31 Days of Horror- Day 25: Tourist Trap (1979)

(dir. David Schmoeller)

Compass International Pictures

A group of friends become stranded in the desert and are forced to take refuge at mannequin museum run by the eccentric Mr. Slausen.

It’s difficult to predict what’s in store when the film’s jaunty theme plays over the opening credits. That and the film’s PG rating may not inspire much confidence. But rest assured, Tourist Trap is a nightmarish look at creativity without purpose, and the death of curiosity museums in the face of motion picture special effects. Chuck Connor’s Mr. Slausen plays welcoming, if perpetually randy, host to the group of friends, but there’s an identifiable resentment that stems from the decline of the tourism industry he founded his life on. Amidst the scenes of lurching mannequins with moving eyes, the spectral choir of girlish voices, and the ultimate question of reality, there’s an inescapable sense of western decline.

Released a year after Halloween and right before the boom of slasher film, Tourist Trap crafts its own disturbing look at evil shaped like a human being. While Schmoeller’s film doesn’t have the competent pacing or tonal control of Carpenter’s masterpiece, Tourist Trap is a stranger horror film and perhaps more likely to make your skin crawl. Stephen King praised the film as one of his favorite horror movies, noting its “spooky power.” Tourist Trap does seem to have a dreamlike power in its use of uncanny mannequins that move on their own, and a killer in a humanity-mocking mask who wants to preserve this group of stranded friends as an attraction in the museum. There are moments in the film, where the action slows down, to something that’s not quite slow motion but rather a lurching rhythm, like a puppet show. While it may lack the bloodletting of its R-rated contemporaries, Tourist Trap’s methods of horror are equally unsettling.

Scare Factor: 3/5 Tourist Trap is an eerie tour of idiosyncrasies and anachronisms, that ultimately turn what would become the tropes of the slasher genre into unexpected surrealism. Like a practical joke gone terribly wrong, Tourist Trap has a forbidden quality to it that feels dangerous in its desperation to disorient. Pair it with the previously discussed House of Wax (2005), and feel your nerves melt away.