TOURIST TRAP 1979
I’m gearing up to plunge even deeper into Tourist Trap at The Last Drive In, where the screen flickers like a portal to a desert dreamland warped by psychokinetic nightmares and lifeless mannequins being orchestrated by a genially macabre puppet master. This film, the maddening, moody masterpiece that closes out the 70s horror era with a whisper and a scream, defies tidy logic like a carnival mirror stretching reality into uncanny forms. It’s not about sense or narrative neatness; it’s about atmosphere thick enough to suffocate, a queer-voiced Slausen whose chilling calm unsettles like a velvet glove hiding a razor claw, and the sick, gruesome ballet of turning flesh into painted plaster toys.
Tourist Trap haunts the folds of your brain; it hasn’t ceased to do that to me, a creepy little gem that sings its own weird lullaby of terror and dark sadness, all wrapped up in that dusty roadside museum come to twisted life. I want to tinker further with Tourist Trap like one of Slausen’s mechanical automata, to wind up the gears and cogs of this sinister museum, pulling at the hidden mechanisms beneath its creepy facade and pry open the clockwork heart of this mannequin menagerie, unravel the twisted strings that animate its horrors and sinister workings behind the painted smiles. I’ll pull on the levers and loosen the screws of this haunted automaton house, to reveal the dark machinery driving its malevolence, in order to celebrate its unapologetic weirdness, and excavate all the strange emotions it stirs in genre fans like me. Because here’s the thing: it doesn’t just freak you out—it lingers, unsettles, beguiles, and insists on being reckoned with. And honestly, that kind of horror, with its blend of eerie, odd, and outright creepiness, is too deliciously rare to ignore. What can I say, I love this movie.
Director David Schmoeller was startled when the film received an MPAA PG rating despite its disturbing subject matter and what he perceived as graphic violence. Schmoeller stated in an interview with TerrorTrap.com that he felt the film would have been more commercially successful had it received an R rating.
Tourist Trap (1979) is an odd, deliciously macabre gem of late-70s horror cinema that has quietly carved its own niche amid the slasher boom overshadowed by the likes of Halloween and Friday the 13th. Directed by David Schmoeller (Puppet Master 1989) in his debut feature, (This is a remake of director Schmoeller’s equally terrifying 1976 thesis short film The Spider Will Kill You 1976). That story is about a blind man living in an apartment full of life-like mannequins. Tourist Trap blends eerie supernatural elements with slasher tropes to create a darkly hypnotic atmosphere that’s as unsettling as it is compelling.
Set against the desolate stretch of the American desert, Tourist Trap drops a group of unsuspecting friends into the decaying roadside curiosity museum of the enigmatic Mr. Slausen, portrayed by Chuck Connors. Slausen is steeped in a hidden bitterness and grief over his wife’s death, and his museum filled with lifelike figures is a haunting mausoleum of his fractured psyche. His mannequins and automata don’t just stand frozen in time; they move with a sinister life of their own, thanks to the psychokinetic powers perhaps inherited from his brother, or is he the one with the power? It’s hard to know, a twist that elevates the film beyond mere slasher fare.
In his book “Danse Macabre”, Stephen King praised the film, referring to it as a “sleeper” and a “gem”. King considers this movie to be one of the scariest he’s ever seen. He enjoyed the film’s frightful opening scene, the special effects, and he said that the murder scenes have a “creepy, ghostly” quality to them. However, he said that Chuck Conners was “not very effective as the villain.” He said Conners was “game, he’s simply miscast.” Maybe Jack Palance, who was the original choice for Slausen, and who was already famous for having a simmering hyperintense quality as an actor, would have been a better choice for the villain than Conners, who is more or less playing another variation on the square jawed cowboy type character he played in The Rifleman. Most horror fans however agree with King that in spite of all of this, the film works very well.
Mr. Slausen’s backstory is undefined, deliberately murky, possibly tied to a tragic betrayal and murder that the film never fully spells out in a straightforward way. With the vaguest of suggestions, the story drops just the faintest, almost whispered hints that his beautiful wife may have been unfaithful—with the brother, no less—though it leaves the truth tantalizingly ambiguous.
Somewhere in that haze of suspicion and heartbreak, Slausen’s fragile mind seems to have shattered, possibly amplified by his eerie telekinetic powers, and in a devastating psychotic break, he likely killed them both, his wife and his brother, only to be driven mad by crushing remorse.
That violent, almost mythic past clings to the film’s atmosphere like dust in sunbeams, made even more haunting by the lifelike mannequins that become twisted, silent memorials to his shattered world. Slausen’s wife, immortalized as an automaton, even shares a chilling scene where he dances with her figure, a poignant yet unsettling ballet of grief and madness that perfectly captures the film’s eerie heart.
Slausen takes on the persona tied to his dead brother as a way to channel guilt and manifest a darker side, not unlike Norman Bates’ adopting his mother’s identity. Slausen dons a doll-like mask molded from a creepy human face and invokes the name “Davey,” his late brother, to separate his murderous alter ego from his own, underlying his multiple personality disorder and fractured psyche. Though the masked killer was called Davey, the production crew had since dubbed him “Plasterface.” This is obviously a spoof on Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s “Leatherface.”
Davey: [deep, raspy voice] We’re going to have a party!
Davey: You’re so pretty.
Davey: My brother always makes me wear this stupid mask. Do you know why? Because I’m prettier than him.
As a matter of face, invoking Norman — Slausen’s line, “Once they moved the highway, I’m afraid we lost most of our business,” is lifted directly from the film, Psycho (1960). In that film, Norman Bates says this to Marion near the beginning.
The opening scene of Tourist Trap (1979) introduces Woody (Keith McDermott) and his girlfriend Eileen (Robin Sherwood) stranded on a rural road after getting a flat tire. Woody ventures off to find a nearby gas station, which appears deserted. Inside, he faces the wrath of several mannequins that suddenly come to life with sinister laughter, and an unseen force traps him. Objects fly at him violently, culminating in Woody being impaled silently by a metal pipe; he’s done in with unsettling calm.
Tourist Trap is aided immensely by Nicholas von Sternberg’s (Dolemite 1975 blaxploitation crime comedy directed by D’Urville Martin) eerie cinematography. His wide-angle shots capture the vast, isolating desert, contrasting with tighter, claustrophobic interior shots that give the museum an uncanny, almost surreal feel, like a dreamscape teetering on the edge of nightmare.
The film then shifts to the rest of the group of friends, which includes Eileen, Becky (Tanya Roberts), Jerry (Jon Van Ness), and Molly (Jocyln Jones)—traveling in a separate vehicle. When they arrive at the spot where Woody disappeared, they discover Slausen’s Lost Oasis, a rundown roadside museum and tourist trap. Their vehicle mysteriously breaks down, and the proprietor, Mr. Slausen, appears as an odd but polite man who has a distinct, quietly menacing presence. He offers to help and insists on taking them back to his ‘weird’ off-the-beaten-path place for tools, introducing them to the bizarre and animatronic mannequin displays.
Eileen: Mr. Slausen, can I use your phone?
Mr. Slausen: Oh sure, help yourself… but it doesn’t work. I got nobody to call.
The women stay behind in the museum while Jerry and Slausen go to repair the car. Eileen’s curiosity leads her to the nearby house, where she encounters eerie mannequins and is ultimately strangled to death by her own scarf, manipulated by an invisible force.
The story deepens its curious violence, unfolding along the edges of surreal horror. As he stalks the remaining members of the group, Mr. Slausen lashes out wearing a grotesque, doll-like mask that looks like a mold cast from a dead human face—smooth, pale, and eerily expressionless with hollow, dark eye holes that seem to swallow the light. This chilling visage transforms him into a living mannequin, blurring the line between man and the sinister figures that populate his museum.
Another unsettling effect is his attire: an old-fashioned, crocheted shawl draped over his shoulders, paired with vintage, roughly worn clothes that give the impression of a relic from another, forgotten era. As the killings occur, the mannequins animate with supernatural menace,
From the moment Molly arrives, Slausen’s gaze lingers on her, with an unsettling, almost reverent fixation. Unlike the others, she’s treated with a bizarre tenderness, as if she holds the key to a twisted salvation. His chilling calm softens when he’s near her, a subtle shift in posture, a rare softness. While his captive, he carefully tends to her, offering silent protection amid the looming menace of his sinister museum. His actions make it clear that Molly is more than just another victim; she’s the centerpiece of his new eerie obsession.
Eventually, Jerry and Becky find themselves ensnared in Slausen’s secret chamber. The walls are lined like a gallery of plaster cast faces, like ghosts trapped in clay, and a chilling little display of lost souls. It’s his macabre workshop where he carries out his grotesque craft, and humanity dissolves into lifeless artifice. Chained and helpless, they discover another captive woman, Tina, strapped to a table, as Slausen is slowly covering her face with plaster, while sadistically narrating her impending fate, creating another layer of nightmarish suffocation and helplessness.
Davey: [Covering Tina’s eyes with plaster, right before suffocating her with it] Your world is dark. You’ll never see again.
This reveals Slausen’s method of transforming his victims into “living dolls,” a gruesome and painful process where he magically blurs the lines between living person and animated mannequin. He obtains their death mask.
First, there’s this cruel little straw trick, letting his victims breathe just enough. Then, bit by bit, that air gets snatched away as the plaster hardens, sealing their faces forever in this grotesque mask of silence. It’s like watching someone become both statue and tomb, caught between life and death in this slow, agonizing freeze-frame
And it isn’t just slow, suffocating horror, it’s terrifying because it’s so intimate. He doesn’t just kill them. Gradually, the suffocation becomes torturous and inevitable as the plaster hardens like he’s sealing them inside a nightmare.
Jerry and Becky eventually succumb to Slausen’s nightmare and die in a more surreal and symbolic way in Tourist Trap. After escaping from the basement where they were captive, Becky is recaptured by Slausen and taken back to the museum. There, one of the animatronic mannequins throws a knife that fatally stabs her in the back. Jerry, meanwhile, tries to rescue Molly but is ultimately transformed into a mannequin himself and reanimated by Slausen’s telekinetic power, effectively losing his humanity and becoming part of the eerie collection.
At the climax, Molly escapes from Slausen’s immediate grasp by killing him with an axe, ending his telekinetic control over the mannequins. However, the chilling final scene rolls into motion, revealing Molly driving (Jerry’s “Jeep” is actually a Volkswagen Thing. Remember those!, a model that was not very successful in the US market.), her expression blank, almost doll-like. Her friends, mannequin versions of themselves, sitting beside her in the car, silent and unnaturally still, are grotesque shadows of life, encased in the lingering mystery of Slausen’s dark power, her expression disturbingly vacant and doll-like herself.
This ending leaves it unclear whether Molly has truly escaped, been mentally broken, or transformed into one of the living dolls herself. Multiple interpretations exist: Some believe Molly has gone insane, seeing the mannequins as living companions and driving away in a delusional state. Has she become part of the eerie collection, blurring the line between reality and nightmare? The film cuts to this eerie, frozen tableau, leaving the haunting question unanswered: Is Molly still herself, or has she too been ensnared in the silent curse of the living dolls?
The film offers no definitive explanation, embracing its surreal ambiguity that closes the film on a note as unsettling as it is unforgettable.
The production design by Robert A. Burns, a maestro whose fingerprints are all over the late-70s horror fabric (Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes), is the unsung hero, crafting sets and mannequins that oscillate between the grotesque and the mesmerizing, lending a tactile creepiness to Tourist Trap. The way the mannequins shift and move, sometimes subtly, sometimes violently, catches the eye and the imagination, creating a weird ballet of horror that transcends standard kill scenes.
And I can’t leave this unspoken; I have to shine a spotlight on one of my favorite composers by highlighting the brilliant score crafted by Pino Donaggio. His composition is a revelation, weaving an ironic circus-like melody with darker, suspenseful undertones that echo the film’s dual nature: playful yet deadly, nostalgic yet disorienting. This score doesn’t just accompany the film; it inhabits it, wrapping us up in a haunting sonic slow carnival ride that’s as memorable as the visual oddities on screen. Three years before composing this film, Pino Donaggio composed Carrie 1976 another 70s horror film about a string of telekinetic murders. And in 1973, he delivered one of the most evocative and haunting scores to Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, one that weaves melancholy and menace into piano and strings, echoing the film’s delicate dance between innocence and the heartbreak of loss.
What sets Tourist Trap apart, and what makes it so ripe for re-examination, is its unusual tenor. It doesn’t strictly adhere to slasher conventions; instead, it’s a hybrid, an atmospheric ghost story posing as a roadside horror, a film where the enemy is not just a killer but a supernatural force of grief and madness, embodied in lifeless forms turned lethal. Its tone fluctuates between modern Gothic creepiness and funhouse haze, and that unpredictability is its greatest strength. This film doesn’t just scare, it mesmerizes, subverts expectations, and invites us into a freaky, wild ride down a lonely desert highway and off the beaten path, where losing your way and falling into a trap tilts the world toward fatal gravity, where the suffocating dread gives way to chilling terror and relentless peril.
