INTRODUCTION: A Wax-Colored Nightmare Without the Heat
You’ve seen this movie before, even if you haven’t seen Tourist Trap. A group of attractive young people on a road trip make a pit stop at a strange roadside attraction. Something’s off. Things begin to creak and groan. One of them disappears. A creepy, overly helpful local insists they stay for dinner. Then come the mannequins. Always the mannequins.
This is the elevator pitch for Tourist Trap, a 1979 horror oddity produced by Charles Band (future overlord of Full Moon Features) and directed by David Schmoeller. It stars Chuck Connors in a rare turn as the villain and a young, wide-eyed Tanya Roberts, years before she’d find cult icon status in The Beastmaster or the James Bond franchise. The film is often praised for its surreal tone and strange visuals. But let’s be honest: for all its cult-horror reputation, Tourist Trap is mostly a slog—an ambitious mess that never quite earns its reputation.
Yes, it has moments of weird inspiration. Yes, it might give you the occasional goosebump. But it also overstays its welcome, drowns in repetition, and leaves the audience staring at mannequins long past the point of diminishing returns. What could have been an eerie slice of wax museum terror devolves into a sluggish, hollow-faced time-waster. There’s a reason it’s usually mentioned as “underrated” or “forgotten”—most people who remember it are mostly remembering the posters, the premise, or that one decent jump scare. The rest is a mannequin slowly turning its head toward the camera while you check your watch.
PLOT: WHEN SLASHERS STALL ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD
The plot, such as it is, goes like this: A group of young people—three girls and one guy—end up stranded near an old roadside attraction after their car gets a flat and a tire mysteriously vanishes. The group includes Eileen (Robin Sherwood), Becky (Tanya Roberts), Molly (Jocelyn Jones), and Woody (Keith McDermott), all playing the usual horror archetypes: the flirt, the goof, the innocent, the expendable male.
They stumble into a wax museum run by Mr. Slausen (Chuck Connors), a lonely, polite, slightly unsettling man who says his wife is dead and his brother (also named Slausen) is crazy and lives in the backwoods. Before you can say “Scooby-Doo,” people start disappearing, mannequins start coming to life, and the waxy house of horrors becomes a literal death trap.
Slausen—or his masked alter ego—begins picking them off one by one, using mannequins, telekinetic powers (yes, you read that right), and a seemingly endless supply of time to slowly torment his guests in increasingly surreal ways.
It all builds to a fever-dream finale that tries to be shocking, but mostly ends up feeling like a leftover Twilight Zoneepisode—minus the pacing, tension, or emotional weight.
VISUALS: CREEPY BUT REPETITIVE
To give credit where it’s due: the visuals of Tourist Trap are its strongest asset. The wax mannequins are legitimately eerie in some scenes, especially when they’re partially broken, dead-eyed, or silently watching the characters stumble around in their doom. The way the film uses stillness and sound—creaking doors, whispers, disembodied laughter—is effective… the first few times.
But Schmoeller falls too in love with the gimmick. The mannequins become overused, losing their shock value. What begins as a clever tension builder devolves into a cycle of shrieking music cues, spinning camera tricks, and lifeless dolls dropping from the ceiling like Halloween-store animatronics.
There’s a dreamlike tone to much of the film, but the editing often undermines it. Scenes drag. Dialogue pauses stretch to eternity. Characters move like they’re underwater. Rather than enhancing the surreal tone, the pacing kills it. The audience is left not on edge, but numbed.
And then there’s the telekinesis. Yes, for reasons never fully explained, Slausen (or his alter ego) has the ability to move things with his mind. He makes mannequins fly across the room, doors slam shut, and ropes tie themselves. While this could be unsettling, it ends up feeling like a cheat—an “anything goes” card that removes tension rather than builds it. If your villain can do literally anything, then why bother pretending there are rules?
CHARACTERS: PAPER THIN, STUFFED WITH SAWDUST
If Tourist Trap fails to frighten consistently, part of the blame lies with its utterly forgettable characters. There’s not a likable or even particularly interesting person among them. The girls are cookie-cutter slasher fodder—alternately shrieking, wandering off alone, or inexplicably trusting the obviously disturbed Mr. Slausen.
Tanya Roberts, despite her natural screen presence and iconic beauty, is given very little to do besides react. She’s supposed to be one of the more “capable” members of the group, but she’s mostly relegated to wide-eyed stares and dumb decisions. That said, she’s one of the only cast members who doesn’t appear bored or baffled by the material.
Jocelyn Jones, playing Molly, gets the most screen time of the girls, but her performance is inconsistent. At times she appears hypnotized, at others hysterical, but rarely believable. None of the characters have depth, backstory, or development. They’re mannequins themselves—wooden, hollow, and waiting to be destroyed.
Chuck Connors gives it his all, and he’s actually quite compelling when he first appears. There’s a tragic edge to Mr. Slausen—an aging man surrounded by relics of the past, living in the shell of a tourist trap no one visits anymore. But as the film drags on and his dual role becomes more ridiculous, Connors begins to lose that quiet menace and leans into camp. He chews scenery with such enthusiasm that you half expect him to start talking directly to the mannequins—and by the end, he practically does.
THE HORROR: GIMMICKS OVER TERROR
What is Tourist Trap trying to be? A slasher? A supernatural thriller? A psychological descent into madness?
The film doesn’t seem to know. There are hints of Psycho (the split personality twist), a dash of House of Wax(obviously), and even echoes of Carrie (those telekinetic powers), but none of them are developed. It’s horror by patchwork, stapling together better ideas from other films without fully understanding why they worked.
The kills themselves are surprisingly tame. There’s little blood, few practical effects, and a general reluctance to go full slasher—even though the setup screams for it. Instead, the movie relies on endless close-ups of mannequins with their mouths agape, staring at the camera like they just smelled something weird. Occasionally a character gets bound, levitated, or suffocated, but the actual violence is minimal and poorly staged.
There’s no suspense because the logic is broken. If Slausen can immobilize you with his mind, why does he bother sneaking around in masks? If the mannequins are part of his power, why do they sometimes act on their own? And if this is meant to be psychological horror, what exactly is the psychology?
The movie isn’t scary. It’s weird. And weird is fine. But weird without coherence is just… boring.
THE SOUNDTRACK: A SYMPHONY OF SHRIEKS AND SQUEAKS
The film’s soundtrack, composed by Pino Donaggio (best known for his work with Brian De Palma), is a mixed bag. At times it evokes the swirling unease of Carrie, but often it overpowers the scenes with dramatic swells and dissonant cues that feel like they belong in a different movie.
Much of the film’s sound design—creaking mannequins, high-pitched giggling, sudden strings—feels like it’s trying too hard to inject life into scenes that are visually flat. It’s horror wallpaper: noisy but ineffective.
LEGACY AND CULT STATUS: OVERRATED OR MISUNDERSTOOD?
To be fair, Tourist Trap does have its defenders. Some see it as a low-budget surrealist horror gem, praising its dream logic, mood, and ambition. And yes, there’s something admirable in the attempt to make a horror movie that leans more into the bizarre than the bloody.
But admiration doesn’t equal enjoyment. The movie may have artistic intentions, but its execution is lazy, repetitive, and dramatically inert. It’s the kind of film that people remember as being better than it was—probably because the poster art (a wax face melting in agony) promised more than the movie ever delivers.
It’s been released multiple times on DVD and Blu-ray, usually with glowing praise from genre critics who enjoy its strangeness. But “strange” doesn’t always equal “good.” Sometimes it just means unfocused.
CONCLUSION: A TRAP BEST AVOIDED
Tourist Trap isn’t a disaster. It’s just not very good. It has a great premise, some eerie visuals, and a committed performance from Chuck Connors. But it never comes together. The story is half-baked, the characters forgettable, and the horror limp.
If you’re a fan of late-70s oddities, or if you collect every obscure horror film ever released by Full Moon or Anchor Bay, maybe you’ll find something to love here. Maybe the mannequins will get under your skin. Maybe the weird tone will work for you.
But for most viewers—especially modern horror fans raised on more coherent, character-driven stories—Tourist Trap will feel like wandering through a dusty wax museum where every exhibit is broken, every scare is repeated, and the air smells faintly of missed opportunity.
FINAL VERDICT: 2 out of 5 stars
Creepy mannequins and Chuck Connors can’t save this slow, repetitive, and undercooked horror flick. Strange for the sake of strange, Tourist Trap is a misfire that belongs on the shelf—gathering dust next to other forgotten curiosities of a weirder, wobblier horror era.
