Ask The Readers moves to Wednesday this week; I’ve bought a house (yay), but have to move again on Friday (boo), so TN will likely go dark for a few days.

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Hi Sars,

So, I have a question for you and your readers.I have been trying to figure out this movie for ages and I can’t seem to find it anywhere on the net.In the 1980s, a movie was shown on St. Patrick’s Day on a local Seattle channel after the St. Patrick’s Day Parade.It was a part of “Movie Matinee” sort of programming.It was only shown that one day every year.

Here is what I know:

• The entire cast had Irish accents.
• The main character is a little girl (somewhere between the ages of 8 and 13) who lives at a big white house where there is a major party at some point.
• There is a super creepy porcelain doll that is haunted by the ghost of the girl’s dead mother.
• The doll floats up out of the well out back where it has been sitting on a ledge but not getting dirty for who knows how long during the aforementioned party.
• The doll wears a white dress, has black hair, and can talk to the girl in one of those skin-crawling sort of voices that dead women have in movies where they possess dolls.
• The doll belonged to the girl’s mother when the mother was a little girl.
• The little girl keeps the doll in a trunk.
• At some point in the movie there is a Banshee, A Ghost Coach, and the old man and the doll end up on this carriage.
• There is nothing fairy or fey in the movie except for the traditional Irish death stuff and the haunted doll.

Here is what I suspect:

• It was made in the 1950s.
• It takes place in Ireland but may or may not have been filmed there.
• The little girl’s best friend was a boy who was a servant on the property, but she spends most of the movie alone talking to the uber-creepy doll.
• The old man is the little girl’s grandfather and he sacrifices himself for the girl.
• The girl felt out of place at the party (which is why she goes out back by the old well).
• I’m really not sure of this one but at some point, I think she falls into the well, sees the doll and wakes it up somehow but she hit her head and her friend rescues her so they forget about it until it floats out of the well in the night as creepy haunted talking porcelain dolls who have spent years in a well not getting dirty are wont to do.

So, Sars and dear readers of Tomato Nation, I would appreciate your help if you would.

Thanks muchly,

Christina

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So, here’s one for the Vine.

About 6 or 7 years ago, I saw a short film online and have not been able to find it again.I’ve exhausted every permutation of search terms that I can come up with and have found nothing.

The basic plot, without giving too much away, is that it’s a suspense/mystery/thriller short. A woman is at a train/aboveground-subway station and she’s taking pictures.She sees a man walking down the tracks and takes pictures of him as he approaches.She gets scared, bolts, forgets her keys, gets the film developed, and as she’s flipping through the photos at her house, the denouement happens.

It was black and white, very creepy.Any help would be, well, helpful.

It’s called a bookmark

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Hi Sars,

Well, I’ve exhausted Google and IMDb, pestered everyone I know via Facebook and Twitter, and so I come to you and your readers, hoping someone out there can identify this ridiculous sci-fi spoof from that scared the crap out of me when I was 8.

I’m afraid I can’t give you much to go on here, but it’s about a superhero, or former superhero, who works in an electronics store, or pawn shop. Here’s the key plot point, though: One night, some alien overlord steals the hair off everyone on earth, and they all wake up bald. (This is what frightened me. I was a very vain child.) I distinctly remember a scene showing hair being beamed up to a spaceship.

I saw it on TV at a friend’s house in the late 1980s, so I assume the film is from the ’80s, though it could be a ’70s movie.

I’m keen to track it down because I’m overdue for a bad movie night, plus it’s time to face down this absurd childhood fear. Hope someone recognizes it.

Keep Your Alien Tractor Beams Off My Hair

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