TOURIST TRAP (1979)

DIRECTED by David Schmoeller

SCREENPLAY by David Schmoeller & J. Larry Carroll based on The Spider Will Kill You by David Schmoeller 

STARRING - Chuck Connors as Mr Slausen, Shilar Coby as Davey Slausen,  Jocelyn Jones as Molly,  Jon Van Ness as Jerry,  Robin Sherwood as Eileen,  Tanya Roberts as Becky,  Dawn Jeffory Nelson as Tina,  Keith McDermott as Woody,  Linnea Quigley as Mannequin.

PLOT -  A group of teenagers are on holiday when thier car breaks down on a lonely highway. Looking for help they stumble upon a closed down roadside attraction - a Waxwork/puppet museum run by the strange Mr Slausen - an eccentric hillbilly curator still mourning his long dead wife.

As day turns to night, one by one the teenagers go missing until there is only one -Molly - left. Terrified for her life and pursued by a murderous madman with telekinetic powers, can Molly escape with her life and uncover the secret of the deadly tourist trap and it's ghastly array of seemingly living Waxwork dolls ?

PERFORMANCES - Chuck Connors isn't really a name that immediately springs to mind when thinking about horror movie villains, afterall why would it ? Connors was far better known for his roles in Westerns (usually playing the white hat wearing cowboy hero). Going back even further than that he was a sports star - excelling at both Baseball and Basketball before retiring from the world of sport to become an actor (he was basically the Vinnie Jones of his day).

So it's somewhat surprising to find when watching this movie that Conners as the sinister schizoid telekinetic murderer Mr Slausen, is absolutely stone cold brilliant.

When we first meet Slausen he seems a little odd, a little old fashioned, slightly lecherous towards the young girls perhaps (he particularly takes a shine to Molly) but otherwise just a lonely ageing man who misses his beloved deceased wife with all his heart. 

You're instantly fascinated by this slightly creepy but seemingly well meaning yokel, you even find yourself feeling sorry for him as he laments his lost love and the lack of trade his broken down roadside attraction receives since the newly built highway took away all his passing trade. 

It's only when he starts to talk about his insane brother - Davey - who lives in the creepy run down old house attached to the wax museum that you begin to feel that all is not as it seems with this weirdo loner.

Ah yes...Davey. An actor called Shilar Coby plays Davey...but only for about a minute in a flashback scene near the film's end. The "Davey" we see for the majority of the film turns out to be...Mr Slausen (and he'd have gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for you meddling kids). It's in his "Davey" personna that we really see the true nature of Mr Slausen, and the utter monster that he really is.

"Davey" basically spends the entire movie (until he's unmasked) chasing and killing our terrified teens - the worst thing about him is that he wears a series of doll masks to hide his true identity and they're every bit as disturbing as that sounds. The masks have various "characters" attached to them - one is a "beautiful lady", another is a "pretty blonde child" and yet another is a "handsome face" which looks like the bizarre lovechild of Elvis, Bruce Campbell and a ventriloquist's dummy.

Basically "Davey" is incredibly Leatherface-like and every bit as awesome a horror villain...oh, and did I mention he has weird telekinetic powers that can cause objects to levitate ? Naturally he uses these powers to kill - cue lots of flying knives and axes. He can also use his powers to bring dolls to life - whether Slausen controls the dolls himself or whether they're possessed by the spirits of Slausen's victims it's left up to the viewer to decide, either way it adds to the creepiness immensely. Further to that it's also implied that Slausen also has some kind of reality warping powers - if this was the X-Men, Slausen would be an Omega level mutant villain.

Connors slides effortlessly from weird sad loner to power crazed slasher villain psychopath effortlessly - why he wasn't cast as a horror villain more often on the strength of this performance alone, I'll never know.

The rest of the cast are our bunch of thirty year old "teens". They're all pretty decent to be fair, although the only one who has a lot to do is Jocelyn Jones as Molly (the others are pretty much just there to up the body count). 

You can tell that Molly is going to be the final girl as she's portrayed as the "innocent good girl", when we first seen the three girls, Molly's two friends are wearing skimpy clothes and showing off copious amounts of leg and cleavage, whereas Molly is dressed like she's going to cross the prairie in the old west with a bunch of Christian bible thumpers. Rest assured though as Molly gets increasingly hassled, threatened, attacked and menaced her clothing starts to shed. It's gratuitous and obvious but it's also quite funny as it's such a b-movie cliche.

As final girls go Molly is up there with the best of them - Jones sells the jeopardy her character is under and like the classic final girls in other movies she becomes a lot more pragmatic and less innocent as the story progresses. Good stuff.

VIOLENCE - There's plenty of telekinetic assisted slashery in this movie - knives, axes and other sharp mentally throwable objects fly through the air and impale our mortally terrified bunch of teens. 

The most disturbing death is when Slausen (in full on Davey mode) ties up a young woman and suffocates her to death by completely covering her face in what is quite possibly the quickest drying plaster of paris ever depicted onscreen.

In the end Molly gets her own back and kills Slausen with an axe...or does she ? The ending is so weird that you're not sure if it's an hallucination by Molly who has been driven insane by everything she's seen or if Slausen has survived his axeing and is now using his powers to warp reality. Unfortunately there wasn't a sequel, so we'll never know.

SFX - Some low level gore (for what is to all intents and purposes a slasher movie the level of actual blood seen onscreen is surprisingly low).

The main effects are the living dummies themselves, sometimes achieved via creepily lit photography of static dummies, other times you see just a hint of an actual person mixed in with the dummies - sometimes it's a brief glimpse of a face, sometimes it's an arm or a leg. Needless to say it's extremely effective and only adds to the unsettling nature of the film. There's always been something deeply creepy about dummies (it's that whole "Uncanny Valley" thing) and this movie has it in spades.

And if you think they're bad enough, just wait until you see this horrible, horrible bastard leap out at you...

It comes out of nowhere, jumps up and down and giggles hysterically like an absolute lunatic. GO AWAY ! WE HATE YOU !!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, and there's this thing as well.

JESUS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

RATING - This is a great little horror film - Well acted, very creepy, very atmospheric. It takes a familiar trope and gives it a unique twist. Chuck Connors is an absolute revelation.

5 menacing mannequins out of 5. DEFINITELY seek this one out, it's a genuine cult classic, you won't be sorry.

ART -