Every horror fan worth their salt knows the “slasher rules.” They’re the unwritten laws of the genre: there’s almost always a masked or otherwise faceless killer; teenagers who drink, party, or hook up are destined to die; and the only one who makes it to the end is the so-called “Final Girl,” the resourceful young woman who survives by keeping her wits (and usually her virginity) intact.
Thanks to films like Black Christmas (1974), Halloween (1978), and Friday the 13th (1980), these oddly conservative rules became baked into the genre, shaping the slasher playbook until the mid-1990s – right around the time Matthew Lillard laid them all out for us in Scream like the world’s first know-it-all Redditor.
But before the slasher became a full-on genre, and therefore generic, things were a bit looser. You got oddities like David Schmoeller’s 1979 film Tourist Trap. Its a film that certainly possesses the conventions of a slasher – in that its core cast of young attractive people are killed off one by one – but is rooted more in the grandiose and semi-supernatural styles of earlier horror subgenres like splatter and giallo.
The setup is boilerplate enough. Five teenage-ish friends are travelling through the desolate wilderness of rural America when their respective transports break down. Whilst searching for assistance, one of their number is slain in a manner that really sells how unsettling this film is going to be with its use of uncanny objects such as mannequins.
After the requisite skinny dipper – with no actual tit on show, unfortunately, as this movie is somehow rated PG(!) – the rest of the group meet Mr Slausen (Chuck Connors, chewing every inch of scenery). He owns a roadside attraction called Slausen’s Lost Oasis, though it is clear that there is little to attract in these parts. The whole area is abandoned on account of a new major road being built…something that Slausen seems real level-headed about.
And somehow, despite watching them skinny dip with his bulging…shotgun in hand, Mr Slausen is able to persuade the group to come to his house so that he can get the tools needed to fix their vehicle. They arrive at the Oasis to find it a dimly lit and decaying museum filled with all manner of nightmarish animatronic mannequins. There’s even a life-sized version of Slausen’s deceased wife and you just know that he takes it for a spin every once in a while.
Slausen is amiable enough, in that peculiar country hick kind of way. He’s the sort of character that’s a dime a dozen in these type of films; the off-kilter but friendly owner of a rural business type, who the characters meet early in the film and who helps them in some way before being revealed to have been in on the horror all along.
True to form, Slausen offers to fix their van and warns them away from the strange, abandoned house that’s literally across the road (certainly expedient). “Davy” lives there apparently. Davy, as in Davy Crockett, is one of the mannequins that Slausen jokes that he had to remove from his shop. I guess good ol’ Davy wasn’t cool about the Alamo.
Naturally, one of the girls goes to explore said creepy abandoned house. Alone. No wonder the Seventies was the golden age of serial killers! There she finds a horde of unfinished mannequins, which seem to move by themselves, as well as Davy himself. Only he isn’t a mere mannequin, but a hulking man in a waxwork mask who looks like that “there’s too much fucking shit on me” guy from I Think You Should Leave.
Davy is quite interesting as slasher villains go. Unlike
Jason,
Michael Myers, or even
Leatherface, Davy isn’t just some force of nature that exists only to maim and kill in the most brutal of ways. He’s a lot more theatrical than that, harking back to the sort of villains that
Vincent Price would play.
Davy doesn’t just swing a blade or axe and call it a day. He commands the world around him with psychic powers, so that he can capture and torment his victims. I was a little surprised by how quickly the cast was being whittled down once the killing started, only to find he was keeping some of them alive for the real slaughter.
There’s one genuinely harrowing scene in which Davy suffocates one of his victims under plaster, and narrates the whole thing like a demented David Attenborough. It’s cruel and methodical. And in a way, it reminds me of the initial slaughterhouse style kills in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, in that it is just so workaday for the villain.
What Tourist Trap does well is the mood. It’s not an out and out bloodbath as, due to that PG rating, the gore is minimal. But the film just oozes atmosphere. Its dusty, decaying rooms cluttered with half-finished mannequins feel like nightmare Americana, and equal parts roadside kitsch and fever dream.
The mannequins themselves have so much character, moreso than most of the victims. There are some creepy designs on offer too. And they move in such uncanny ways, often accompanied by a haunting, ghostly chorus.
Of course, it is revealed that the mannequins are not actually alive and are being controlled by Davy – if that is his real name, wink wink. Still, the finale is utterly delirious and makes you question what you think you know is happening. I’m trying my best not to spoil things. Not that I think that the identity of the killer and his relationship with Slausen is particularly surprising if you have an IQ above room temperature.
But let’s just say that the final two survivors confront the unmasked Davy, only for one of them to be removed from the story in one of the most outlandish slasher movie twists alongside the surprise dong reveal in Sleepaway Camp. The other survivor then breaks down and loses all grip on reality.
The magic here is a good mix of sincerity and camp. Schmoeller doesn’t wink at the audience too much and most of the horror plays dead straight, even when Davy is barking his silly dialogue through a ridiculous wax mask. That seriousness is what makes the weirdness land. It dances on the edge of camp the way all good cult horror does.
Tourist Trap isn’t as iconic as some of the slashers I mentioned. But it’s a strange, fun little time capsule from when slashers were still being figured out. It’s messy, cheap, and wonderfully weird.
The real stars are the mannequins, and they steal every scene. Watch it once and you’ll never look at a department store dummy the same way again. And you could probably end a review of that Kim Cattrall movie in the exact same way.
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