Tourist Trap
Review by Peter Syslo

Tourist Trap (1979) is another one of those movies that I remember seeing as a child and it has stuck with me all of these years. I think the first time that I watched it was with my sister – she used to baby-sit me and she would let me stay up a little later and watch things like this. As a child, this movie bothered me quite a bit – I thought that it was pretty creepy, mainly because it was so strange. As all of my stories seem to go, I had not seen this movie for over twenty years and then, one day, I saw the DVD for sale at a consignment shop. I greedily picked up the DVD, saw that it was in pristine shape, and handed the lady $5 in exchange for this beloved little horror treasure. The underlying point being, you never know what you are going to find when you stop at these little roadside shops – much like the young travelers in Tourist Trap.

The movie is directed and co-written by David Schmoeller who would later continue with the doll/mannequin horror genre in the Puppetmaster films. Chuck Connors (who absolutely kicks ass in this) stars as the villain/killer of the film, Mr. Slausen. The film also stars Jocelyn Jones, Jon Van Ness, Robin Scerwood, Dawn Jeffory, Keith McDermott, and Tanya Roberts, as the group of young travelers. The music in the film is composed by Pino Donaggio and I wanted to mention that because I think that the music is really essential to this movie (more on that later).

The story focuses on a group of young men and women who experience car trouble and are stuck on the roadside, somewhere in the South. They meet Mr. Slausen (Conners) who appears to be a nice (yet weird) older man and he offers to help. He brings the group back to his home, which is a roadside attraction called, “Slausen’s Lost Oasis”. His home is sort of like a wax museum, only with mannequins. People start to disappear and Slausen is discovered to be a madman with telekinetic powers, who murdered his unfaithful wife and brother. After many bizarre, yet frightening scenes involving mannequins and mannequin-like masks there is one survivor, Molly (Jones), who goes head to head with Slausen in order to escape.

Again, this is one of those movies where certain scenes stuck with me, over the years. I tell you, some of the scenes in this movie are truly unnerving and downright creepy. In one of the very first scenes, one of the young men goes into an abandoned diner to look for help and he discovers a back room with “deformed” mannequins/partial mannequins. The mannequins are all laughing and trembling in strange ways and the young man meets his demise by being impaled with a pipe that flies across the room. Believe me, it looks scarier than I am describing it; but, with really excellent visual effects and with that feeling like you don’t know exactly what is going on (like watching a David Lynch film – you are sort of mesmerized by it), the scene really is chilling. Most of the scenes are like this; the kills are not really bloody or gory, b ut they are very bizarre (which sometimes is much scarier than showing a lot of blood). In another scene, the other young man in the story is defending Molly and Slausen just goes over to him and tears his arm away from his body; the young man’s arm became a mannequin’s arm. It is exactly that perfect degree of “weirdness”, the telekinetic powers, the mannequins, and Connors’ fantastic performance that really make this movie. On a side note, Connors truly plays one of the best “psychos” of all time – in a lot of the scenes he is wearing a mask and uses a different voice (“little girl”, “little girl”). He emerges from the background ala Michael Myers and you really get the sense that he is deranged and completely dangerous (All hail Connors! The unsung slasher god!).

Last but not least, I must discuss the music. This music, I think, stands up there with some of the great soundtracks (Psycho, Halloween, Candyman, Friday the 13th, Interview with the Vampire, etc.) simply due to the fact that it is extremely effective and it matches the twisted nature of the film. The music just makes certain scenes very powerful – the music itself is very memorable and enhances the impact of the visual element. There is a beautiful melodic theme when Slausen speaks of his dead wife and that theme is continued throughout the film and developed. The main, “psychotic” theme is sort of like the theme of Vertigo, but in 6/8 time; this music is in the scene that I remember most fr om this movie. At the very end, Molly is driving away with her four friends, who are now mannequins, and that “psychotic” theme is playing – it’s the kind of thing that gets etched on your brain and this music, I feel, is responsible for 50% of that.

The only thing left to say is that I really like this film and if you get a chance to see it, do so. Yes, there is a little bit of that “campy” quality (as in a lot of 1970s horror movies), but it does not interfere with the truly bizarre and nightmarish atmosphere of the film. On that note, I think that I kind of “dig” this whole doll/mannequin horror thing and writing this review makes me want to revisit things such as Puppetmaster and Dead Silence; ...and maybe those Jack-in-the-box restaurant commercials too – they kind of “creep” me out a little.