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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The Great Texas Dynamite Chase (1976)

Technology has all but killed that age-old American tradition of bank robbing. Oh, sure, you can still rob a bank if you're of a mind to, but the planning needed to do so today falls this side short of just getting a job instead (that is, if you don't want to get caught). The security measures used in modern banks are so sophisticated, you could spend just as much on setting up the heist as you could make pulling it off. There have been timelock vaults for decades, but the intricacies and difficulty of actually getting one open have risen exponentially as the speed and complexity of technology has increased. Then there's the aspect of getting away with it, which if you wear a mask and don't leave your wallet behind (as an alarmingly high number of crooks seem to do), shouldn't be too hard, but the clarity of today's security cameras, the use of smaller and smaller tracking devices, ink packs, and so forth don't guarantee a clean getaway.

Candy (Claudia Jennings) has just escaped from prison with a few sticks of dynamite, to boot. Ellie-Jo (Jocelyn Jones) is a put-upon bank teller who has just been fired. When Candy shows up at Ellie-Jo's former employer's with a lit stick of said dynamite, Ellie-Jo feels a thrill she's been missing all her life and helps her rob the place. Having paid off the debt owed on the family farm, Candy takes it on the lam. After picking up the now-hitchhiking Ellie-Jo, the two determine that they make an okay team, and that robbing banks with dynamite instead of guns is a swell idea. Pretty soon, the duo's fame reaches a point where the authorities have to take them very seriously, indeed.

Michael Pressman's The Great Texas Dynamite Chase (aka Dynamite Women) is something of a mixed bag. It positions itself as a distaff Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, but with cars and dynamite instead of horses and pistols. However, the pacing stops and starts depending on which of its two leads' turn it is to get naked (or even both at the same time). Granted, there's nothing inherently wrong with this, and it is certainly the main reason most people would want to see this film in the first place (the others came to see shit blow up). Producer Roger Corman's exploitation film strategy (boobs or blood every ten minutes) holds true, but there's little, if any, effort to work the exploitable elements into the story. Consequently, the film as a whole doesn't hold together too well. 

Also, the filmmakers seem unsure as to the tone of the film. It starts off as two girls having a good time robbing banks, but once the Fuzz bring shotguns to this dynamite fight, the mood sobers up for as long as it takes some bullets and blood to fly. I'll give you two examples to illustrate my point. There is an extensive undercranked shot of the robbers counting their loot, giving the goings-on a light, carefree feeling. Not long after, a character is rather messily shot and winds up floating in a lake. It's not so much the mood shifts that are an issue, but rather how they are handled. In my mind, undercranking has no place in any film that an audience is supposed to take even one iota seriously. If a technique was a staple of television sitcoms ("Gilligan's Island," I'm looking at you), it is disqualified from usage in non-comedic films. Likewise, graphic violence has no real place in a film intended as a light romp. That's just me. This is not to say a balance is impossible to strike. One's just not struck for the majority of this film.

This unevenness, then, applies to the film's treatment of authority figures. The first cop we see is overweight, rather dim-looking, and he hitches up his belt before approaching the crime scene. Plus, he is dumb enough to park over a lit stick of dynamite. Later, another cop is introduced reading a stroke mag on the side of the road. Pulling the ladies over, he tells the boys back at the station he's going to "get some piece o' ass." Needless to say, the girls make an ass out of him. A bank manager that the women robbed not once but twice is spoken of lowly by his unsuspecting wife and called a loser outright. Authority (and more so male authority) is depicted as clownlike. Even so, once the cops start showing up with rifles and hair triggers, all traces of buffoonery evaporate. It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye (or small intestine).

Still and all, the sexuality of Candy and Ellie-Jo is never portrayed as out of their control. They determine who they want to sleep with and when, and then they proceed to do so. Men who seek to force themselves on the duo are handily swept away. On this level at least, the film can be classified as feminist. The duo makes their own choices for their own reasons. They own their bodies and are the final deciders of what to do with them. In this sense, they are free, the whole reason for heading down their criminal path in the first place. And of course, a male-dominated society cannot bear the idea of independent women making them look bad, so they must be brought low by any means (read: violence) necessary.

To be fair, there are things in the film which are both interesting and entertaining. The first couple of times Candy and Ellie-Jo rob a bank are genuinely involving. There's some nice tension and uneasy comic mishaps (see, it's not impossible to do both), as well as an intriguing ploy which is at once wildly dangerous and thoroughly convincing in its effectiveness. Ellie-Jo's escalating search for thrills is also absorbing and provides an element of uncertainty and danger. Unfortunately, the filmmakers don't make an effort to build on these assets, and the viewer is left shrugging. That said, there is some very nice cinematography courtesy of Jamie Anderson (who would move on to the original Piranha and Grosse Pointe Blank), but it can really only elevate this material so much. 

So let's break it down, shall we? Yes, there is dynamite, and yes, it is set in Texas. There is some chasing whenever the story remembers it. But great? More like The Middling Texas Dynamite Chase. 

MVT: Whether she's brandishing TNT or prancing around in a pair of Daisy Dukes which could more aptly be described as a denim belt, Claudia Jennings is magnificent to watch whenever she's onscreen. And it's not just her looks. The woman had magnetism and talent in excess. Her death three short years later was truly a tragedy.

Make Or Break: The undercranked money-counting scene accentuates the uneven and dismissive feel of the film in toto.

Score: 6/10