Review #2600: Tourist Trap.
Cast:
Chuck Connors (Mr. Slausen), Shailar Coby (Davey Slausen), Jocelyn Jones (Molly), Jon Van Ness (Jerry), Robin Sherwood (Eileen), Tanya Roberts (Becky), Dawn Jeffory-Nelson (Tina), Keith McDermott (Woody), and Linnea Quigley (a Mannequin) Directed by David Schmoeller.
Review:
Because many horror films tend to be low budget, this is one genre where many first time directors can get a start. And unfortunately, many horror films are pretty shlocky. So the general impression is that horror films are mostly shlocky. But there is a real stigma about the horror film, you're right. I suppose because of the violence and the lawlessness of it. It tends to scare, even bother people. And you're absolutely right, as a result much good work in the horror genre is overlooked or dismissed...by film critics in particular and the audience in general. Their loss, huh?
I guess there really are more horror movies involving old film/TV stars getting to play it up for everyone. Louisville native David Schmoeller studied at the Universidad De Las Americas in Mexico City (for undergraduate work) and at the University of Texas at Austin. Apparently, he encountered film directors Luis Buñuel and Alejandro Jodorowsky when he was 20 years old and this influenced him to go to film school. It was during his time in Austin where he made his thesis film with "The Spider Will Kill You", which had taken inspiration from his observations of mannequins he saw at J.C. Penney's (namely the smoothed-over features by the time one saw adult mannequins) for what was apparently a short involving a blind man and a mannequin. He enlisted J. Larry Carroll, who he knew from his time at UT and wanted to use The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as their model (it should be noted that Carroll was the co-editor of Massacre) in making a feature film of it. They pitched it around to people such as Samuel Z. Arkoff, Bruce Cohn Curtis, and Charles Band, with the latter going along with it (incidentally, it was Band who proposed the telekinesis). Distribution ended up being done by Irwin Yablans and Compass International Pictures. Incidentally, despite being filmed just before Halloween [1978], Tourist Trap wasn't released until the spring of 197 (apparently, Yablans told Schmoeller of his belief that Tourist Trap was going to be a big hit, although Pino Donaggio's music score somehow soured that belief). David Ayres did the masks while a majority of the effects were done by Robert A. Burns (also someone who worked on Texas Chainsaw Massacre), specifically the mannequins and the manipulations that occur with the use of say, rotating the set (for the opening), wires, or in one instance, taping a block of wood behind someone's hair and attaching a knife with a wire to hurl at said block. Shot over 24 days, the PG-rated film (yes, really) ended up being a modest success.
Schmoeller ended up directing a handful of films over the next few years from The Seduction (1982) to the direct-to-video Puppet Master (1989); for many years, he was a film professor at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, while Carroll ended up being a regular writer on TV. Tourist Trap has plenty of familiar aspects to it (as a loving cribbing from Massacre or, well, House of Was [1953] and Psycho [1960]), but there's enough of a strange atmosphere involving a fully game Connors and a film that doesn't really aim explanation and select moments within the figures for creepy chuckles. Connors (the athlete-turned star of The Rifleman) was not the first choice for the main role, but Jack Palance and Gig Young saying no opened the door for him; he apparently wanted to try and get roles like this to be a horror veteran on the level of, say, Vincent Price. Sure, it didn't exactly work that way for him in the remainder of his career, but he proved fairly effective with what is needed here in that distinct sense of curiosity for what lurks around for an odd old soul that perhaps likes his figures a bit too much. It slashes away with laughs at the growing terror, you might say. The rest of the folks are basically wrapped up in standard stuff of being trapped in a place for a bit too long with one inevitable final girl. Nobody sticks out besides what goes with the body count (and the terror shown in dealing with encountering how the proverbial sausage is made with plaster) without going into full skin-stuff; Jones is an adequate presence to slowly go further in the unraveling of more than just tourist spots and fun. The sequence near the end with the revelation that someone being less of what they thought they were is actually neatly unsettling (it's more interesting to see it than to spoil it). As a whole, this is a movie built on familiar horrific aspects that goes the way it goes for enjoyment in the eyes and ears of the beholder, which in this case is a spooky enough film worth checking out once.
Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.
Coincidentally, this was the first movie among the handful to be shown on the July 2018 Marathon of The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs. As started at 10:58, he calls it a severely underrated movie - The Last Drive-In With Joe Bob Briggs - Tourist Trap Intro
