all been struck silly with fear at one point in our childhoods and for some completely broken reason, were looking to both achieve that sick adrenaline high again, and even sicker… give it to others… That said, here's what frightens Fewdio… 

 

JOHN CRYE
 

I was eight years old when MAGIC, starring ANTHONY HOPKINS was released in theaters, and it provided the single most frightening image of my childhood. I did not see the actual film until almost twenty years later, but in 1978 the ad campaign was enough. The ad was brilliantly simple: the grinning head of a ventriloquist dummy speaks an ominous nursery rhyme in a nasty falsetto. Then his eyes roll back in his head. I think I may have only seen the ad once through before that visage simply popping onto the TV screen would send me screaming from the room. My older brother used to love to wrestle me into the den and force me to listen to that dreadful sing song voice… 

 

DREW DAYWALT
 

I have two things that traumatized the living hell out of me as a "lil kinder"…(actually there are many MANY more, but I've got two that are seminal in shaping the warped mind I have today. First up is one that traumatized just about everyone born between 1965 and 1985…. LINDA fucking BLAIR… I was watching TV (I was about seven or eight) when the trailer for the film THE EXORCIST came on. Most of it was just building-up-suspense-type-stuff… but at the end there was LINDA BLAIR looking like something right out of hell itself, as well as a super-short snippet of her crabwalking backwards down the steps. CRABWALKING BACKWARDS DOWN THE STEPS? WHO THOUGHT OF THAT? I'd love to know because I'm dying to punch him in the cock. Okay, so everyone's scared of THE EXORCIST – but here's where my pain gets entertaining (for YOU…) What happened was, I continued to relive that stupid trailer for years in the form of a malignant and unnatural recurring nightmare. Probably once a month or so I would have this sublime dream that we had a framed picture in our house of the non-demonic LINDA BLAIR, but as I'd walk by the picture in the dream, she would morph into her Exorcist-version and reach out of the painting and grab me and bite me. Hard. Like on my face. I woke up screaming many times… Hold on a sec, now I need a Xanax… Okay, meds taken, now for Number Two — The other Kindertrauma, for me, is the opening credits to the original NIGHT GALLERY series from the early 1970's. The first time I saw it, I was literally frozen with fear as I sat alone on the couch, gripped by some unseen, unearthly horror that seemed to force me to keep watching what was clearly the most terrifying thing I had ever seen in my life. Mom was just in the next room, cleaning up the kitchen, but I was actually physically unable to move my limbs to get myself away from what I was seeing and hearing. I could not move. I could not blink. I could not look away. I could not scream. It was, by far, the most excruciating and exquisite fear I have ever felt. It lasted probably 30 seconds… but the twisted funhouse-mirror-style faces and gut-churning, grinding, synth music left a mark on my soul still leaves me chilled when I hear it, 30 years later. 

. 

PAUL HUNGERFORD
 

For me, one of the scariest moments in film had a lot to do with "how" I saw this particular film. In 1982 I was taken to see POLTERGEIST. Now, I had seen a lot of films by that point in my 11 years. A friend of the family worked in NYC as a cameraman for the news and had a 3/4 U-Matic top-loading video player in the house. Their video library consisted of everything that was awesome from 1974 to 1979. Including JAWS, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, KING KONG… even THE OMEN and THE EXORCIST. And I watched them all. A dozen times each. Alone, on the floor in the dark, one-windowed room, in front of a 24"inch color console TV at my Aunt's house… whenever I wanted. So I was no novice to horror. But then came POLTERGEIST… Due to my love of JAWS and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, I was also a STEVE SPEILBERG nut and once I learned his name was on Poltergeist, I had to go! But that night in 1982 changed me. We had NO idea what to expect and upon walking in – we discovered the theater was mobbed! Thus came a decision I would later regret; I elected to sit by myself. My last moments of a good night's sleep would end once that movie started. Specifically, when little Robbie was attacked by that MAD OLD TREE! I shit my Boo Berries! To this day I can't look at trees outside when there is thunder and lightning! "Holy Crap!" I thought, "How much worse could it get!" Then, a giant crazed clown pulls our footed-red-pajama-clad Robbie UNDER THE BED! UNDER. THE. BED. Boo Berries! Finally, the coup de grâce, the cool smart ass twenty-something scientist PEELS HIS OWN FACE OFF IN A MIRROR WHILE CHUNKS FALL IN THE SINK!! Boo Berries galore! That movie sitting by myself, surrounded by strangers, with no one but my own hands to hide behind, kept me up for weeks. I remember thinking, while hiding under my covers, that if my Mom and Dad ever found out that I was scarred because of that movie, I would never get to go with them to Friday night movies, and that scared me most of all! 

 

DAVID SCHNEIDER
 

My earliest memory of having the shit scared out of me was a certain page in the classic children's book, Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel. I've searched for the image online, and while there's plenty of pictures of the cover, I haven't been able to find the picture in question, unfortunately. Or perhaps, fortunately. I honestly don't even remember the story. I'm pretty sure it concerned a fellow named Mike Mulligan, and he owned some sort of heavy duty steam-powered construction vehicle. The steam shovel may have even talked in a falsetto with a French accent, but I may just be misremembering that part. But it definitely had eyes. Piercing, crazed eyes. And oh, I can still picture that page. That page that kept me up nights. It was a dark drawing of an empty dirt pit; the foundation of a future building. It was empty, and lonely, and dirty. I remember thinking it felt like the picture had been painted with dirt. I think Mike had been fired at this point in the story, or perhaps the job had been shut down by Union leg-breakers. Or maybe it was just the end of a long day, I dunno. But the point is, there was nothing in this dank pit except disheveled, rusted equipment. It was like a half-finished pit to hell, in my little 6-year old mind. I had a dream of that image, of being buried alive by that Steam Shovel. Layer upon layer of dirt heaped upon me, as I cried out to no avail. I looked up and saw those maniacal eyes of the steam shovel staring down at me, laughing at me, as I was buried deeper and deeper into that dirt mound. My mother would make me sit through that book, because it had been a favorite of hers when she was little. "It won an award!" she'd say. Well, I can't dig myself out of a demonic pit inhabited by crazed anthropomorphized construction equipment with a damn Caldecott Medal, can I mom? Fuck Mike Mulligan, AND his damn steam shovel. 

 

KIRK B.R. WOLLER
 

For me, the two images that I can't get out of my head, even to this day, come from THE EXORCIST & THE SHINING. I'm with Drew on the whole LINDA BLAIR thing…When she's on the bed and her head spins around… her damned eyes just freak me out, so mean & possessed…and the head turning effect was mechanical looking — but to me that was part of the what horrified me the most…it was so un-human & disturbing. But I think THE SHINING image might just horrify me more…it's when the little kid kept saying "redrum, redrum, redrum, redrum, redrum, redrum,"…his voice, that gravelly quality it has when he speaks as the little boy who lives in his mouth… and the endlessness of his chant and that uncertainty of what was going to happen next… it still gives me chills even as I write this…"redrum, redrum, redrum,redrum , redrum….." 

Official Traumatot:: Pamela Franklin

Posted on By unkle lancifer

 

 Born in Japan, the talents of tiny totling PAMELA FRANKLIN were Godzillian in size. In her screen debut she not only went head to head with DEBORAH KERR but also child actor wunderkind MARTIN STEPHENS in the broody classic THE INNOCENTS. This outstanding performance soon lead to an unflinching cinematic confrontation with intimidating grande dame of cinema BETTE DAVIS in THE NANNY. Where other child actors burnt out or squandered their talents on non horror fare, Pammy graduated into a full genre presence in the seventies, appearing along side the great ORSON WELLES in NECROMANCY a.k.a. THE WITCHING, battling giant rats in THE FOOD OF THE GODS, combating a supernatural Mt. Everest in THE LEGEND OF HELLHOUSE and taking on SATAN'S SCHOOL FOR GIRLS in the timeless AARON SPELLING produced television classic. We acknowledge not only P.F.'s definite acting talents but also her consistent lifelong contributions to horror with our greatest honor…THE TRAUMATOT AWARD!              Â