The Wonderful World of Nightmare Fuel -- Childhood Trauma

I've spoken before about how confronting fear through films can be a rich learning experience for a child, firing up developing synapses that are better practiced in fake danger. You have your classics, of course, the moments that most of us can agree upon as traumatizing--the boys turning to donkeys in Pinocchio, the flying monkeys in Wizard of Oz, the entirety of Return to Oz, etc. Of course, with age and wisdom comes bravery, and most of us have come to accept and even enjoy these things that used to keep us up at night. Look at me, I'm a horror fan whose first time "watching" Pet Sematary was spent with ears plugged and eyes shut so tight I'm surprised I didn't rupture something.

Then again, some things, some really deeply scarring things, stick with you forever. I may have eventually come to love the Oompa-Loompas, but you couldn't pay me to watch The Dark Crystal ever again.

Trauma bonds people, but it can also alienate. When you share an obscure moment that shattered your reality when you were seven, you accidentally reveal a lot about who you are--most importantly, what a weenie you can be. How many times have you revealed that, say, an episode of "Treehouse of Horror" kept you up for weeks, only to be laughed at by all your friends?

The point is not all scary things are scary to all people, and some scary things were barely meant to be scary at all. Growing up teaches you many things, but sometimes the most enlightening thing is realizing that you used to be (or still are) terrified of some really dumb shit. But that doesn't mean it's not worth exploring.

So without further ado, here's my list of media-induced childhood trauma!

THE JUNGLE BOOK (1967) -- Kaa the Snake

Out of all the characters in Disney's The Jungle Book that lost their dignity in translation from the source material, Kaa may have gotten it the worst. An ancient and elegant creature in Kipling's stories, Disney's animated version of Kaa is an ineffective antagonist at best and a punchline at worst. He's clumsy, inarticulate, easily overwhelmed, and he shares a voice actor with Winnie the fucking Pooh. He couldn't be a less threatening villain. AND YET. Kaa does one thing especially well, and that's hypnotism. All he needs to do is hold eye contact for a few seconds and the victim is instantly lost in a haze of swirly eyes and dopey grins as he wraps them in his coils. This was incredibly disturbing to me as a child, even if I couldn't really understand why at the time. You could point out the weird sexual aspects, not the least of which being a giggling predator trying to wrap his body around a young boy, but while researching this I stumbled into a dark pit of Kaa slash fiction and I'd rather not go down that road. Ultimately for me, it was a combination of the utter helplessness of the victim, and maybe more so, their big moon-faced smile as their doom coils around them.

THE HAUNTING (1999) -- Just the trailer

As much as I love horror movies now, I couldn't go near one as a child. (Looking at the other entries on this list, it's easy to see why.) Trailers and video box art were as close as I ever got to real horror in those days, when the cover of Street Trash was enough to give me nightmares. For whatever reason, one that sticks out to me is The Haunting in 1999--not the full trailer necessarily, but the TV spots that showed the highlights of the spookshow. I remember this film being set up to be a real blockbuster (it was not), so the commercials were played often enough to be burned into my brain as I lay awake in bed, waiting for little wooden baby heads to start wailing in the night. I avoided this movie for years out of pure terror, until finally one day my friends made me sit down and watch it. Imagine the embarrassment, and the triumph, of realizing what a laughably awful film Jan de Bont's The Haunting is. The story is a mess, the acting is lousy even with a (mostly) star-studded cast, and the CGI is awful even for its day. But I do have to give credit where it's due: without this movie, I may never have become the horror fan I am today. If I never faced that fear of poorly rendered weeping statues, who knows what else I may have never experienced.

THE BRAVE LITTLE TOASTER -- Every ten minutes

Many people my age claim to love this movie. My question is, "How?" How can you enjoy something so viscerally upsetting? How can you claim to love a thing that clearly does not have your best interests at heart? Brave Little Toaster is not for children. It does not exist to tell a story. Its only purpose is to attack its audience with unsettling questions and dark violent imagery under the guise of being a cute family film. If your memory is fuzzy on the plot, skim through the Wikipedia summary, and realize that not only does it read like a fever dream, but more importantly, nothing good happens to any of these characters throughout the entire film. For every few precious minutes of wholesome sweetness with a gang of talking appliances going on an adventure, there is an onslaught of surreal terrors waiting just around the corner. And I'm not even talking about that evil clown dream sequence. Remember the AC unit that has a meltdown and literally explodes in front of his housemates? Remember when the vacuum cleaner chokes on his own cord and is reduced to a jibbering vegetable for a while? Remember the flower growing all alone in the woods that falls in love with its reflection in Toaster's surface, and when Toaster runs from it, it instantly DIES OF A BROKEN HEART? Do you remember that bit of sickening tragedy that comes out of nowhere and leads to nothing? That's only a sample of the horrors that lurk in this harmless-looking film. And don't even try telling me it has a happy ending--how many 10 year old household appliances do you still own, let alone cherish? This is not a movie, this is an assault.

A GOOFY MOVIE -- Max's Nightmare

I love A Goofy Movie. You probably love A Goofy Movie. Even my Disney-hating husband with his heart of stone got choked up watching A Goofy Movie. It's practically perfect. It's got catchy songs, crisp animation, and great voice acting. It may never have the prestige of The Lion King or Beauty and the Beast, but it's still one of Disney's finest and is just as enjoyable today as it was in 1995. What could I possibly find to be nightmare inducing in this otherwise lovely film? Well, I was five when A Goofy Movie came out, and to my memory it was one of my earliest experiences in the theater. So imagine a sweet little child sitting fairly close to a huge screen when that gorgeous dream sequence begins and swiftly turns into a nightmare rife with body horror and teen angst. Again, I'm five. I don't understand the comedy of the scene, nor the context. All I see is a boy whose body has turned into a giant monster. It doesn't even matter that the monster looks like Goofy, not with all the screaming and lightening and scary music. That's a really rough start for a five year old to take in, but thankfully the movie moves right along with the bright colors and pop songs. And that's why it's a masterpiece.

THE ADVENTURES OF PINOCCHIO -- Lorenzini's transformation into Monstro

Listen, nobody loved Jonathan Taylor Thomas in the 90's the way I loved Jonathan Taylor Thomas in the 90's. I was too young to even understand what attraction was and I was still in love with JTT to the point I would watch him in literally anything, even a movie involving that which I feared most as a child: human-looking puppets. The Adventures of Pinocchio is not good in any sense, but it is memorable if only for being deeply unsettling to look at. Besides the passable hideousness of Pinocchio himself, the human characters are decked out in the most ridiculously foppish garb and filmed in garish golden-hour sunshine at odd angles to make them look even more bizarre. This movie is too interesting-looking to be ignored, yet too boring to actually be interesting, aside from the inherent delight of hearing Martin Landau struggling with a "mamma mia!" Italian accent. The film is largely forgettable, aside for one little moment on Pleasure Island, and shockingly, it's not the one you're thinking of (although that scene is pretty upsetting too). Pinocchio and his friends clap back on the villain Lorenzini (Udo Kier) by pushing him into the magic water that transformed them into donkeys. Inexplicably, the water doesn't turn him into a jackass but something else entirely--a half-formed fish man that will eventually become Monstro the whale. The makeup effects here are quite good and tastefully revealed in shadows and warped reflections. Still, those few seconds of a man's eye bulging out of his head as his skull rearranges is something you simply cannot forget.

These random moments of weird surreal terror aren't ranked in any particular order, but every list needs a number one ultimate top pick, and baby, I saved the best for last. Before the big reveal, here are some honorable mentions:

Ren & Stimpy -- all of it, the whole thing, every single second
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? -- Dr. Doom's toon eyes
Altered States -- that one part I caught on TV where a hairy naked man feasts on a goat
The Last Unicorn -- the laughing skull
Jumanji -- giant vicious mosquitoes with seizure-inducing stings
The Hobbit (Rankin/Bass version) -- friendly dwarves animated to look like living Troll dolls
Anaconda -- winking Jon Voight corpse

And now, my top tier, number one, all time greatest movie-induced childhood trauma is........

E.T. THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL -- Fuck this movie

Look, I'm not a monster. I love Steven Spielberg. I love Drew Barreymore. I love movies about aliens finding their humanity. I love animatronics. But physically, mentally, and emotionally, I cannot love E.T. I've tried, believe me. It's one of those movies you're not allowed to dislike because it is goodness in its purest form--sweet story, good directing, great score, an all-around classic. Far be it from me to try to convince you that it is not. Even I don't know why I don't like it. Maybe it's when we first meet E.T. as nothing but a set of icky probing fingers in the woods. Maybe its when he secretly takes over Elliot's mind and gets him shit-faced. Maybe it's when E.T. falls ill and they find him rotting in a ditch like a discarded powdered doughnut. Maybe it's the overall design of the puppet--as if somehow big blue eyes would save that wrinkly turd of a sinking ship. Maybe it's how every other shot of this film is framed with smoky mystery and inexplicable dread. Maybe it's not any single trait. Everything about this film unsettles me to my core and I have never been able to overcome my inherent deep-seated fear of it--not when I was a baby watching it on VHS, not when I was a teenager watching it on remastered DVD, not now as a grown ass woman struggling to get through the trailer without getting stomach pains. E.T. is as far from heart-warming as it gets for me. This is a scary, scary movie, and honestly, it deserves more of that recognition.


There you have it, my list of the most memorable childhood nightmare fuel. I hope I could help conjure up some repressed memories for you. Perhaps adulthood doesn't bring bravery, only awareness, and if we can't overcome all of our greatest fears, we can at least laugh about them.

Finding art in ZOMBIE STRIPPERS! (2008)

As a horror fan, there are few things as satisfying as picking up the stupidest title and accidentally discovering a gem. Zombie Strippers is one of those gems. Hiding beneath a cheap grindhouse title and Jenna Jameson's lusciously inert breasts is, believe it or not, a small wonder. Initially conceived as a joke, because of course it was, Zombie Strippers tells a sleazy story with brilliant splatstick moments and existential flair, as any good zombie movie should.

The meat of the story takes place in a not-so-distant future where George Bush has won his fourth consecutive term as president (because Bush jokes were hilarious in 2008). As a result, the US is at war with literally everyone. We open on a military investigation of a research facility striving to make a super-soldier serum, which has obviously gone horrifically wrong. Thankfully, the army sent its sexiest unit to take care of business.

The push-up bra is standard issue.

During the initial tour before the zombies hit the fan, the scientists explain that the nature of the disease causes your usual brain-dead, flesh-hungry zombie fare only in the male subjects, whereas female patients maintain their conscious minds while reaping all the undead benefits--super strength, heightened agility, and a bloodthirsty drive to destroy. To make an overly long sequence short, one of the less sexy soldiers gets bitten during the extermination and goes staggering off into the city. He inexplicably stumbles into an underground stripclub, where Kat (Jenna Jameson) is our lithe, shimmery, gyrating introduction to Rhino's.

No matter how you may feel about Miss Jameson, she is an absolute rock star on the pole, and sets the stage for the kind of shiny cheesecake we're in for. She has incredible confidence and control of her body, strutting the stage with a presence that both exudes and transcends her porn star status. According to the behind the scenes, she couldn't be sweeter about sharing her sexy secrets--she actually helped the other girls in the cast with their own choreography on the stage.

The handful of side characters that keep the club running serve both as comic relief and occasional antagonists. Unfortunately neither path lands very well, but no worries since we don't see very much of them. There's the slimy owner Ian Essko (Robert Englund); a smooth black DJ as the voice of reason and possibly the only sane person in this universe; a madame who is cartoonishly Russian from her pastel Lycra pants to tales of squeezing vodka from potatoes in the old country; and a Mexican janitor played by a Puerto Rican actor who is forced to caricature being Mexican to the point that it runs screaming past parody straight into blatant racism.

This is his big monologue.

The real magic lies backstage in the dressing room. Here we are introduced to our girls, each completely unique in their own shallow way. First there is the previously introduced Kat, the star of Rhino's. When she isn't tearing up the stage, she hangs out in her separate VIP dressing room, reading Nietzche and contemplating her own futile existence. She's an intellectual stripper, man, and Jameson plays it surprisingly well. She is not the hooker with the heart of gold by any stretch; rather she is an enlightened woman living in a dystopia who doesn't have the patience for anyone else's sensitivities. She's never cruel beyond mild cattiness or chilly determination, but she doesn't go out of her way to be nice, either. Her pep talk to the newbie stripper Jessy about what it takes to be a real dancer is blunt but not malicious, and is actually precisely the advice you would hope to hear from a veteran stripper. 

"First lesson: quit your bitching."

Next is Jeannie, Kat's rival and apparently the least popular stripper at the club, though God knows why since she's got some of the most stunning cleavage I've ever seen. (Maybe it's her penchant for corsets in a house full of nylon bikinis.) Whatever the reason, Jean mostly serves to shoot Kat dirty looks throughout the movie, inevitably leading to a big-breasted showdown.

Ugh, what a cow.

The "lesser" strippers are lesser only in that they don't get nearly as much screen time as they probably deserve. Gaia is set up as an empty-headed sweetheart with self-esteem issues that aren't revealed until it's beyond being relevant, while Sox is more memorable for her crush on Kat than anything else. That, and being a fucking Amazon princess.

Tall girls represent.

Then there's Lillith (Roxy Saint), my personal favorite of the ensemble in spite of and precisely because she's a ham-fisted cartoon of The Goth Chick. She's got the punky schoolgirl outfit, the cigarette-stained grumbling, the heavy nipple piercings, the spidery eye makeup that would make Helena Bonham Carter blush. She even employs a little silver pistol on a chain into her dance routines because she is just so hardcore. I fucking adore her. It shouldn't come as a surprise that Roxy Saint is also a punk rock singer, and a few of her songs are stripped to throughout the film, adding a grimy, sexy flavor to some of the gorier dance scenes. Like Sox, she harbors her own admiration for Kat and is the first gleeful converter to the undead.

SUCH ANGST!

Somewhere in the middle is Berenge, a lapdancer who is physically incapable of caring about anything. She is set up to be a much bigger character than she actually turns out to be, and in the end, the film really doesn't need her beyond faithfulness to its source material (which I'll get to).

Finally, there's Jessy, who is arguably our central protagonist, but it's hard to tell since this movie doesn't stay focused on any one character for too long. She is a good Christian girl who is hoping to raise money for her grandmother's surgery by stripping. This character could, and should, be dead on arrival, but this otherwise walking cliche has a self-aware earnestness with a just a hint of world-weariness that's endearing. She's an innocent without being an idiot.

Just a small town girl, living in a zombie world....

Unfortunately, she's got a literal ball-and-chain dragging her down--her bumbling boyfriend Davis, who keeps following her around the club and being a general skeeze. One second he's pleading with her not to take her clothes off for strangers, the next he's slinking into the shadows to enjoy the show. Just like a dude. Even though Davis is just as useless as any of the other men in this picture, he at the very least serves for Jessy to show her strength. When he begs her to not strip, she hears him out but sticks to her conviction. She doesn't even apologize for his hurt feelings. She makes it clear the whole ordeal has nothing to do with him, and that her grandmother's well-being is "more important than staying pure for you." That's a shockingly progressive direction for a goody-two-shoes character in a movie called Zombie fucking Strippers.

Back to the plot, such as it is. The infected soldier hangs out at the club, the virus quietly consuming him. When Kat struts out for another dance, he rushes the stage and proceeds to rip her throat out. Everyone looks on in horror, but are surprised to find that Kat recovers from her wound quite quickly. In no time, she's ready to take the stage again, gaping flesh wound and all.

And she fucking KILLS IT.

Jenna Jameson decomposes beautifully over the course of the film, but these initial scenes are just stellar. The virus has turned her into a vicious, tireless beast, her feral dancing becoming both erotic and frightening. With her black eyes and deranged grin, not to mention the blood streaked all over her golden flesh, she is a full-on predator on the hunt for meat. And the fellas can't get enough!

Fear-rection.

When the other girls catch wind of the secret to Kat's makeover, they begin converting to zombie-ism for a taste of the power. Kat's posse swiftly overtakes the club's line up, and infected male patrons begin piling up in the basement like rabid dogs. It is up to the remaining survivors to deal with the sexy zombie menace, and if they can't reason with them, they'll have to shoot their way out. Typical silly splatterfest ensues, with a few sets of glitter tits to spare.

Believe it or not, Zombie Strippers is based on what some people would call art. Back in 1960's France, a fella named Eugene Ionesco wrote a little farce called Rhinoceros at the height of the absurdist movement in theater. The play tells the story of a man named Berenger, an everyman who prefers to drown his first-world sorrows and spin philosophy at the local tavern rather than face any real responsibility in life. One day, his musings are interrupted by a passing rhinoceros, which is later rumored to have formerly been a person. Over time, more people in town mysteriously transform into rhinos, rampaging through the streets and destroying property. The remaining non-rhinos try to rationalize the bizarre events and attempt to figure out a cause, but one by one they surrender their humanity to become something else.

Soon the town is lousy with rhinos, all except Berenger and his lady love, Daisy. The two decide to make the best of things and try to go about remaining human despite being surrounded by dangerous animals that were once their neighbors. Over time, the transition to rhino-hood becomes more and more attractive to Daisy, and she eventually leaves to join the herd. Berenger struggles to hold on to his humanity, finding himself seduced by the call of the rhino as well. In the end, he decides to resist temptation and actively fight against the rhino invasion.

The play has a few themes floating around, but the most central is the notion of conformity. Ionesco presents us with normal people who inexplicably become beasts, and the remaining humans willingly follow them--not all at once, but slowly. Through conversation and persistent rationalization, they convince themselves that making the change is simply better than remaining what they are, as if it's a new level of enlightenment, a superior state of being. The play speaks directly to the insidious nature of Nazi propaganda, but could just as easily be applied to any number of hostile movements throughout history--the Salem witch trials, the Satanic Panic of the 1980's, even now with the marketing of our most recent election--a hideous idea that presents itself as profound logic, taking root in the impressionable individual and gradually creeping into public consciousness as the status quo. Berenger represents man's resistance to savage herd mentality, and he ultimately finds direction by pointing away from everyone else.

In these modern times, zombies are an ideal replacement for rhinos. Since Romero's triumphant premiere, they have always represented our most base selves, stripped of empathy and reason, hungry for domination (and flesh). Zombie Strippers takes this and cranks it up to maximum parody levels, but the themes remain the same. You could even dig a little feminist message out of the fact that the base male is a mindless drone whereas females can retain their speech and get bitchy superpowers.

Wanna lapdance?

Personally, in 2018, the zombie theme is largely played out, and by now even the most inventive twist still often rings a bit stale (with a few choice exceptions). But sometimes art doesn't strike at the right moment and takes a few years for anyone to recognize it for what it is. I believe Zombie Strippers is ripe for a comeback, not only for its timely political unrest, but also for its feminist themes, however flimsy they may be in context. For me, I always enjoy an ensemble of beauties taking on their shitty situation, so Zombie Strippers fills a void for me in the same way that Showgirls does, even if the amazing quality and vibrancy of their female cast doesn't get near as much screen time.