Tourist Trap Review (1979)

Every so often I stumble back into a film that reminds me why I fell in love with Horror in the first place. Tourist Trap is one of those slices of strangeness that has no business being as unsettling as it is. On the surface, it looks like your run-of-the-mill late ‘70s slasher setup: a group of friends, a roadside attraction, a creepy old caretaker, and the promise of doom around every dusty corner. But once you settle in, the movie peels back its own waxy face and shows you something far stranger. This was one of those movies I watched with Mom when I probably should’ve been watching cartoons. But it’s also a part of the reason I’m the Horror fiend that I am today…

What really gets under my skin about this film isn’t just the mannequins, which are nightmare fuel on their own, it’s the atmosphere. The whole place feels like it’s been left to rot under the hot sun, a forgotten monument in random Americana, with only the whispers of laughter and plastic faces left behind. There’s this uncanny dread cooked into every creaking floorboard and hollow stare. It’s not loud Horror, it’s the quiet, oppressive kind that crawls into your bones.

And then there’s Mr. Slausen. He’s not your typical Horror villain, and that makes him even more effective. There’s a strange sadness about him, almost a broken quality, which makes his unraveling even more terrifying. He’s part showman, part recluse, part monster, you never quite know where one ends, and the other begins. Watching him play host in his lonely wax museum feels like being entertained and threatened at the same time.

By the time the movie really bares its teeth, you’re caught in this nightmare logic where mannequins move on their own, faces twist, and true reality bends. It’s the kind of Horror that isn’t bound by rules.

Tourist Trap is cheap, strange, and unhinged, but it’s also genuinely haunting. It’s a reminder that Horror doesn’t need gore splattering across the walls to disturb you; sometimes it just needs the echo of laughter in an empty room, a frozen smile staring back at you, and the creeping suspicion that maybe you shouldn’t have stopped at that roadside attraction in the first place.