Covers for books and videos are like car accidents. They’re horrific but you can’t look away. In the video store, instead of looking for something in the family section like I ought to have been doing, I was wandering the horror section, scrutinizing the covers for movies I would never be allowed to watch. Movies like Basket Case, The Blob, The Nest. Book covers were not that different. My mother had a ton of Stephen King books that rivaled the video store. One was a bizarre cover for Cujo that I could not wrap my head around. It was like an optical illusion where you see two images at the…
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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…
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My Kindertrauma: Fast Forwards
I missed a few things during my Kindertrauma run that I didn’t think of at the time and/or didn’t think worthy of an article. But time passes and hey, it’s Halloween anyway. The Neverending Story – Gmork Gmork is an interesting character. He’s really not in the film much and wolves can be as cute as scary. They’re just older uncles of dogs. They’ve been in the war, they’ve seen some shit, but they keep it to themselves. But Gmork is a personification of dread. The first time you see him is when he’s chasing Atreyu in the swamps of sadness. In that shot, he’s just a blur. You know…
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My Kindertrauma: Tales from the Darkside’s “Inside the Closet”
So for my final Kindertrauma, I bring you one of the most obscure, but most trauma-causing pieces of media I was much too young to see. Some people had Pennywise. Some had Chucky. I had the creature from Tales from the Darkside‘s “Inside the Closet”. Tales from the Darkside was like a cheaper, milder version of “Tales from the Crypt”. Less gore, more reliance on twist endings and psych-outs. But still, it had its share of monsters. Don’t mistake my description to think I watched the show. No, once again this lovely little memory comes courtesy of my mother, who rented it from the Hollywood Video for her class on…
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My Kindertrauma: Tidbits
For my second-to-last entry regarding Kindertrauma, I thought I’d go over some of the moments that didn’t warrant an entire article, but were still evoke shivers when I think of them. “Recorded Live”(one of HBO’s Short Takes; also known as “Flesh Eating Film Reels”) I have no idea where or when I saw this, but I know I must have. Because when I was perusing old short horror films available on YouTube, this little gem came back, and I immediately had a Vagrant Story reaction (that’s an inside joke I don’t expect you to get). My dad must have recorded this off of HBO (he recorded everything, we had over…
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My Kindertrauma: The Poison Cackler
The first thing I remember being scared of was the Poison Cackler from Fraggle Rock. Early in life, we all learn what death is. The raccoon laying on the road shoulder. The crushed ant doesn’t move anymore. The grandfather laying in the casket and he looks so strange, unnaturally still, kinda plasticky. And as a child, you know of only a few things that cause death–being old, an unfortunate disease, extreme bodily trauma, and poison. Poison is the scariest of these because it’s the least predictable. It works fast, and it could come from anywhere–an apple, a sword, a battle of wits with a Sicilian. But most of all, all…
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My Kindertrauma: Night of the Creeps
On a very boring Saturday, our cable was out. I don’t remember why. Maybe we had canceled it early in anticipation of moving. Anyway, this was one of those odd days where there wasn’t anything to do, and the timing was right (I remember it started at noon exactly), so I sat down in front of the floor model, wood-paneled, 198-something Magnavox and watched the best thing that was on. The best thing on was “Night of the Creeps”. Usually, I channel flip, but this time I didn’t (what would be the point with only five stations?). And Fox was still a young network at that point and in those…
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My Kindertrauma: Wonderful Sausage from “More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark”
How about a change of pace? Let’s hit the pause button on films and go for some literature. Now, I’ve never found reading very scary. It lacks the visual punch and timing. The best you can get is a sense of dread. I know some people say that when your imagination takes over, things are scarier. But for me, I know I have nothing to fear from my imagination — it’s in my head, the monsters can’t affect me there. It’s only as scary as I can make it. Lovecraft can’t stop me from giving Cthulhu a flowery hat like Mrs. Nesbitt. But sometimes at night, when the shadows are…
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My Kindertrauma: Poltergeist III (the puddle scene)
So I already mentioned Poltergeist in my “Faces of Death” entry, but here’s a scary scene from a movie I never saw. I’m still not sure if I’ve ever seen it. In 1988, Poltergeist III was released. It includes a scene where Carol Anne is running through a parking lot, then stands in a puddle. Two demon hands grab her and drag her down into the water. But her two older siblings* find her and catch her in time. Unfortunately, THEY are dragged into the puddle as well. The whole thing ends with a vacant, quiet parking lot. Now I didn’t see Poltergeist III (I’m still not sure if I…
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My Kindertrauma: Faces of Death (Beetlejuice/Poltergeist/Indiana Jones)
No, not actually “Faces of Death”. I wouldn’t learn about that franchise until I was in high school. And then it was more fun figuring out which vignettes were fake and which were real (this was before YouTube). No these are the terrifying moments about kindertrauma to someone’s face, usually in the form of it coming off. The first was in Beetlejuice. I can’t believe my mom took me to see this in the theater. I was seven years old. Did I express some kind of interest in seeing this? I must have. It was the same director as Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. Maybe she just wanted to get me…
