Nightmare In Badham County (1976)

Imagine this, if you will.  You’re a monster kid (yes, you are, so shut up).  You’re cruising around the dial (back when televisions had dials and you had to sometimes adjust the signal manually [that means with your hands]) when you come upon it.  A permanently boggled schlub in a seersucker suit who looks like he would have fit right in at the press room in His Girl Friday leveling a crossbow at an elderly lady, warning her not to approach.  She, naturally, does, and the man looses a bolt.  As the arrow finds its target, the senior citizen transforms into a gruesome, hairy monster (a rakshasa, to be precise) just before dying.  And so was I introduced to the wild, wonderful world of Kolchak: The Night Stalker, arguably one of the most fun television series ever made and one of my all-time favorites (though, in all honesty, I can’t say it’s the highest quality in the world, but how much of what we hold closest to our hearts ever is?).  The show was dubbed Kolchak’s Monster Of The Week (I believe by “TV Guide”), and it was that, but this is what fed the hunger inside me and kids like me.  However, for how formulaic the show is, the television movie from which it sprang (The Night Stalker) is exceptional and often touted as one of the best films ever produced for the small screen.  That film was directed by John Llewellyn Moxey, the director of Nightmare In Badham County (aka Nightmare).  Make of that what you will.

Cathy (Deborah Raffin) and Diane (Lynne Moody) are a couple of students from UCLA on a little road trip through the American South (always a bad idea in exploitation fare).  When their tire blows out, they get a firsthand taste of the local constabulary’s asshole-ish-ness in the form of Sheriff Danen (Chuck Connors).  Later, after the Sheriff tries to make it up to the ladies by lecherously hitting on them and is rebuffed in public, the two women quickly understand exactly how close-knit this little community is.  They also learn that the Badham County Farm is only one step removed from Hell.

This is a WIP film, and it has all of the elements needed for the genre.  It has the prisoners being abused and forced to wear flimsy, easily removable clothes.  It has aggressively predatory lesbian guards.  It depicts slave-like conditions under which the characters toil.  It has vicious internal conflicts among the inmates.  And this last point is the specific reason why the leads are played by a white woman and a black woman.  You see, the tensions at the farm are only exacerbated by its being segregated.  Though both sets of prisoners are treated as slave labor, it is the black prisoners who are given the more menial tasks.  Even at the bottom of the ladder, they get a raw deal.  This segregation and the treatment of the different races come as a shock only to the two outsiders.  To the people indigenous to the area, it’s simply how things are.  By that same token, the women in the black barracks mostly get along with one another.  It’s the women in the white barracks that get into cat fights and generally want to kill each other.  This sense of solidarity among the blacks isn’t because they’re sager than the whites any more than the discord among the whites is because they’re less civilized than the blacks.  It’s more distressing than that.  The numb obedience of the black women comes from an innate sense of racial inferiority which has been institutionally reinforced over decades.  This idea enhances the film’s overall somber attitude.

This vile corruption is embodied by three men (four, actually, but one of them has very little to do in the narrative), representing the government (or more specifically one part of it).  Danen, the Judge (Ralph Bellamy), and Superintendent Dancer (Robert Reed) are supposed to be enforcers of the law.  These are the people whom we rely on to keep the bad guys away.  These are the people who are our protectors.  That they so readily twist and manipulate the system to suit their own base desires points to an endemic illness.  We have seen this sort of corruption of power countless times in film.  It is portrayed in communities both North and South (though I would venture a guess that there are more of them set in the South, just because of its old ties to slavery).  But the one constant in films like this is that these are small, clannish localities.  Big, metropolitan, corporate corruption is another facet in other movies, but that is usually typified by its dispassion.  In small areas, where everyone knows everyone else and everyone seems in on the scheme, it’s the familiarity that makes the evil done more insidious.  This isn’t a wide net spread over a large mass.  This is a tight glove wrapping itself around your throat.  It feels more intimate, as if the perpetrators have something personal against their victims.  But even the bodies of the subjugated are just meat to be used and discarded at a whim, still just a means to an end.  No matter how much these villains may enjoy what they do, they still do it with a sociopathic detachment, because these acts no longer offer pleasure.  This is merely what they do.

All WIP films are sleazy.  That’s one of their big appeals, and Nightmare In Badham County is no exception.  Women are demeaned and molested throughout.  A scene with guard Alice and prisoner Nancy nails this home.  Alice strips down to just her panties, sits on a couch with her crotch splayed, and states, “I didn’t keep you out of the fields today just so you could eat my lunch.”  It’s not just the situation or the double entendre of the dialogue.  It’s Alice’s open repose that amps the sleaze up.  Her nudity makes her menace (again) feel more intimate.  But beyond all this, the film is resolutely grim in tone.  Intriguingly, this is illustrated with Dancer’s skanky interactions with the women and how they customarily turn out, but it takes on a quasi-meta meaning due to Reed’s casting in the role.  This is not because of the actor’s well-documented sexual orientation but to his identification as one of America’s most beloved, moralistic fathers in recorded history (Mike Brady of The Brady Bunch, for those who don’t know).  To see a man who was held up as a moral compass for many years discard said morality and get down into the gutter makes it feel somehow more wrong and just a little shocking.  It’s at this point in the film when the viewer begins to understand the gravity of the situation and believe that truly this nightmare may not be one from which our protagonists may ever awake.

MVT:  The dour quality of the film sets it apart in my experience with this genre.  This is bleak, even angry, filmmaking, and despite its exploitation roots, it has something to say.  It just says it through gritted teeth.

Make Or Break:  The scene with Danen and the girls in the local lockup manages to be nasty and creepy without being explicit.  It also sets the timbre for the remainder of the film and reminds the audience that this is only the beginning.

Score:  6.5/10      

Tourist Trap (1979)

I used to have an oversized teddy bear when I was a child. I didn't have a cutesy nickname or anything for him, but he was fun to play with, as he was large enough to be a giant villain of Galactus-ian proportions to my other action figures. It didn't matter to me that he was fuzzy, unarticulated, and had a permanent grin which rendered him utterly non-threatening. He also used to stay at the head of my bed (not that his rough, fuzzy exterior was comfortable to sleep on) at night. One evening, as I was falling asleep, I glanced over at the bear, and I swear to you, he was breathing. Naturally, this sort of phenomena has been known to occur sometimes to people in a hypnagogic state, but I know that as soon as I realized it was breathing, I was on full alert. Of course, I was also paralyzed with fear, not knowing if saying anything or moving would provoke this seemingly mild-mannered pal to attack. It was probably a matter of minutes, but it felt like hours that I just lay there staring at the bear. Eventually, I drifted off to sleep, and we never had another incident, he and I, but to this day I recall the sheer dread I felt that evening, and I had a somewhat newfound respect for the power my ursine pal could wield among my toys.

David Schmoeller's Tourist Trap opens with Woody (Keith McDermott) walking along a lonesome road with a flat car tire. He comes upon a lonely gas station (always a good sign) and searches the place for assistance. Wandering into the back area, he comes upon a bunch of mannequins, dolls, and so on, and unseen forces handily dispatch the young lad. Down the road a piece, Woody's pals, Molly (Jocelyn Jones), Becky (Tanya Roberts), Eileen (Robin Sherwood), and Jerry (Jon Van Ness), are searching for him when they come upon a rundown western museum (another good sign) owned by the crotchety old coot, Mr. Slausen (Chuck Connors), and Jerry's vehicle also mysteriously breaks down. Slausen takes the kids back to his place, but warns them not to go outside or to wander over to Davey's house down the back. What do you think they do?

The first thing you notice as this film starts is the Pino Donaggio score which feels more quaint than menacing. But as we all know, Mr. Donaggio is a professional, and by the end of the film his musical composition feels not only appropriate but sinister. No small feat. In line with this initial sense of whimsy comes a dichotomy between new and old value systems. As Jerry's car rolls up, we notice Molly in the back seat (okay, we actually notice Becky in her tight tube top, but work with me here). Molly is dressed in a pretty, white sun dress and a white sun hat. Compared to her friends, who are all considerably more dressed down (and with less actual cloth) than she, Molly is something out of a daguerreotype. She is the odd duck among her friends, and even though she does participate with them in things like skinny-dipping, she is visibly ill at ease with the act and separates herself physically from her friends while doing it. Slausen takes a shine to Molly instantly, and she is the only one of the troupe who he will call by name. This is emphasized constantly through the film, and Molly also seems to be the only one with whom Slausen even wants to speak at all. Of course, Slausen is also an old-fashioned fella, living with all he has left ("this junk and my memories") in the world and pointing out repeatedly that it was the building of "that new highway" which essentially ruined his business. 

The other characters are all fun-loving young folks who are just out to party, with all that entails. According to the rules of Slasher films (which hadn't been as stringently codified as they would be in just a few short years), this makes them the primary targets of the film's antagonist. It's a classic set up, and it is followed by the numbers. The characters are split up by the most specious of reasoning, taken to a remote location, and then murdered by a character-definingly-outfitted villain. The twist here is that the villain doesn't need to use his hands to murder his victims. Davey uses the multitudinous mannequins which litter his place. See, he has the power of telekinesis and uses it to make the dummies appear alive. It's an interesting idea to have the bad guy use the power of the mind to kill, but the structure and execution are so banausic, it detracts from the overall quality of the film, I think. Not enough to make it unworthy, but enough to keep it from greatness.

Have you ever been in a dark department store with nothing but rictus-wearing mannequins? Me neither, but they are certainly disquieting in their own right. For as much as they display any emotion (typically joy), it is unmoving, unchanging, and after a long spell of staring at you with dead eyes, unsettling. Over an extended period of time, the countenance which is supposed to instill a warm, inviting feeling instead inspires dread through its fixedness, in the same way that watching a beauty pageant becomes uncomfortable, because you know that the smiles on the contestants' faces are there strictly for show. The immobility masks what is inside, and that's where the horror comes from (not that beauty pageant contestants are scary…well, maybe they are a little). And when the mannequins turn as one to stare at their prey and their jaws drop open, it is chilling. Davey, then, wears a mask (or masks) which attempts to link him with the dummies. His mask is essentially that of a mannequin; smooth, white, and (perhaps most importantly) eyeless. This is not to say that Davey doesn't have eyes, but when his mask is on, we can't see them. This serves double duty. On the one hand, it keeps us from reading emotion on his face (the eyes being the most expressive feature on the human head), and it also deprives us of the much-vaunted "windows of the soul" eyes are conjectured to be (and they are; you can know a man's measure by looking him dead in the eye, I believe). Davey is not only a mannequin in look, but like his playpals, is in effect soul-less, a puppet pulling his own strings. His desire to be an imitation of life is scary, and the filmmakers would have been wise to play up these psychological aspects of the film. Tourist Trap is a good, creepy little movie, and one which is overlooked by a great many Horror fans. It is not one of the best, but (like its namesakes the world over), offers a pleasant and mildly thought-provoking piece of entertainment, if you're of a mind to give it a look.

MVT: The core concept is familiar enough and derivative enough to be comforting, but it is also just enough unlike other Slasher-type films (specifically with the telekinesis facet and how it's depicted) to make it stand out a bit from the pack.

Make Or Break: I know the Make is often the first scene with me, but that's only because it's a rarity that any other scene in a film encompasses the various aspects of a film and/or sets the tone for good or ill, like the first one or two can. This film is no exception, and the murder of Woody is a sterling example of what giving a viewer just enough of what they have to look forward to can do to keep butts in seats.

Score: 6.5/10

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