The Maddening Quiet (1962)

<< The Kilauea Recording (2006) 

Original Essay by "Tristan Marshall", forbidden media investigator.

 
Gimmick films are a part of cinema that have always fascinated me, and I’m sad that they’ve died out. We’ll always have 3D films, but we’ll never again have anything like William Castle’s The Tingler, whose “Percepto!” used vibrating seats to simulate the crawling of the titular parasite on the backs of the theater-goers as Vincent Price urged the audience to scream. We’ll never have another instance of Psycho’s policy of ‘No Late Admissions’ so that the twist of the film couldn’t be spoiled. I doubt that the new version of Clue that’s been in the works for years will give audiences the ability to choose their own ending. I’d kill for one movie to use Scratch-n-Sniff Cards.

One of the lesser-known gimmick films, something that’s truly considered forbidden cinema, is 1962’s The Maddening Quiet. Like The Tingler, it advertised itself with a gimmick, which called itself “The Silent Scream”; unlike that film, it was sold to theaters as not needing any special equipment to execute its gimmick. Its director, Laurence Forrester, actually took potshots at several of William Castle’s gimmicks in a marketing pitch for the film, saying:

Theaters that screen The Maddening Quiet do not need to distribute napkins with insurance policies written on them, or rig a skeleton to fly over the audience, or create a fire hazard with special seats. Rather, the score of the film, the dialog, shall do that all on itself… a blind man could sit in the theater and still scream in fear at the void upon the screen!

In another pitch, meant for smaller theaters, he says this:

The Maddening Quiet does not rely on cheap rubber suits with high-contrast zippers or makeup that suffocates the actors to deliver on its promise of fear. All of the horror is in the soundscape of the film-- with the help of the great Dr. Ludo Neptune, people will flee from the theater in droves!

On this point, he was a bit optimistic, but ultimately correct-- but something like this wouldn’t happen until twenty years after it was originally released. I watched it, and the following is going to be both a documentation of the plot, and the film’s effects on me.

The worst crime any movie can commit is to be boring, and The Maddening Quiet isn't boring. Like a lot of films at the time, it features themes of transgressive science, hypnotism, and past lives. In it, Dr. Harold Neyman is attempting to bestow hearing upon a woman named Pearl Franklin, who has been deaf since birth, using “past-life regression hypnotherapy’; he reasons that since Pearl is deaf not due to damage to her ears but due to a defect in her brain, the hearing can be restored if she experiences a past life that is capable of hearing.

The session is where we first start to get trippy. The hair on the back of my arms stands up on end as Dr. Neyman walks her through the process, having her read his lips and hold her hand on a clock that ticks very loudly, so she can feel the vibration of it. I have a copy of the script, so I'll just transcribe it when needed:

Dr. Neyman: Pearl, you are going into a deep sleep. When you go to sleep, you will awaken in the body of one of your past lives, one that is capable of hearing. When you awaken, you will bring back the sense of hearing with you, and you will be able to enjoy the world as the rest of us do. When you awaken, you shall once again be Pearl Franklin, with the ability to know what my voice sounds like. You will be Pearl Franklin when you awaken...

After that, the sound cuts out. We go into Pearl's mindscape, and see a woman that looks like her in Victorian-era clothing, who seems to be a singer in a music hall. Even in the black-and-white film, you can see she's very pale. She's singing on stage, but again, it's inaudible... except for a droning sound in the background, like hearing a jet fly overhead when you're half a mile underwater. It's not music, it can't be; the effects of it actually start to make me feel nauseous after about a minute.

Then, the singer collapses, and sound returns. The audience is heard murmuring in confusion, and she looks straight at the camera, saying:

Singer: I shall not go into the quiet. Not like this.

Pearl awakens, startled, with her hands over her ears; the ticking clock's volume is greatly amplified for a few seconds, producing a jumpscare that's enough to get my heart going. She can not only hear, but she can speak, sing, and even has better hearing than the characters who were born with it. How she knows how to speak English when she's never spoken a word in her life is glossed over through the power of reincarnation.

But there’s a problem-- Pearl’s got something following her, which manifests in a scene at a grocer in her small Midwestern town. For years, people have been talking about Pearl behind her back, and she has literally been unable to hear it. One of these is a man named Floyd, who for years has been shooting… ‘compliments’ at her. This is taken verbatim from a copy of the script I have:

Floyd: Pearl’s a name that don’t suit her. I feel like she could be named Kitten. Let her out at night, bring her back in for some nice warm milk in the mornin’...

When Pearl overhears this, and other gems from him, rather than pretend to ignore it and play deaf, she turns on him and gives him both barrels-- or at least, I assume she does.

At this point, all audio cuts out from the film. It cuts between takes of Pearl yelling at Floyd and Floyd looking increasingly distressed. Then, it cuts between Floyd and an image of a gaping black void, while the sound of howling wind plays. Floyd falls dead of a heart attack when Pearl is finished yelling at him.

This was meant to be the first big scare of the film. Up until now, the film had basic B-Movie trappings; here, it does a 180. The whole scene is tough to sit through, even before the scare starts. Not to the degree of something like a Ruggero Deodata film, obviously, but we hear Floyd cat-calling her for over three minutes as the actress grows more and more uncomfortable. Some of the things he says aren’t even in the script; there’s one line he has about ‘buying a hot-dog cart’ that made my skin crawl. And then the void, the titular ‘Maddening Quiet’, hits.

There’s something about the lack of score, the eerie silence. At first you think the audio on your device has failed; in my case, I had to double-check the headphone jack on my computer. Then, as the tension builds in the scene, as Floyd grows more terrified and Pearl grows angrier, you feel like you’re glued to the seat. You feel like you’re standing in between a pair of passing trains, but there’s no wind, no sound; just the feeling of some vast, dangerous presence all around you.

When the Maddening Quiet actually appears, you had better be sitting down. Something about the sudden darkness, and the feeling of vastness, knocks you flat. I made the mistake of standing to check the settings on my monitor, and nearly got a sprained ankle for my trouble.

The Institute was established to study ‘forbidden’ media, but occasionally, we come across something truly supernatural, or ‘cursed’; the Kilauea Recording from last week is a good example of this. I wasn’t sure if the movie was supernatural in nature, or not, at this point.

The film continues with Floyd’s body being carried out on a stretcher. After a short scene with a useless member of the town’s police, Pearl’s boyfriend Nelson comes to pick her up from the grocery store. He’s astounded to learn that Dr. Neyman’s treatment worked, and Pearl runs into his arms, overjoyed that she can hear his voice for the first time. He makes a joke about her no longer needing to read his lips, and she gives as good as she gets, replying with:

Pearl: I could hardly read them before, with how close they were to my eyes!

The film continues with a series of vignettes after this, where Pearl adjusts to a life of hearing. She’s startled to hear a car blaring its horn in the street, has to stop to marvel at birdsong, and is fascinated by a kitten mewling at her. She makes an odd comment when Nelson drops her off outside of her house:

Pearl: Honestly, it was a lot quieter than I thought it would be.

Nelson: What do you mean?

Pearl: The sun’s so big and bright… I expected it to be louder,

This whole time, though… I get a feeling of dread. The car horn sounds like a fuse box shorting out. The birdsong feels like fingernails on a chalkboard, at the volume of a foghorn. My adrenaline spikes when Pearl pets the kitten, and my head whips over my shoulder. And I don’t know why.

I can tell the second big scare is coming when Pearl starts getting agitated at a barking dog owned by her rather nasty neighbor, Mr. Wolfe. I pause the video and take a moment to calm down, doing a bit of research on the film in the meantime.

Contrary to my expectations? It flopped on release. Critics complained of the audio cutting out at big scenes, which... It was meant to do? They said that the film is occupied entirely by a black, silent screen for five minutes around the climax (we’ll get to that in a bit) and they’re left wondering if the projectionist unspooled the film. It was only screened in a few theaters across the country, and in West Virginia, one critic said this:

The Maddening Quiet is a series of money-saving tactics barely supported by a charismatic series of actors-- I would not be surprised if the director ran out of money prior to shooting the climax, and simply cut to a black screen. Perhaps he intended to exposit the surely horrific events that happened to the townsfolk behind the screen, but was too besotted to do so.

Forrester was heartbroken by the reception. This was his first foray into cinema, after he had grown up watching Hammer Horror films. He genuinely thought he could make it, but he never filmed anything again. As for the “Dr. Ludo Neptune” who helped with the sound design... nobody of that name exists, obviously, but he felt so convinced that a horror film could be carried on sound alone, and it flopped. Why?


Back to the film. Mr. Wolfe’s dog keeps barking at her, and Wolfe himself keeps yelling. The Maddening Quiet appears once again, with the sound cutting out. Wolfe clutches his head in pain, and his dog gets down, putting its hands over his ears. Once again, there’s no sound, but the presence of a vastness is there, right by my ears.

Then, a scream breaks the silence. I wrench my headphones from the computer as I stand, startled, and the black void appears. The scene cuts back to Wolfe on the porch, a gibbering mess. Pearl runs back inside and pretends nothing is wrong.

Dr. Neyman comes to check up on her that night, and mentions that Mr. Wolfe had an episode of some form, and was rushed to the hospital. His dog is heard howling in the background, as Neyman gives Pearl an examination. The characters in the scene-- Pearl, her mother, Dr. Neyman and Nelson-- all suddenly react as if a very loud noise has been played. Nothing comes through on my end, thankfully, but Dr. Neyman has to clap his hand to his ear; when it’s pulled away, he finds blood on his palm.

Pearl complains that she feels faint and goes to lie in bed. Dr. Neyman and Pearl’s mother converse as Nelson takes her up to bed.

Dr. Neyman: That noise-- did you hear it, or did you feel it?

Mother: I’m afraid I really can’t say, doctor. I felt like… like I was standing next to a tree that was falling over.

Dr. Neyman: I need to do some more tests on her. Bring her to my office tomorrow, after Church.

Then we come to the Church scene. Pearl at first is afraid to cross into it, stunned by the volume of the organ music within. She explains that she’s used to feeling the music rather than hearing it, and it makes her feel unsteady. Nelson appears and offers to sit next to her and her mother on a pew; it’s implied that Nelson isn’t of the same denomination as them, and that his appearance here is unusual.

The dread I’ve been feeling for the last several scenes has died down, only to start back up when they start singing a hymn. Pearl stands to sing, and all eyes are on her by the time the hymn is finished; the pastor, Father Webb, stares at Pearl like she’s something straight out of hell.

Father Webb: God in heaven, what manner of beast are you?

Pearl: Not a beast, father. The treatment worked! I can hear perfectly.

Father Webb: There is no surgery that can restore your hearing and make you understand me, child. What manner of devilry was committed on you?

Pearl: Why, Dr. Neyman hypnotized me! It’s an amazing thing, maybe you should--

Father Webb: How do I know you are the same Pearl Franklin that was in here the previous Sunday, and not some foul being using her form to speak?

Mother: Now see hear[sic], Father Webb! My Pearl has been through a lot these last few days, and I shall not have you antagonizing her with your--

And then the audio cuts out again. Everyone around the church looks around, confused. There’s a shot of the organ player resting on the keys, trying to get them to work, and the pipes not producing any music. And like Pearl… I don’t hear the sound, but I feel it.

It’s like an explosion in my head; a deafening blast of nothingness that gives me a headache. For a moment, I’m convinced I’m deaf, blind, maybe even dead; I can’t even hear myself breathing. I can’t feel my arms. Then, it passes, and I’m in my seat, sweating bullets.

Before the Maddening Quiet can appear, Nelson puts his hand on Pearl’s shoulder. Her head snaps to him, and she leans into her boyfriend, crying. All around the church, people glare at her. They make themselves scarce quickly.

A lot of the film repeats this formula until the climax, so I’m going to gloss over them; at this point, I was just unplugging my headphones every time a scare came. About a day after the church Pearl makes an entire street experience the Quiet, causing someone to crash into a storefront. At another point, she’s arrested by that same useless police officer from earlier for breaking curfew with Nelson, and the Quiet causes him to sit stunned in his car, blaring his siren for what is later stated to be three hours, in the hopes that he can hear something again.

The climax takes place in Dr. Neyman’s office; Neyman has become convinced that one of Pearl’s past lives has overtaken her body, and that the Maddening Quiet is Pearl trying to communicate with people to tell them that she’s still alive. This is evidenced by the fact that Pearl, at several points, seems to forget Nelson’s name, despite them being together for several years. So, he aims to try to hypnotize her and drive out the past life possessing her.

But… the Quiet, or Pearl, doesn’t want to go back into the body. There’s a feeling I got when I watched it, that whatever the Quiet was was… happy. It wanted to be out of a body that it considered broken and useless. It had been experiencing sound outside of Pearl’s body, and knew if it was ever driven back in, it would never be able to hear music or birdsong or anything like that ever again. I knew this, but the characters… didn’t. And I have no idea how I knew it.

Dr. Neyman starts his hypnosis. By this point, I’ve taken off my headphones and unplugged them, electing to have subtitles on. But... I’m so unsettled that the five-minute black screen of nothing actually gets to me. I put the headphones back on about halfway through, because I have to know what’s happening.

There… there’s something talking in the darkness. I don’t know what it’s saying, but it’s mad. It doesn’t want to go back into Pearl. The Quiet likes being outside of Pearl. And it would rather tear apart everyone in the room before it becomes Pearl again.

When the darkness fades, all we see is Pearl, in repose. A sheet is draped over her as an inconsolable Nelson sits in the corner. A pair of feet are seen hanging through the doorway from the next room; the coat and pants match Dr. Neyman’s. Nelson gives the closing lines of the film:

Nelson: Maybe it’s better this way. Maybe, now that she’s gone… she’ll be content with the quiet.

An ominous tone plays over the speakers. I remove my headphones; my face is wet, my breath is ragged. I put my fingers to my left ear; there’s a stream of blood trickling from it. I feel like I’m having a panic attack and a migraine at the same time. After a moment I just… kind of passed out in my seat.

Supplemental:

In 1982, as part of a B-Movie Film Festival, a movie theater in western Pennsylvania screened The Maddening Quiet. I won’t name the exact theater beyond that, but it was shown, alongside classics like Them!, and The House on Haunted Hill, and dumpster fires such as The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies. It was screened in a theater of seventy people, most of whom reported being ‘uncomfortable’ during the viewing. One forty-two-year-old woman said that ‘I hadn’t been that scared at a picture since that poor woman got cut down in a shower’.

When the climax, with its five minutes of solid black nothingness, came onto the screen, people began pouring out of the theater. Barely two minutes in, the theater was empty; fearing that a fire had broken out, the manager had the whole building evacuated, spreading further panic among the crowd. In the end, there were twelve people injured in the crush, with one man needing to have a foot amputated from the sheer damage done to it.

After twenty years, Laurence Forrester’s movie had the intended effect. People were fleeing, likely due to the “Silent Scream!” gimmick. But what changed in those twenty years?

Someone in the research community-- our audio specialist ‘Squirrel’-- did some digging into the audio channels of the movie after hearing about my symptoms. Squirrel found that the audio track for the movie contained sounds that were of an inaudible frequency between 16 and 19 hertz-- something called ‘infrasound’. A few studies done into it show that it can cause fear responses in humans, trauma to the ears… it’s been attributed to be the cause of some ghost phenomena (which is... wildly untrue, but that’s a story for another time). The sound couldn’t have been properly broadcast on speakers available in 1962, but by the 1980s, the technology had caught up to the medium.

I wondered how the hell they didn’t account for this, so I did some digging; as it turns out, director Laurence Forrester is still alive, eighty-three years young. I got into contact with his granddaughter, who arranged for communication between us via email exchange. He was flattered that I enjoyed the film despite its somewhat extreme effects, and had this to say when I asked him about who on earth “Ludo Neptune” was.

“Neptune was an audio engineer out of New Jersey. Claimed to work on some parks on the boardwalks. The man could make the most beautiful music with this weird little box of his-- he called it a ‘Magnaphone’. But, like you said, we couldn’t get them to play back on anything other than his own equipment, which he provided for the preview screening he gave us. Even then, the effects on us were nowhere near as bad as they were for you, or any other audience.”

When I asked him where from New Jersey, he responded:

“He said he was from around Cape May. I tried tracking him down back in 1966, but didn't find anything; he’s most likely dead by now, and ‘Ludo Neptune’ isn’t a real name, of course it isn’t. Never found any trace of him.”

A colleague of mine has been investigating a series of anomalies in the Cape May-Wildwoods area of the Jersey Shore; I’ll have him add it to the list as soon as he’s done with his ‘arcade raid’ project.

 Beyond that, I don't have much to report. It's a relatively harmless curiosity, but the film has been out of print since 1992, and there doesn't seem to be much interest in getting a new edition of it out. That said, the film is in the public domain (there was no copyright notice on the film when it was first screened so it fell into PD automatically) and I've heard that there's a copy floating around Youtube somewhere. Seek it out, if you wish.

A Brief History of Killer Apps >>

The Kilauea Recording (2006)

 Original essay by 'Tristan Marshall', forbidden media investigator.

I’m going to splash a content warning up here: if you’re uncomfortable with reading about bad things happening to children, I wouldn’t read on. This gets rough.

Thanks to the likes of The Blair Witch Project, the genre of ‘found footage’ films was all but ubiquitous in the 2000s and early 2010s. You occasionally got a quality piece, such as The Atticus Institute, REC, Trollhunter, or Paranormal Activity, but more often than not you were left with dreck like The Devil Inside, Apollo 18, The Pyramid, and… “Trash Humpers”, a movie that doesn’t deserve proper italics. Some are mistaken for genuine, thanks to the ignorance of the audience or deceptive marketing.

And then we have genuine articles, pieces of forbidden media that are found by some unwitting passerby that document some sort of bizarre event-- or else cause harm to the viewer. You have Lassiter Hotel Footage, the Reykjavik Flare, and the so-called ‘Night March’ recorded in Central China. These have been documented by us, but we don’t feel comfortable releasing information on them at this time.

There’s always one that keeps getting away from us: the Kilauea Recording. Part of the reason I’m putting this up is a plea that somebody can maybe help us find it, because it is dangerous, and is honestly one of the few pieces we’d prefer not to preserve.

The Kilauea Recording, sometimes called the Kilauea Tape, is a thirty-one minute long video stored on a VHS-C tape. As the name might suggest, it was shot at Kilauea, the most active volcano in Hawai’i. Despite the imminent danger of lava that can literally cook you to death, it attracts thousands of tourists every year, as lava flow is largely cordoned off and what is accessible is slow and stable enough that you can be near it with relative safety. There’s probably a few thousand pictures on Instagram of people trying to roast a marshmallow on the lava there or something.

Nobody who’s part of the Institute, or the broader community, knows the full contents of the video, but the context around it is well-known. It’s known to depict an anomalous event occurring near Kilauea in Hawai’i. It was shot by the Sinclair family-- Malcolm Sinclair, along with his sister Matilda, his wife Gwen, and his eight-year-old son Brian. A fifth individual, park ranger Sarah Cameron, is seen throughout the tape, but is largely absent after 00:11:27. It was recorded in 2006 using an unknown model of Sony camcorder.

As the recording starts, we get a shot of the Sinclair family inside the visitor’s center at Kilauea, which is part of the Hawaii Volcano National Park. Matilda is shooting for the majority of what’s safe to view. A shot of the wall shows a clock reading 10:22 AM. They explain that they’re going to scatter the ashes of ‘Grandpa Harold’ in the park, with Malcolm holding up his urn somewhat somberly; this Harold was apparently a volcanologist (or, as Brian adorably puts it, a ‘volcanist’) who studied Kilauea from the 1970s to the 1990s.

Park ranger Sarah Cameron arrives and goes over safety procedures in the park; don’t stray off of marked paths, make sure you can see her at all times, don’t go within a certain distance of any lava flows you see, and if the ground starts shaking, get out of there as fast as you can.

What’s more, Cameron seems to be at least a little familiar with ‘Grandpa Harold’, as she expresses her condolences, saying that she’s more than happy to help put him at rest, and that she ‘owes him for saving her job’.

The first five minutes or so are dedicated to setting out from the visitor’s center, with Brian’s mother demanding he put his toy-- a little well-loved plush dog-- in the car. After being assured there’s water in the car so his plushie won’t get too hot, Brian reluctantly puts the dog away, and is grouchy for a good few minutes, before he gets to see how beautiful it is. Everything is lush and green, but it’s… manicured, is the best way to describe it. Everything is just a bit too orderly for it to be natural. The trail they’re taking is well-worn with trail markers and warning signs, but there’s still enough natural beauty for Brian to genuinely begin enjoying himself.

At about nine minutes, the ground shakes slightly. Cameron goes to find reception for her radio to check what’s going on, and instructs the family to stay put. Brian, being a little kid, immediately goes running off. His mother Gwen follows after, with Matilda more than content to just wait for her to get back. Then, at 00:09:43, a scream is heard, followed by a sickening crunch, and inconsolable sobbing.

Matilda and Brian’s father Malcolm find Brian at the bottom of a drop, his face contorted in pain and covered in tears. His mother’s made his way down to him, and is gingerly touching his leg, causing a shriek of pain. “It’s broken!” She yells. “Call for help!”

Cameron explains she can’t get reception on her radio, and instructs them to wait for assistance as she begins the trek back to the visitor’s center. Following 00:11:27, Cameron is not seen on the recording, until the very end. Brian’s mother begs Matilda to turn off the camera; the recording terminates.

The video picks up what seems to be several hours later; it was morning when they arrived, but the angle of the sun seems to show that it is now mid-day. The camera seems to have been turned on by accident, as none of those on tape acknowledge it being on.
Brian is at the base of the cliff still, being held by his mother, who’s helping him swallow a pain pill. He asks why ‘the lady hasn’t come back yet’, and his mother just lets out an exasperated sigh, looking outwards.

Macolm is heard cursing out a cell phone, and Matilda says to him “Don’t throw the damn thing!”. Further dialog confirms it’s been about four hours since the expedition set out. Malcolm announces he’s going to follow the path back to the visitor’s center, and as he’s searching through the bag for a spare water bottle, he asks: “Where’s the urn?”

There’s commotion as Matilda and Malcolm search through the supplies. The urn was clearly visible on film at the outset, and Matilda picks up the camcorder, presumably to check this. They continue to be ignorant of the camera being on, and an argument breaks out between Brian’s parents, with Brian beginning to cry and beg for his stuffed dog, apparently named ‘Sparky’.

Seeing no better options, they start to set out for the visitor’s center, with Gwen carrying Brian on her back, his arms wrapped around her neck. The path is easy to follow, but after five minutes, they realize they aren’t passing any signposts. They do, however, see a series of figures on the path ahead of them; they’re dark and indistinct, but appear to be wearing something bright red. Brian’s father calls out for help, and all he gets in return is a series of heads turning towards them and tilting in unison.

He approaches them, continuing to ask for help, seemingly ignorant of Matilda’s question-- “Do you smell smoke?”

Following the timestamp of 00:19:13, the recording is unwatchable. I don’t mean that the recording quality degrades or that the data is corrupted. I mean that watching the Kilauea Recording past this point has, to date, resulted in over forty deaths and at least one-hundred severe injuries. All injuries result from exposure to an unknown, extreme heat source; people who have watched for a minute after this point typically suffer from first-degree burns on their retinas. Nobody has survived watching the tape for more than three minutes after this point.

Only recently, with advances in neural networking, have we been able to isolate parts of the recording that are safe to view.

The first, from timestamp 00:20:07, is a series of six frames. These frames show the urn containing Grandpa Harold’s ashes, smashed against rocks, appearing to have been thrown from off-screen. Lava is visible in the background.

The second, timestamp 00:23:55 to 00:24:09, shows an area of dark forest, apparently somehow at night; the neural network that analyzed this video confirms that there have not been any cuts since 00:19:13. An unconscious Brian lying on the ground. His breathing his shallow, and Brian’s mother is begging the filmographer, “Don’t look at his leg, it’ll happen to you too!”

The third, timestamp 00:27:09 to 00:27:25, has the camera largely shooting the ground as the person holding it runs. Their gait is unsteady, as if they are carrying something heavy. A voice, garbled shouts, “There it is!”. The camera swings upwards, showing a tall, indistinct shape, wreathed in frames. Someone screams.

The final shots are from 00:29:03 to the end of the recording. It is morning once more. Four charred bodies are seen in the same area where Brian fell. A team of rangers come onto the scene, stopping in sheer disbelief. Sarah Cameron goes up to the smallest form, inspecting them. She shouts, “Medic!”. A ranger notices the camera and picks it up; the recording ends as we see rangers attempting to treat Brian’s burnt form, as the very act of picking up the camera somehow terminates the recording.

Supplemental:

In April of 2006, park rangers at Kilauea recovered the burnt bodies of three individuals-- Gwen Sinclair, her husband Malcolm, and his sister Matilda. The exact cause of death, beyond ‘injuries sustained from burns’, was never determined. Brian was discovered nearby, covered in third-degree burns but somehow alive. He was life-flighted to a hospital in Hilo, Hawaii where he underwent almost a year of treatment and therapy. He survived, barely.

I attempted to reach out to Brian Sinclair for an interview or even a comment; instead, I received a strongly-worded email from his lawyer. The Law Offices of Schuyler, Baumer and Walker in Omaha, Nebraska informed me that Brian Sinclair is under a conservatorship ‘owing to severe physical disabilities’. Basically, I was very politely told that there was no way in hell I was getting an interview.

I did, however, manage to get in touch with Sarah Cameron, however briefly. She no longer lives in Hawaii, and did not wish me to disclose her location, beyond the fact that the area she is in is also volcanically active.

“Brian didn’t deserve what happened to him. Nobody in his family did. I still stay in touch with him, but it’s hard, seeing his burnt face over a video call, all these years later. Skin grafts can only do so much.”

“I think I know what did this to him, and I’m trying to make sure it never happens again. There’s a way to put out the fire that burned him. I read about how to do it."

She did not elaborate beyond this. 

The camera which created the Kilauea Recording was destroyed, apparently crumbling into ash in the hands of FBI arson investigators. Inexplicably, the tape was in pristine condition, and was digitized for easier viewing. Following a fire at the FBI’s Honolulu office, both the original VHS-C tape and the digitized recording where shipped to the mainland using protocols normally reserved for radioactive material. Its intended destination was in California; however, it somehow was re-routed upon entering the country, heading for a non-existent address in New Jersey.

The data of the Kilauea Recording we have now comes from an upload put on LiveLeak in early 2011, creatively titled “WATCH THIS VIDEO TO DIE AT 19:13”. The video was pulled down by the site’s admins, but not before one of the Institute’s investigators managed to copy it. It was uploaded by the account “wiltedflowers12'', which some of you may recognize as the origin of the infamous “GUTS GUTS GUTS GUTS GUTS GUTS” shock video. What you may not know is that “GUTS X6”, as it is now known, is linked to twenty unsolved murders across the south-western United States.

The Kilauea Recording’s properties persist on copies, as is already evident. And someone is copying it, and attempting to distribute it. Since 2006, forty-seven people have died as a result of exposure to footage present on the Kilauea Recording after 00:19:13; the vast majority of them have been in film processing labs that have obtained copies of the Kilauea Recording meant to be digitized. There’s seemingly no motive behind these attacks, nor any pattern.

The most recent attack was in June of 2021. It destroyed a film processing lab in New York City, where a copy of the tape was sent, along with a request for digitization. The tape itself was pristine, and wisely not watched by NYPD Arson investigators.

Current estimates are that there are at least thirty extant copies of the Kilauea Recording, not counting any online uploads. If you have any information about the Kilauea Recording, please reach out to us. That’s what this blog is for.

Money for Nothing (1999)

<< Mission Statement 

Original essay by ‘Tristan Marshall’, Visual Media Investigator

In 2001, the first-ever episode of Fear Factor aired. While its former host is notorious nowadays for reasons entirely unrelated to the show, it was the epitome of late 90's and early 2000's 'gross-out' media, and I do not mean that as a compliment. From more mundane stunts such as parkour to downright disgusting items such as forcing contestants to eat roadkill, Fear Factor wanted to define a generation of stunt-based game shows and, thankfully, did not manage to do that. But it wasn't the first game show to subject contestants to cruel and unusual punishment; it has a very obscure precursor, in the form of Money for Nothing.

Money for Nothing was a stunt-based game show filmed in 1999; however, in the middle of filming the fourth of five episodes for its original order, the host (a fairly prominent actress at the time) walked off the set, threatening to terminate her contract with the network.

Officially, all recordings were either destroyed or placed into evidence. Despite this, I have seen part of the first episode, the majority of the second, a series of stills from the third, and the final shots of the fourth episode that caused [Host] to walk off the set.

Up until November of 2021, the fifth and final episode was thought to be completely lost.

Money for Nothing could be summed up with its tagline: “Do you have what it takes… to do NOTHING?”. It was the ‘Quiet Game’ writ large: how long can you go without doing or saying anything, while everything goes wrong around you?

The set of Money for Nothing was a bizarre hybrid of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? with its moody lighting, darkness, and amphitheater-like setup, and Double Dare, featuring several areas of modular flooring which could be used to set up the various stunts, with over 5000 square feet of usable space.

The stunts were fairly out there, as well. For instance: Episode 1 featured the segment ‘Stopping Cart’, where the contestants sat in the basket of shopping carts and rolled down a ramp that gradually got steeper, until it ended in a pile of padded material. One of the contestants bailed from their cart less than halfway down the slope and lost. This was called a “Chicken Challenge”.

Other than Chicken Challenges, we had what was meant to be the main draw of the show, the “Skin-crawling Challenges”. Contestants were expected to sit perfectly still and make as little noise as possible while in very unpleasant situations, a formula that would later be copied by Fear Factor. Episode 2 featured three different Skin-crawling Challenges: ‘Hammock Panic’ had a contestant laying in a hammock trying to stay as still as possible in the middle of a wind tunnel. ‘Oh, Honey!’ had [Host] drizzle honey on the contestant while the sound of buzzing filled the set. The final round had ‘Arach your Brain’, where contestants had their heads placed in a box full of wolf spiders (terrifying, but harmless to humans) while having to answer trivia questions.

I have three stills from the third episode. When I saw the first one, there was so much smoke, I thought the set was on fire. Upon further inspection, I saw three contestants sitting in lawn chairs, trying to casually read through magazines, while [Host], wearing a gas mask, egged them on. The second still was straight out of The Wicker Man, with two contestants hanging upside-down from wooden scaffolding, laughing from the headrush.

The last still from Episode 3 was likely not intended for broadcast. It shows a pair of crewmembers arguing, covered in white foam. Medics are attending a stretcher in the background. Nothing so far would warrant the destruction of the footage. I studied Money for Nothing on and off for three years, but never got any farther than Episode 3.

The Institute has partial footage of Episode 4, but it was missing the camera angle that showed [Host] cussing out the producer. I had incomplete data.

That is, until March of 2021, when I paid a visit to Mr. Renard.

***

In my line of work, sometimes we have to rely more on B&Es than Ph.Ds. Sometimes you’ll get lucky and find something on eBay or at an estate sale, where you can essentially scoop it up and research it at will; this wasn’t one of those cases.

There were three cameras that captured the last moments of [Host]’s tenure on Money for Nothing. The Institute had two of the recordings. The third was owned by a ‘Mr. Renard’, a superfan of [Host] in Iowa, who refused to part with it for any reason. Mr. Renard ran a fangroup for her on UseNet back in the day, named his cat after her most well-known character…and he has a restraining order from her framed on the wall in his ‘office’. I drove 400 miles, and he laughed in my face when I asked if I could buy the tape off of him.

Plan B was breaking into the house and copying the tape with Institute equipment frankensteined out of a few old laptops and a VHS player. It made converting VHS digital-- a process which normally took an entire room’s worth of equipment-- into a portable affair. All I needed was ten minutes.

So, when he left for work, I waited half an hour, vaulted the fence, and picked the lock. From there, I headed to his office on the second floor. In addition to the restraining order, he had posters, action figures, Photos of a Hustler shoot [Host] did, and a signed photograph of the two of them; [Host] looks like she wants to scream. He wasn’t cliche enough to have a shrine; most of it was on a single bookshelf.

Sandwiched between several volumes of TV shows [Host] had been in was a single black plastic tape case, with the words ‘$.F.N. 1999 Last Appearance'' written on a label.

First problem: the case it was in was too small for VHS. It was Betamax. Betamax-to-Digital conversion required highly specialized and bulky equipment-- equipment we had, but I was going to have to steal the tape.

Second problem: the case caught on something and clicked as I tried to pull it off the shelf, and wouldn’t budge. From the way it jiggled, I could tell that there was a cable tied to the case connected to some mechanism behind the bookshelf I couldn’t see. It was booby-trapped, and considering that I didn't see a Betmax player in the house, I realized he set this up specifically to get someone trying to go after the tape.

I kept the case still on the shelf, took out a box cutter, and began sawing through the case. It was made of cheap, but solid, plastic and was more likely to shatter than gouge, leaving behind shards. When I’d asked after the tape, I’d give Mr. Renard a false name, and I was wearing gloves as I broke in. If he didn’t find any evidence I had been here for at least a week, I could safely (and this is the technical term) skidaddle across state lines.

After five minutes, I got through the seam linking the front cover of the tape and the spine. I dug my fingers into the sharp plastic, peeled it off-- and was met by a strange sight. The tape was in there, but immediately in front of it was a plastic bag filled with some sort of liquid. There was a bare wire inside of the liquid, a battery on the inside of the front cover, and I could smell gasoline-- the trap was meant to destroy the tape. But why?

A car pulled up outside-- Mr. Renard was back, six hours early. The tripwire must have been some kind of alarm system, as well. I pulled aside the firebomb, said a prayer, and grabbed the tape. A door downstairs slammed open, and I heard him sprinting towards me.

I toppled the bookshelf in front of the door, and dashed to the window. I was on the second floor, but outside of it was a bare trellis that made for a good ladder.

The door burst open when I was halfway down the ladder, despite the bookshelf in front of it. I thought for sure that he was going to come to the window and start either throwing things down at me or shooting at me, but instead I heard him start to weep, saying that something was ‘ruined’ and that he could ‘never fix it’.

I ran for my car three blocks away. I didn’t see any cops until I was at a diner two miles away, on Telegram with my colleague who runs the Betamax-to-Digital setup.

***

It took until November for the digitization to be complete, which was for the better, honestly; less than a week after it was done, another colleague of mine got me into contact with one of the producers of I. While he’s technically under an NDA, he’s breaking it for the sole reason that “You’re a bunch of nutjobs and nobody would believe you anyway.” 

 

Harsh, but ultimately true.

The producer, [Riley], talked to me over a Zoom call from L.A. Regarding the foam-filled photograph from Episode 3, he told me: “The challenge called for the contestant to hold a lit candle on their head. They sneezed, but… they lived.”

“So the white stuff is foam? From an extinguisher?”

“Exactly.”

“There’s a lot for it for someone setting themselves on fire.”

“They didn’t just set themselves on fire.”

I presented him with what I had of Episode 4-- he asked how I got it, as the Network had lost the recording some time in 2002. He didn’t judge when I told him I broke into someone’s house.

“Gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet.” [Riley] chuckled. “I like your gumption, kid. Better than I like this. Let’s see if it’s as fucked as I remember.”

Episode 4 is… uncomfortable to sit through. Thanks to the tape I procured from Mr. Renard, what we have of Episode 4 consists of fifteen minutes of footage: three of [Host], talking with the crew prior to the incident, seven with her actually presenting the stunt, and five minutes of the aftermath.

The stunt that caused [Host] to walk off the show was called ‘Raindrops on Noses’. The contestants were strapped into a set of reclining armchairs (It was the only stunt on the show that used restraints), and above their heads, a prop in the shape of a large rain cloud would drip water onto their faces. The chairs had buttons on them that would release the restraints and light up a sign indicating they forfeited.

The first three minutes of the tape consist of [Host] having a conversation with one of the producers; it’s indistinct, and the words ‘disgruntled employee’ and ‘call security’ can be made out. [Host] doesn’t want to be here; she’s rubbing her hands together when she clearly just wants to wipe all of her makeup onto her shirt and start screaming. I’ve seen it dozens of times; when people don’t think the cameras are rolling, they become balls of stress. Part of me thinks that they were trying to record a blooper reel, since she drops her American accent at one point and says something along the lines of ‘buncha horseshite’.

Then, the lights come back up. There are cheers from the audience as the host escorts the two contestants, [Carter] and [Etta], to the chairs, where she explains the mechanics of the challenge. Then, when she’s sure the contestants are in the positions, she says “Are you ready to Earn… MONEY FOR NOTHING?”. The audience is prompted to cheer as the challenge starts.

There’s a lot of droning, moody music here. I think that it’s just to cover up the snoring of the audience.

Riley asked me to pause so he could give some testimony. “The show was bullshit. Nobody wanted to watch people just sit around and do nothing. The shopping cart ride was an example of a good stunt-- people were expected to not bail out, kind of a weird expression of machismo. But this rain challenge? We were having people sit and watch contestants get wet for three to six minutes.” He rubbed his face. “One of the production assistants, he had an idea-- make the droplets fall randomly. Apparently it drives people crazy.”

I squinted. “Isn’t that a form of torture?”

“I didn’t know that until later but… yeah.”

Since this episode was never aired, all the sound here is unedited; the video was cobbled together by my friend from the three different tapes. Even with the moody music in the background, even with the grand, sweeping camera motions, the show is mind-numbing to sit through. [Riley] was right, this show shouldn’t have been made.

The challenge should have ended quickly-- [Carter] starts tapping at his release button while the [Host] is in the middle of commentating and cheering them on. His restraints don’t open, and the alarm to show that he’s forfeited doesn’t light up. He keeps pressing it, and [Host] doesn’t seem to notice.

[Etta] takes a bit longer to crack; at the five-minute mark, she presses her button, and it works. As [Host] gets up to thank her for playing and congratulate [Carter], she notices something is wrong with him. The camera closest to him zooms in on his hand. The plastic button has shattered, and there are several cuts on his hand from him desperately trying to press down on the release. He’s clearly sobbing and writhing in his restraints, and I can see him mouthing ‘please oh god, please, please.’. Smoke is coming off of his forehead. All but one camera turns off.

The only camera to remain on is positioned where [Host] would be sitting. [Etta] is pulled out of her chair and taken off-stage. Someone in the audience asks if they should call 9-1-1. The host’s microphone picks up [Carter]’s sobbing. A crew member resorts to breaking the raincloud prop off to stop the flow of water.

[Carter] is cut free of his restraints and laid on the ground, where he curls into a ball. [Host] goes off to the side, right in front of the only active camera, where she has an argument with a producer.

Host: What the fuck was that?!

Producer: Look, we figured this stunt would bring a bit more excitement to--

Host: Excitement? If people want excitement, they can watch me poke through someone’s guts on Sunday night. What just happened here is fucking torture! The gas was bad enough, but this?!

Producer: It was an accident! We’ll scrap this episode, but they signed waivers--

Host: Fuck you. I’m calling my agent. Anyone who wants me to stay here can kiss--

At this point, the recording ends.

 ***

My first question was “What’s this about gas?”

[Riley] shook his head. “The guy in the chair was part of a stunt earlier in the program where he sat in a room full of smoke-- just a fog machine, really. He had some residue on him, but… I’ve never seen it react like that with water.”

“And… it was water in there?”

“Maybe. The cloud prop vanished before we got a good look at it.”

It’s here that I started asking about Episode 5.

“So, after [Host] walked off the set… we still had a contract with the network to fulfill. They asked for five episodes, and if their Queen of the Small Screen wanted off the show, they weren't going to say ‘no’.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “So, I made a few phone calls. Ever hear of [Sitcom], from the 80’s?”

“Yeah.” [Sitcom] isn’t the actual title, obviously, and the only reason I knew about it was because someone in the Institute had investigated it.

“We managed to get the mom from that show, [Actress]. She was a no-name by ‘99. She got a gig, and we got a new host.” He chewed his lip. “It’ll be easier to show you what happened.”

My eyes boggled. “You have footage?”

“Kinda. It’s only one angle of the set, and a wide one at that. But… you get to see most of it." He asked for my email.

The last recording of Money for Nothing is seven minutes long. It begins with the contestant being placed into a clear, plexiglass box. He stands completely still as [Actress] walks around him; I can make out the words ‘little furry friends’ and ‘maybe you’ll come out the big cheese!’. Then, she looks out at the audience, and says “Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the [inaudible]ack!!”

The floor around the man opens up, and a swarm of what I assume are brown rats comes flowing out, gathering around his feet. Credit where it’s due, he stands completely still-- for a while, anyway. Once they start clawing at his clothing, he gets shaky, and by the time one climbs onto his chest, he faints.

A tone starts to play, very high-pitched. At this point, [Riley] chimed in.“Get to the rats?”

“Yeah. What’s that sound?”

“It was meant to be a rodent deterrent. Something to make them go back below the stage once the stunt was done. Just… keep watching.”

The tone plays again, but the rats remain in the box, crawling over the body of the fallen man. [Actress] is looking at the producers in confusion, and gets up to approach the box. She recoils as the tone sounds again, and I see it-- the rats are swarming over where the man fell. I know where this is going.

Staff evacuates the panicking audience.[Actress] tries opening up the box, but is stopped by someone on the set-- they get into a fight, with her gesticulating at the swarm of rats. The bottom of the box begins to fill with blood. Someone comes over with a fire extinguisher to try to break open the glass; [Actress] tries to stop them, but it’s too late.

The box doesn’t shatter-- it tips over, apparently poorly secured to the floor. Rats and blood flow out from beneath the box as it falls over, and everyone who hasn’t already evacuated the set does so. The rats abandon a bloody mass that I’m thankful I don’t get to see clearly-- there doesn’t seem to be much skin left, and barely any muscle. All there is are bloody bones covered in the barest fibers of flesh.

“Fucking god.” I swallowed.

“It gets worse. Keep watching.”

Two minutes after everyone leaves. a figure emerges from the audience section, dropping down opposite the camera. They’re hard to make out, even though the entire set is lit from below; they don’t seem to have any distinct features, barring what seems to be a white T-Shirt with what looks like a broad “V” on it.

Then, the lights go out entirely, leaving the set in darkness.

“What the hell?”

“Rat chewed through a power cable.”

Footsteps approach the camera. The emergency lights show a shadowy form obscuring the lens. They wheel it over to what I assume is the center of the room, and aim the camera downwards. This whole time, I’m expecting his face to pop into frame, but instead I hear footsteps walking away.

I check the timestamp. A minute is left in the recording.

When they’re scavenging a corpse, animals normally go for the softest parts of the body first-- the eyes, the lips, the ears. So, I can’t explain why the head of the contestant that the rats had eaten was untouched. I can’t explain why his eyes seemed to open in response to the flashlights. And I hope to god that it wasn’t his voice calling for help before the recording ended.

***

This wasn’t the first time I’d seen someone die on film, but you don’t really get desensitized to it. I felt ill, but this was valuable data that the Institute needed.

After a moment, I asked, “What the fuck was that?”

“That’s what the LAPD has been trying to figure out for over twenty years.” [Riley] lit a cigarette. “We’re fairly confident someone sabotaged the production, between the incident with the Raindrops stunt, and this one, which… god, I think they called it ‘Rat Pack’.” He shakes his head. “We got those rats from the same place that supplied productions like Game of Thrones. They should have been completely docile, but they went berserk when they heard the tone. I can't explain it." He blew on the cigarette and sighed. "Production was scrapped, tapes were burned, and any props that weren’t essential to the investigation were mothballed or destroyed. That footage you saw is supposed to exist only in evidence lockup, and nowhere else.”

“How’d you get it?”

“...it’s Hollywood. Do the math.”

I saved the video, and I deleted the email. “Anything else weird happen?”

“Surge of crank calls made to [Crime Show] right after this happened. Beyond that, nothing.”
“What about at other studios?”

“Wouldn’t know.” He blows on the cigarette. “Would you?”

I frowned. “I’ll have to look into it. Now, how much do I owe y--”

He shook his head. “Kid, I’m not in it for the money. I just… needed to get this off my chest.” He paused.“There is one thing.”

“What?”

“You do this all the time, basically? Look up creepy TV shows?”

“Basically.”

“If you ever find anything related to a show or movie that involves an actress named ‘Zelda Plunick’, you call me.”

With that, he hung up.

Supplemental:

The deaths and injuries caused by Money for Nothing have been swept under the rug. [Carter], the contestant from Episode 4, declined a request for an interview, as did all other living contestants I could find.

The video of Episode 5 has been analyzed by some other people in my community. We’ve determined that the figure is tall, but not anomalously so; maybe 6’4”, and is likely male. Other than that, it’s indistinct.

[Riley] did technically break an NDA on this, but he’s wealthy enough to settle out-of-court. I’ve heard nothing about a lawsuit, so I’m assuming he’s going to be okay.

I normally keep this kind of analysis and history within our institute. But something happened a few days back that got me spooked enough that I decided to post this, and other items, out into the broader world.

The USB drive I had the video stored on went missing around the start of July. I’d uploaded it to the cloud and there was nothing else important on it, so I didn’t really need to keep it. A few days after it went missing, however, I saw something… disconcerting on my home security system, or what was left of it.

A man came up to my front porch. It was the middle of the night, and my porchlight was out, so I didn't get a good look at him. What I did see was the notecards he held up on front of the camera.

"We live in your screens."

"We will overtake your dreams."

"What was ours will be again."

He dropped the notecards, and destroyed the camera with... something. But before it was smashed, I could clearly make out an image of a television set on his shirt, showing a test pattern; on top of the television were a pair of rabbit-ear antennas, which, when viewed from the right angle, looks like a very wide letter "V".

The Kilauea Recording (2006) >>

Mission Statement

On January 15th, 1975, a young girl in Milwaukee discovered a deck of cards hidden inside an antique chest of drawers her parents brought home. Included with this deck was a set of instructions for playing a game known as Calliope. She invited four of her friends to play the game, thinking it was simply a variation on Poker. By the morning of January 20th, the girl was the only survivor.

In May of 1943, a Japanese artist was commissioned to paint scenes from across the island of Kyūshū. One night, the artist awoke to find himself having painted a landscape depicting a city in flames, with bizarre shadows that resemble people covering the walls. He recognizes it as Nagasaki, and vows to never visit the city again.

In October of 1998, an NBC affiliate in Maine had their signal interrupted during a broadcast of Days of Our Lives. This new broadcast depicted an empty street in an unknown metropolitan area. Morse code is played over this transmission, which has since been translated as “Y2K38 NOACH CANNOT SAVE YOU”. The camera shook before the broadcast ended as a gargantuan shadowy form descended onto the street.

In 1603, the first and only known performance of The Rapturous Revival of the Crosse occurred in Southern London. Written by a Catholic playwright, the performance was interrupted by a Protestant mob storming the playhouse. The mob attempted to murder the entire theater company, but found their assaults-- everything from throwing tomatoes and boots to firing pistols to running onto the stage and stabbing the actors-- were completely ignored by the performers. When the play concluded, every member of the theater company simply vanished, leaving bloody, ragged costumes behind.

These are just a few examples of what we have dedicated our lives to studying. For every claim of a haunted Nintendo cartridge, or an alleged snuff film disguised as a kid’s show, or a mundane Youtube video created by a malefactor trying to game the ever-elusive algorithm, there are a dozen pieces of media like this-- lost to history, locked away, hidden from public view purposefully, until we uncover and study them.

The Institute for the Study of Forbidden Media catalogs these items and phenomena because, quite simply, nobody else is willing to take them seriously. These works are aberrant to reality as we know it, and we believe that educating ourselves and others about them, no matter the risk, is the best way to defend humanity against whoever, or whatever, is responsible for these items.

This blog will collect essays, recountings, summaries, and personal testimonies regarding pieces of media studied by members of the Institute from 2021 onward. Some entries have previously been posted on certain internet forums in an attempt to boost awareness of the forbidden media phenomenon, and have been re-edited for the sake of better readability and flow. 

For legal reasons, certain names and details regarding the persons and corporate entities involved in the creation of forbidden media, as well as the names of the individuals writing these summaries, have been altered or expunged.

 

Money for Nothing (1999)