002: Squirm

004: Xtro

The Trauma Box bites back this week with Xtro, Harry Bromley Davenport's offering from 1982, an impossibly grim and upsettingly British ode to ooze. Why do we keep watching horrific films with dead/absent fathers and animated toys? What the hell is our problem? And, more pressingly, what drugs was Harry Bromley Davenport on?

003: Making Contact

Once again Tyler and Shawn open up the Trauma Box to investigate one of the great sources of childhood horror: the Ventriloquist Dummy. Is there anything scarier than an evil talking puppet? With 1985's Making Contact, Roland Emmerich (yes - the director of Independence Day) answers that question in a truly chilling fashion: by presenting us with a *German* evil talking puppet. A nightmarish perversion of Spielbergian childhood wonder-terror, Making Contact will haunt you for years to come.

002: Squirm

This week, Tyler and Shawn writhe their way through the Trauma Box with Squirm! Jeff Lieberman's proto-Lynchian 1976 horror flick is a puzzling, downbeat musing on Georgian small-town affairs (think spaghetti-swilling sheriffs, worm farms managed by yokels, arch Southern belles, etc) that winds its way heck of a slithery payoff. Your intrepid Trauma Boxers should help this one go down as smooth as an egg cream.

001: The Exterminator

In our inaugural episode, Tyler and Shawn open up the TraumaBox with The Exterminator, James Glickenhaus’s 1980 opus horrificus. This grim viewing prompts us to explore post-’Nam generational trauma, Reagan-era projections of Big Apple deviancy, and our own relationships to depictions of masculinity in the Video Store of yore.