My Kindertrauma: The Cinemax “CHILLS” Hand

So when I was a kid we had cable and we got a few premium channels. One of them was HBO, which was a blessing of movies. Not only did it have Fraggle Rock (and woe to anyone who could not partake of this divine show), but it also had that legendary promo before its feature presentations.

The other channels had similar sequences, one of which was Cinemax, which would come on a free preview weekend. My father taped Short Circuit, my favorite movie, during one of these instances before I was old enough to remember. Cinemax’s movie announcement wasn’t as epic as HBO’s, but it was more, shall we say, dramatic?

As you can see, it’s mostly tight shots of what might be called “key moments” or “tropes” of the genres they feature. That hand desperately grabbing for the breaking rope for “SPILLS” was no picnic for four-year-old me, but the thing that really did it was “CHILLS” where that hand rises from the grave. I think this may have been the trauma that resulted in my predilection for zombies.

I don’t like hands rising from the ground. Carrie, Creepshow, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Michael Jackson’s Thriller, Return of the Living Dead, Tales from the Crypt, Batman, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II. The dead should stay dead. And the hand rising out, whether making a last grab for survival or a triumphant return to life, there’s something so final or disruptive about it that it gives me, well, chills.