Launching programs repeatedly disables them

[Doogster]

I'm on Slackware 12, and I've configured rxvt-unicode using the
default options (no configure flags).

I've found that launching interactive text-based apps repeatedly from
inside rxvt-unicode causes them to stop working after just a few
repetitions.

To duplicate:

Launch vim and exit out of it;
Launch links and exit out of it;
Launch vim and exit out of it;
Launch links and exit out of it;

After repeating the above a few times (around 7 each for vim and
links), either vim or links always stops working. You would type the
work "links", and you just see the cursor go to the next line, with no
links interface starting, and then all you can do is ctrl-c out. Or
you would start vim and it would go to a blank screen that doesn't
respond to input.

This has happened with "su" and "mc" as well.

I've tried both rxvt-unicode 8.3. I've also tried a checkout from CVS
(todays's). I got this problem both times. I don't see this problem
when I use xterm, only when I use rxvt-unicode.