Revenge of the Revenant Review 27: The one with mannequins instead of zombies

 

Title: Tourist Trap

What Year?: 1979

Classification: Unnatural Experiment

Rating: What The Hell??? (2/4)

 

In the course of this feature, one thing that’s been a surprise to me is that I haven’t had to take many liberties with what to count as a zombie. Even with the major “exceptions”, An American Werewolf In London, Two Evil Eyes and The Grapes of Death, the movies clearly featured either a form of the undead or something close to what has been envisioned as zombies and the zombie apocalypse. With this review, I am finally going with something that really breaks the mold, for better or worse. It’s a movie I have never seen discussed in connection with the zombie genre, yet it’s one I have had tucked in among my surprisingly compact collection of zombie movies for as long as I’ve had it, if only because it never “fit” anywhere else. And that is as good an introduction as any to Tourist Trap, a movie where people become mannequins, and mannequins come to life.

Our story begins with a group of youths travelling down forgotten backroads when one of their vehicles gets a flat tire. The others pick up their companion in a VW Thing (always the most awesome thing in any movie) and try to catch up with a young man on foot, unaware that he has already been killed by mysterious assailants. They discover a service station (I… think…) with a roadside museum of vaguely lifelike mannequins, close by the house of the odd but charming proprietor. The man talks about his late wife and his unseen brother, whom he says made the mannequins. Things take a turn for the worse when a masked figure appears who identifies himself as the brother, apparently able to control the dolls as well as various weapons and inanimate objects. One by one, the travelers are killed or captured by the attacker, who continues a cat-and-mouse game with the mannequins. But they soon learn that a fate worse than death lies ahead- to become new mannequins for the museum!

Tourist Trap was an early film by Charles Band (see Bride of Re-Animator), directed and cowritten by David Schmoeller, also later responsible for the Puppet Master series. The movie starred Chuck Connors as Mr. Slausen; a fictional cast member Shailar Coby was created to hide that he also plays the villainous “brother” Davey. Other cast included Jocelyn Jones of The Enforcer as the protagonist Molly and Tanya Roberts of Sheena and That ‘70s Show (!) as Becky. The film was made on a budget of $350,000, of which $50,000 reportedly went to Connors’ salary. The movie was originally released with a PG rating, allowing for airings on television. At least 2 cuts are known, of 85 and 90 minutes, but reportedly differ little in the level of violence and gore. The movie received further attention from a favorable mention in Stephen King’s Danse Macabre and a 2018 review from “Angry Video Game Nerd” James Rolfe. It has been released on DVD and Blu Ray under Band’s Full Moon Banner. As of mid-2021, it is available for free streaming from Tubi.

For my experiences, I first heard of this one from the AVGN/ Cinemassacre review, which impressed me enough to buy it on DVD. I watched it promptly, and didn’t get much further than noting its similarities to the Band crew’s later (and better) Dolls. After that, I set it aside for a time when I might take a closer look, and there it sat up to the time of the present review. Because my life is irony, the viewing for this ended up happening entirely by chance. I had planned to review another movie while waiting on tech support, all the way up to paying for a rental of the other title, when I discovered I couldn’t play it because of the same tech troubles. I then looked around and saw this one in a literal pile, and I rationalized that I could play this one just to settle once and for all if it really belonged here. What followed was one of my more disastrous and fragmented viewings, during which among other things a family member walked in and quit after maybe 15 minutes. Under normal circumstances, I would have bailed and set it aside, but the one thing that was very clear is that this is not a movie you can just come back to. So I’m forging ahead, and it remains to be seen just how far I’ll get.

The central reality of this film is that very little is shown (making the “’70s PG” somewhat comprehensible), and even less is explained. The upside of this is that there’s no distracting or laughable pseudoscience or occultism to account for the goings-on.  The abilities of the villain, which I will get to momentarily, are portrayed in a reasonably consistent way without him or anyone else venturing a suggestion of their source, and this is certainly an improvement on many more polished movies. The downside is that this applies equally to the plot and characters. What gets most confusing if not irritating is that the “twists” regarding the villain’s identity and motivations are easy enough to figure out that I’m not bothering about spoiler warnings. The protagonist and victims, on the other hand, are so haphazardly developed that I was repeatedly confused simply by how many of them there are and who was still free, captured or already dead and possibly transformed. At one point, the question of whether a gun is loaded comes up without being addressed in any way. This all comes across as an unintentional demonstration why clear camerawork and linear storytelling almost always work best for SF/ fantasy/ horror; it’s hard to impress viewers with your concepts if nobody can figure out what’s going on.

That brings us to the villain and the mannequins. Whether the dolls are undead or otherwise “zombified” humans hinges on several potentially ambiguous points I won’t try to explain or argue. What I find far more intriguing is that the villain closely approximates the zombie masters of Afro-Caribbean religion and myth, something we really haven’t seen outside of Chopper Chicks In Zombietown and perhaps Shanks. Most of the time, his control over the mannequins, whatever they really are, remains complete enough that one can take it as an extension of telekinetic powers that are also manifested. At times, however, the mannequins show enough autonomy, at least in the master’s mind that they are spoken to and instructed rather than directly controlled (almost in line with the legend of the Golem). Things get most interesting in the finale, when who is still human or doll becomes a story point. It’s mind-bending enough to plant a theory in my mind (particularly given a reported Twilight Zone influence) that the villain’s prey have been mannequins all along. Alas, this gets buried by confusing relationships among the characters and one more predictable revelation about the villain we didn’t need to know.

Now for the “one scene”, I’m going with one of the few scenes I felt willing to take a closer look at. At just past the hour mark (about the time the second viewer wandered in), the villain is tending to his newest addition, an early victim apparently transformed into a mannequin immediately after her demise. Now, the mannequin sits at a table, for once with no hint of life or the potential for it. Mr. Slausen (by now there is no question of his identity) sits down and speaks to the doll. When no answer is forthcoming, he puts on a mask. The doll seems to speak, albeit in his own voice. He then instructs the mannequin how to eat. As with many things, it’s not clear what exactly happens, though we can clearly see some of a spoonful of soup dribbling down. Then, in the middle of the movie, there’s a malfunction that simply should not be possible if the “doll” is human, whether living, dead or undead. The villain merely muses, “Oh, I have to fix that.” It’s barely a matter of a couple minutes, but even in a movie like this, it’s a surreal and baffling sequence with an impact far beyond its limited length.

In conclusion, I must speak to the movie’s reputation as a neglected “classic”. By my assessment, it is certainly better than the other early Band films I have reviewed, Laserblast and The Day Time Ended, though given the quality of the former film in particular, that’s hardly a complement. Compared to later Band crew entries, like Re-Animator, Dolls, Terrorvision, and even strange experiments like Dungeonmaster, it definitely falls into the category of “interesting” rather than good. What redeems it is its rough-hewn quality, even by low-budget ‘70s standards, that remains more memorable than plenty of “better” films. It’s awkward, uncomfortable, confusing and simply not very good, but you still wouldn’t want it any other way.