Now that I've exhausted my own traumas, I thought I'd tell you about a trauma experienced by by own four year old daughter, Sophie.
She's a big fan of the Muppet movies, and since she didn't seem frightened by 'scary' Muppets like Animal, Sweetums, and Miss Piggy, we treated her to a DVD of episodes of THE MUPPET SHOW. After sitting through such 'Still Alive?' hosts like Roy Clark and Lesley Ann Warren, we came to the Alice Cooper episode. She was okay until the 'Welcome to my Nightmare' song where Alice rose out of his coffin and sang with skeletons and ghosts. She made me fast forward past that.
It was a pretty dark episode, with Alice trying to make a faustian bargain for Kermit's soul, a Muppet catching an arrow through his head, and Dr. Honeydew creating a giant germ which devoured Beaker. Eventually, we had to turn it off.
Now, every time we watch the show, Sophie asks, 'It's not the creepy guy, is it?'
Now that is my kind of family viewing.
This has to be one of the WEIRDEST episodes! Especially as there's that muppet who looks like he could be Pyramid Head from "Silent Hill"…only purple and fuzzy aside from the pyramid head. (Hmm…"Muppet Silent Hill" sounds interesting…)
BTW, here is an article from the site "Tough Pigs" where the author reads a LOT into this episode-
http://www.toughpigs.com/my-week-with-halloween-part-3/
"Freakos- 1
Civilization- 0"
Best Muppet Show EVER!!!