Tourist Trap (1979)

Wonderful Movie

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

According to It Came from the 80s!: Interviews with 124 Cult Filmmakers, Tourist Trap was originally going to be directed by John Carpenter. However, co-writer J. Larry Carroll was unhappy with how much he wanted, so he nominated his writing partner David Schmoeller (Puppetmaster and the movie that led to Please Kill Mr. Kinski, Crawlspace) to direct. Along the way, they brought in Charles Band to produce and he demanded that there be telekinesis in the movie. Why? Who knows!Eileen (Robin Sherwood, Death Wish II), Woody, Becky (Tanya Roberts, The Beastmaster), Jerry and Molly are traveling crosscountry when Woody's car breaks down. He enters a deserted gas station but is soon killed by a metal pipe thrown by a mannequin that comes to life. This scene is frightening in its shuddery intensity and it's not the half of the wildness that this film is ready to attack you with.As the rest of the gang arrive, they decide to go skinny dipping - as you do. That's when they meet Mr. Salusen (Chuck Connors, TV's The Rifleman and one of only 12 athletes in the history of American professional sports to have played both Major League Baseball and in the National Basketball Association), who matter of factly chats them up while they're all nude.Soon, the tourist trap lives up to its name, with mannequins coming to life, a man with a mask chasing everyone and someone yelling, "We're having a party! Your world is dark." Yes, Tourist Trap is a veritably insane film, one that departs nearly instantly from anything approaching reality. There's talk of twin brothers, the modern world destroying old fashioned businesses and oh yeah - people being turned into wax figures.The strangest part is that Slausen is able to make the dead alive and the alive dead, sometimes within the same scene. And somehow, this film was given a PG rating. Seriously - this is one of the darkest, most depraved PG films I've seen since, well, The Baby. There's never been a movie like this one, before or since, and that's a shame. But it's also a big reason for you to watch this.

"Tourist Trap" from 1979 is one film that to me is a B list horror gem the plot is a little silly and the scenes seem far fetched yet, still for it's day it provided fears and fright for an audience. The plot revolves around a wax museum and a group of teenage kids who wander away(which was typical of late 70' and early 80's horror pictures).Set in the California desert area a group of teenage kids break down and after getting rid of car trouble they find and wonder their way to a creepy and deserted wax house called Slausen's Lost Oasis and each one by one are lured into this trap of death and a wax bath! The owner Slausen(Chuck Conners) runs an actual chamber of horrors.The picture becomes gross and crazy with flying and twisting mannequins who murder in this sordid show of fear and fright. Really this is a picture of crazy madness a B list movie that proves you never know what you will encounter and find and mostly never trust anyone!

After many of my friends recommended this to me, I figured I had to check it out, so I bought the (relatively) new Blu-Ray release, settled in for the night, and checked it out. To my surprise, Tourist Trap lives up to its hype and then some. One can see why it never became a huge mainstream success like, say, Jaws or Halloween, but it has all the makings of a cult classic.The set up is nothing spectacular. In fact, it owes a lot of its plot to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Psycho, and House of Wax (even more surprising, the 2005 remake of that film is more of a remake of Tourist Trap than the '53 film). What makes this one stand out from the then growing slasher genre is a sense of the surreal, the dreamlike, and the nightmarish. Attractive teens aren't just killed one by one by some creep in a mask. There's a lot more at play here than your average stalk 'n slash flick. By the last 20 minutes of the film, everything seems like a bizarre fever dream and hope is a thing of the past.A lot should be said for Jocelyn Jones' wonderful performance - going from kind wallflower to woman in the process of a nervous breakdown. Chuck Connors is also terrific as Mr. Slausen, the owner of the titular Tourist Trap whose motives seem to always be up in the air. And yes, that's future Charlie's Angel, Tanya Roberts, as one of the other victims.For those looking for something creepy and different, Tourist Trap delivers in spades. Perfect for a Halloween party or even for a kid's first horror film (it is rated PG after all).

In the wake of Low Budget Blockbusters like THE Texas CHAINSAW MASSACRE and HALLOWEEN, there came a crop of- in all honesty- crap. Most of what followed was of the Murder Movie variety, with usually unclad teens being hacked to death by masked assailants. I don't need to list them here; if you're a Fright Film fan, you've already suffered through most of them, anyway. There was an occasional deviation from the formula- movies like TOURIST TRAP. While not exactly the most ORIGINAL idea ever committed to film (the mask worn by "The Killer" is straight out of the original version of THE Texas CHAINSAW MASSACRE and the "Living Dolls" were done to death on THE TWILIGHT ZONE, etc.), TOURIST TRAP isn't as bad as it very well might have been: most of the shots are composed well and the outdoor scenes shot at night have that Dean Cundey look and feel to them (if I'm not mistaken, the cinematographer went on to do a decent little vampire movie, THE VAMPIRE JOURNALS). I liked it as a kid and I still think it's a decent little flick.