‘Your world is dark. You’ll never see again…’
Everything about Tourist Trap points towards it being rubbish. An inexperienced first-time director in David Schmoeller. A largely unknown cast, except for a man better known for playing pro baseball and basketball (welcome, Chuck Conners). A premise that borrows liberally from House of Wax, Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Now, having said all that, while it’s certainly never going to trouble any top 100 lists, Tourist Trap is, against all odds, a wildly entertaining and innovative cult horror classic…
A group of teenagers are driving through a secluded rural area when, shock horror, their car breaks down. Luckily, they are greeted by Mr Slausen (Conners), a kindly but eccentric roadside attraction manager. Sure, he’s got a few weird-looking mannequins that have a habit of moving things around or randomly cackling, but other than that, everything seems fine. Aside from Conners, Jocelyn Jones has the most screentime as Molly, but really, Tourist Trap is all about Conners’ performance and the excellent visual effects and production design (presided over by Robert A. Burns, who had previously worked on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes).
I went into Tourist Trap with perhaps understandably low expectations, but was then greeted with an all-timer of an opening scene. I was surprised at how innovative the practical effects were, but most of all, I couldn’t believe how genuinely frightening it was. That might seem like an odd thing to say about a horror film, but connoisseurs of low-budget horror films from the ’70s and ’80s will know that while they are often beautiful butterflies with lots of idiosyncratic strands of nonsense, they are rarely actually disturbing. This film is disturbing in its weird, surrealist, uncanny way, to the point that it clearly influenced many of the more modern horror films that have followed in its wake. With that in mind, I’m surprised this odd little film isn’t more well-known and respected. Any horror fans reading this, let’s address that. Watch it yourself and then get the word out. Tourist Trap is a minor classic.
