Welcome to the Kill Count, where we tally up the victims in all our favorite horror movies.
I'm James A. Janisse and today we're looking at Tourist Trap, released in 1979.
Tourist Trap is an EARLY slasher, made before the subgenre's tropes had calcified
after endless Friday the 13th clones.
That's probably why I really like it.
It's so different from something like The Mutilator or other slashers, since none of those feature
mannequins or a supernatural killer who sounds like this...
-in a raspy robotic voice- "Because I'm handsome."
Tourist Trap was co-written and directed by David Schmoeller, who, a decade later,
would co-write and direct the first Puppet Master film.
He worked under a pair of producers pretty important to the horror genre
first, Irwin Yablans, who came up with the idea for Halloween and who was
an EP for those first 3 films; and second, that old son of a bitch, Charlie Band,
though Tourist Trap predates Full Moon and even Empire Pictures.
This was made under his first company, Charles Band Productions.
Maybe that's why this thing is so tame in terms of gore. In fact it was released with
a PG rating, which hurt its theatrical performance Who wants to see a PG-rated horror movie?
but allowed it to be played on TV in syndication.
"Because it was PG, it could play Saturday afternoon TV, and it did."
That's how a lot of young viewers managed to see
and be scarred by Tourist Trap. Because even though it's not bloody, this movie's
a little disturbing. What it lacks in gore, it makes up with a singular weirdness and
neat practical effects, even though it occasionally suffers from the standard slasher sluggishness.
Sure, the kills are PG, but it's still my job to count 'em. So let's go!
The movie begins with a dude rollin a wheel down the road, and boy is he tired!
Woody here is looking for a gas station since his car broke down a ways back, but, honestly
dude, I don't think this one's gonna have what you need.
"Can I get some service?"
Take a look around, bro, and tell me what the fuck you think?
Some noises draw him behind the counter and into a back room, where he finds something
he probably wasn't expecting: a mannequin in a bed
Woody: "Ma'am?" Mennequin: "OOHHHH HO HO HO HO HO
Oh shit, that was actually kinda scary.
Woody's locked inside the room as windows slam shut and break inward,
forcing him to try another door.
But that one's got a goblin with a plunging neckline
blocking his path, oh nooooo!
These mannequins are freakin great, honestly, all laughing at Woody as he gets his arm
caught in the door. Stuck in place, he's unable to move when a cupboard full of jugs and jars
starts to shake and fling its contents at him. I love the way this looks, and the simple
way it was accomplished - that cabinet was built on the set's ceiling, and Woody's actor
Keith McDermott is lying on the floor. The crew just had to drop bottles and cans down
around him and that made it look like things were flying at him sideways.
The sideways set was an idea from production designer Bob Burns, who also did the invaluable
art work in Texas Chainsaw Massacre - he's why the Sawyer house was so bone-filled and creepy
Tourist Trap actually shares a LOT of DNA with the classic Tobe Hooper film.
Not only did this movie's editor, Ted Nicolaou, record sound for Texas Chainsaw, this movie's co-writer Larry Caroll, was that movie's editor.
Caroll and director Schmoeller hoped that
Tourist Trap would launch their careers, like Chainsaw did Hooper's.
It... did not.
Eventually Woody's luck runs out and a hollow pipe flies over and lodges itself in his back
His death face may be a little silly here, but the kill's sound design makes up for it...
*Drip...drip... drip drip drip...*
as we realize that we're listening to Woody's blood drip
out of the pipe and onto a metal tray. Pretty damn morbid - but somehow, WAY less
disturbing than the next sound we hear.
*weird shuffling and mumbling/grunting/snorting*
..Fuck was that? Sounded like those alien voices in Brightburn
Back at his car, Woody's girlfriend Eileen gets a roadside rescue by some friends
on their way to help Patton in North Africa. They find Woody's tire near the sign for a
tourist trap called Slausen's, so that's where they head to look for him. Before they can
make it there, though, the passengers of the B McB find their jeep's no longer functioning.
And, also, its headlights are randomly exploding. That's not gonna help us beat Rommel!
As Jerry here starts to work on his vehicle, the three ladies run off and find a waterfall
oasis. Huh, wonder what they're thinking of doing. Surely not going for a swim - I mean after all
"We didn't bring our bathing suits."
Ya can't argue that.
"So...? Who needs a bathing suit?"
Oh wait yeah you can, if you wanna have a skinny dipping scene!
Yep, even though this is a PG-rated movie, it's still got Charles Band's name on it, so bring on
the suggestive skin!
The girls start having an unusually scared-looking swim, when a reason to be scared finds them
"Howdy. You kids enjoying yourselves?"
This comfortable cowboy is Mr. Slausen, and he talks real nice
and friendly as he sits there making these women feel clearly threatened. He tells them
this is part of his property, since he owns the roadside attraction with his name on it
- although business dried up a while back, when the gub'ment built a new highway
"Everyone's in such a damn hurry these days."
After finally leaving the girls to get dressed, Slausen shows up at Jerry's jeep offering
to help. To make them more comfortable, he takes them to his out-of-business junk museum
and shows them around. Mr. Slausen is an easy character to distrust, but the great thing
about Chuck Connors's performance is that you really want to believe he's a good guy.
"Hell, I was kicked out of the Navy when I was 19, kicked in the head when I was 20 and
kicked into jail when I was 21, heh, and those were just to warm me up for what life had in store for me."
Chuck Connors had a HELL of an interesting life.
His acting career saw him as the star of a long-running western
series called The Rifleman and various movies including Soylent Green and the OG Flipper,
and before all that, he was a professional athlete.
In fact he's one of only 13 people
who played in both the MLB, with the Cubs in '51, AND the NBA, with the Celtics in the late 40s.
He was also the first basketball player to ever shatter the backboard with
a shot, and he once got a hug from Leonid Brezhnev. Again, hell of an interesting life
Slausen says that all that the lifelike mannequins in his museum were made by his brother Davey,
before he left this tourist trap to make it big in the city.
Y'know, like your average hotshot mannequin maker.
He leaves with Jerry to go work on the jeep and tells the
ladies to stay put while he's gone. But Eileen doesn't trust the guy, and decides to go look
at a house she sees next door, hoping it'll have a phone she can use. The other two ladies,
Molly and Becky, stay at the museum as instructed.
Eileen gets to the neighboring house as dusk settles in and straight up walks inside after
hearing some voices.
"Okay by me, I'd just as soon..."
But who could have said that?
These folks are just dummies!
Whisper-y voice: "Eileeeeeeen..." Eileen: "Woody?"
Yo, did that SOUND like your boyfriend, Eileen?
She looks around the house, finding more mannequins than Laurie Strode keeps for target practice,
but doesn't notice when they begin to look back at her. The glass eyes moving in these
dummies was another idea from Bob Burns.
But he wasn't the only notable make-up artist
A lot of the mannequins were made by David Ayres, who had previously worked
on The Hills Have Eyes, and effects were also done by Ve Neill, who would go on to win Oscars
for her make-up work in Beetlejuice, Mrs. Doubtfire, and Ed Wood, and be a judge on
the SyFy show Face Off.
Eileen's fixin herself up in the mirror, real nice, when THIS guy shows up...
Eileen: "Woody?" *Mirror breaks*
Yeah, I don't think that's your boyfriend either, lady. This dude moves shit
with his mind like he's plastic fisherman Carrie White before he telekinetically
chokes Eileen to death with the handkerchief around her neck. Way to not leave any fingerprints,
ya creepy mutha fucka.
Slausen gets back to the museum by himself, explaining that Jerry took his truck into
town for jeep parts. He waxes nostalgic about his late wife to Final Girl Molly, who he's taken a real
liking to, before realizing that Eileen isn't there. He leaves to go look for her at the
house next door, where he walks around calling out for his brother Davey. He doesn't find
Davey, but he does find Eileen - who's now become a womannequin.
Back at the museum, Molly and Becky find an especially realistic mannequin in a lit-up shrine.
"Feels like flesh..."
Turns out this little lady looks just like Slausen's late
wife, and when he gets back, he tells them it's his own special way of keeping her memory alive.
Yeah, that's nice and all, man, but, uh, what'd she just say about it?
"Feels like flesh..."
...Whatcha doin with that mannequin, dude?
Slausen says he wasn't able to find Eileen at the house, so he's gonna go check for her
by the jeep. He leaves once again, and this time it's Becky who doesn't want to follow
his stay inside orders. Just like Eileen, she goes to the house next door, though she
takes a much more burglarly approach to enter it.
Once inside, Becky tries to find Eileen, but instead, she finds a Leatherface-looking figure sitting in a chair
Woah! What was that Mortal Kombat air teleport tackle?
Damn, this mofo's mystical as hell!
Becky has a multi-round battle with a whole bunch of mannequins, who break out into vocal
warm-ups before launching their final attack
Multiple voices: AH (ahh) AH (ahh) AH (ahh) AH
With repeated sighing moans,
the dummies fall inward and pin Becky to the floor. And lemme tell ya something, it is not a pleasant
view from down there.
The masked figure takes her into a basement where he's already got Jerry tied up, as well
as another women, named Tina, on a table - and boy does he like HER
"You're so pretty."
But Tina doesn't return a compliment...
"Why don't you like me?"
...so he goes upstairs, dejected.
Jerry realizes that this guy must be Slausen's crazy brother Davey, and Tina shares the fun
fact that he's going to kill them all.
"We're all going to die."
Thanks, Tina!
At least Davey dresses up before he commits heinous crimes - I mean ya gotta be festive
about it, you know?
"We are going to have a party! How do I look, huh? How do I look?"
You look great, guy.
Davey's idea of a party is drinking and drying - drying plaster all over Tina's face, that
is. It's a great, unsettling scene as the killer covers Tina's face with goop and narrates
how awful this whole experience must be for her
"Your world is dark.... you'll never see again."
He kills Tina by sealing up her face with this Plastec entirely, but he promises
her that she won't suffocate to death - instead, her heart will burst with fright. And that's
exactly what ends up happening, since we hear her heart beating rapidly before it suddenly
stops and she becomes still.
As Davey paints a mannequin face, he complains about his brother Slausen, who forces him
to wear these masks because he's such a hottie
"He doesn't like his wife to see me. He's afraid she'll be attracted to me."
Davey doesn't notice at first when he drops a key to Jerry's restraints,
but before the captive Jeep owner can get it, the masked man simply scoots it out of
range with his mutha fuckin MIND! Davey calls it a good trick, like spinning a starfighter around
and complains even MORE about Slausen, since his brother tells him not to use his telekinetic powers
"I shouldn't have to hide it, it feels good!"
By the way, the telekinetic stuff, which never gets explained, wasn't in the original screenplay
it was the only contribution to the script made by Charles Band, but I'm glad he
did, it adds to this movie's weirdness.
Molly, left by her lonesome, gets bored of wrapping herself in dead wife mannequin shrouds
and decides to head next door to find her friends. No friends here, Moll, just Davey
the masked killer and his amazing screaming dummy head
Dummy Head: AHHHHH
We get a standard slasher
chase scene through the woods, although this one does benefit from that screaming dummy
head and Davey calling out "little girl"
Dummy Head: Mooolllyyy!! Davey: Little girl!
Can't complain about a chase scene when it
includes something like this...
Molly gets away and winds up on a road where she flags down a truck driven by friendly
old Mr. Slausen. He admits that his brother Davey never actually left for the big city
Instead, he's a troubled man who Slausen's had to hide and protect for years
"It's not his fault he's the way he is."
He drives back to the museum to look for Davey before they call the police, and gives Molly
a gun for protection while he's gone. Good thing he did, cause here comes not-Leatherface now!
Shoot his ass, Molly! *gunshot* Hell yeah! Whatchu got to say about that, Pleatherface?
"Aww, little girl!"
Same old same old, huh? She shoots Davey again, but then he starts to
make fun of her - because the gun's been filled with blanks
"Bang, Bang, you're dead, bang, bang, you're dead!" *laughs*
Yeah, well blank this, mother blanker!
To absolutely no one's surprise, Davey is revealed to have been Mr. Slausen this whole time,
and after another midnight forest run, he captures Molly by magically appearing behind
her in the swimming hole. Get on down there now, little girl!
With all the kids captured, Slausen's
finally able to settle in for dinner with Davey - though he's not quite ready to eat
until he's lookin like Leslie Vernon
Slausen: How's that? Mannequin: Let's eat.
Slausen: That's what I said, let's eat
Man, I love this wackadoo shit - it can sometimes be legitimately funny.
"Are the crackers good?"
*head falls off* "Ohh..... I GOT to fix that." *wack-a-doo sound effects*
That wacky music you just heard was part of this movie's
eccentric score done by Pino Donaggio, the Italian musician who had composed the equally-memorable
music in Carrie. His work for Tourist Trap cost 50 thousand dollars, which was a sixth
of the entire budget. I think it's great, even though producer Irwin Yablans apparently
thought it ruined the movie.
I guess compared to Halloween score, it is a little weird.
Back in the basement, Becky perfectly executes a little kick to slide a file over to Jerry.
Damn that looked good - no wonder Tanya Roberts went on to be an Angel in the final season
of Charlie's Angels, as well a freaking Bond Girl, Stacey Sutton, in the Old Man Moore
movie A View to Kill.
And for people who don't indulge in 80s action media, you may
recognize Miz Roberts as Donna's mom Midge in That 70s Show.
Jerry uses the file to free them both and they head upstairs, but in order to escape
entirely they're gonna have to get by... uh, this. Slausen comes into the hallway to look
for them, but is temporarily fooled by their poor attempt at the mannequin challenge - AKA
the old Chopping Mall technique. Eventually he finds them, though, causing Jerry to jump
out the window like he's a Texas Chainsaw final girl. Becky also makes her way outside
and runs away, giving us our, what is this, third slasher chase scene? Just be sure you
don't fall now, Beck- ohpe, she fell. *laughing* Pretty fucking hard, too.
Becky is found by Slausen in his friendly limping old man persona, and he carries her
back to a bed in the museum. But as she comes to, so do all the mannequins there - except
for the new Woody mannequin Slausen's recently acquired. He directs his mannequins to shoot
their guns a bunch, and then they kill Becky by throwing a knife into the back of
her head. This kill was done with a pretty simple trick, with the knife sliding across
a wire and going into a wooden block hidden behind Tanya Roberts's hair. Becky slides
to the floor, deader than the ratings for her season of Charlie's Angels, and her kill
is capped off with a "m'lady" tip of the hat.
Slausen has Molly in a candelit attic where he dresses her up in his dead wife's mask
and kisses all over it.
Mwah mwah mwah mwah mwah!
As she cuddles with a dolly, he gives
her a monologue of motivation - turns out he killed his wife AND his brother Davey when
he found them having an affair.
"She and him had to die.... I got a legal right to that."
He's not a lawyer.
His uninformed explanation of the law is interrupted by Jerry, having returned to rescue Molly.
But she doesn't only want to escape Mr. Slausen, by this point she's turned *singing* cold blooded!
"Kill him Jerry."
Turns out Jerry can't kill Slausen, 'cause Jerry's been straight up mannequinized!
Aw, and look at that. Ya lost yer head, Jerry! Despite the total lack of
blood here, I LOVE the way this kill looks.
Things honestly just go buck fuckin' wild now, and the mannequins all around them blink back
and forth between being plastic and being real people. And one of the mannequins was
purportedly played by Linnea Quigley, though I couldn't even begin to tell you which one.
Life is also given to the wife mannequin Slausen swings around, meaning we can maybe add potential
necromancy to this movie's list of what-the-fuckery. All of this can't be too fun for Molly there, though.
She decides that she's had it with this roadside show, and grabs an axe to swing straight
into Slausen's neck. It lodges in deep and after a nice long death scene from Chuck Connors,
Slausen finally keels over, leaving his mannequin audience in total shock. Molly grabs her
head and screams at no one, and the movie ends with her hightailing it down the highway
in the jeep with all her dummy friends. Freeze frame!
How many Tourists got trapped in the afterlife? Let's find out and get to the numbers.
6 people died in Tourist Trap, and with 3 male and 3 female victims, we got ourselves
an evenly-divided pie chart of death. With a runtime of 85 minutes, that left us with
a kill on average every 14.17 minutes.
I'll give the GOlden Chainsaw for Coolest Kill to Tina, which may be the most bloodless
death to ever win the award. It's so haunting and sinister the way it plays out, and actor
Dawn Jeffory-Nelson says they had to film the scene 5 to 8 times. Couldn't have been
fun, since the plaster put all over her face was either mashed potatoes or whipped cream.
STICKAY!
Dull Machete for lamest kill will go to Mr. Slausen, whose telekinetic powers
couldn't save him from a quick and simple axe to the neck.
And that's it. Tourist Trap came out in 1979 and is on Shudder, if you wanna give it a watch
I recommend ya do - it's a lot of fun and, reportedly, one of Stephen King's
favorite horror movies! Speaking of Mr. King, we'll continue the Carrie franchise
on Friday, but until then I'm James A. Janisse. This has been the Kill Count.
Thanks a lot for watching this extra Kill count, that people actually voted on in a poll on Youtube.
Look out for those community posts y'all!
I wanna thank some Patron's, like
Trevor Tyers Hannibal Olmeda
Chance Glaus Littleyuzu
Major Sangheili and Patrick O'Hara
I love that over three years into having this as my job, I can still discover little gems like Tourist Trap.
Thanks everyone! Be good people.