The Tourist Trap

Rating:
Summary: One of my top ten favorite horror movies!
Review: This has got to be one of the creepiest movies ever! Forget garbage like scream and i know what you did last summer. this is real horror! a group of friends get stranded at a wax museum run by chuck connors. the wax museum is filled with these creepy mannequins who.. well im not going to ruin it for you! Watch the movie! I cannot believe i had never seen this earlier. From beginning to end this movie will have you on the edge of your seat! beautiful music by pino donaggio. ONe of my top ten favorite horror movies! Highly recommended. I watch alot of horror movies and this is one of the best! Just get it!

Rating:
Summary: Atmospheric but gruesome
Review: Classic sexploitation plot: libidinous teens sidetracked to a rundown spooky old house. Chuck Connors' role as a disturbed widower is a nice contrast to his classic role as The Rifleman. However, graphic violence (stabbing, smothering) ruined it for me.

Rating:
Summary: My Nominee for Best Horror Effort Ever.
Review: I say "effort' because it doesn't totally maximize its opportunities to shock or scare, but overall, it is a standout. The plot is a bit muddled, and the goofy music tries very hard to detract from the suspense, so why do I like this one so much? Maybe because of Chuck Connors, who truly brings a sense of believable human feeling to a role in an otherwise bizarre combination of horror staples. He really gives psychotic yet lovable turn as Mr. Slauson. Many of the "shockers" from this era were as straight-ahead as you could (not always) want, but this one never lets you know where it's going. Is Slauson basically weird, with evil tendencies, or vice-versa? Where do his powers come from? What does he really want from his victims? His telepathy and his creepy mannequins and masks are put to good use here, creating some really surreal, dream-like, and funny scare moments. The DVD transfer is maybe a little grainy, and director Schmoeller seems a bit too laconic about his work in the bonus interview, but the movie stands by itself, especially if you like 80's horror offerings in general.

Rating:
Summary: The Tourist Trap- 2.5 Stars
Review: This movie wasnt scary , it was strange and diffrent. A group of tourists bump into a wierd guy with a gun who starts telling them about his brother, he takes them back to his place to show them this museum he has full of freaky looking manicans and wax figures. He tells them to ( stay put ) and warns em about his brother. Meanwhile, a couple of them sneak out and end up finding a little house down the path that has all kinds of crazy manicans in it , thier eyes move , they are alive in a sense. It sounds good but it really isnt scary. Anyway, the killer has ( pyschic abililities and is able to close doors and kill people by just thinking about it. I heard a reviewer comparing this to tcm , the killer in this IS nowhere near as scary or good as leatherface. I dont mean to give anything away but the killer isnt scary , he looks just like conan o brien. Hes more funny than scary. Overall its slightly entertaining and unique, more unique and more thought went into this than other horror films so i would probably give it 3 stars. Im having a hard time rating this one cause it had bad points and good , its somewhere between a 2.5 and 3.5. Rent it then decide but i wouldnt buy this before renting once at least.

Rating:
Summary: The Carrie Chainsaw Massacre...
Review: Four gals and two guys get stranded in the middle of nowhere. Thankfully, there's a nice man named Slausen (Chuck Conners) who is only too happy to help them out. Good ol' Slausen has a wax museum full of automatronic gunslingers and the like. Unfortunately, he also has a maniacal brother named Davey living in the nearby house. Davey is a freakazoid of the first order! He's not only crazy, but has telekinetic powers to boot! The house of horrors is filled with mannequins (in place of Texas Chainsaw's bones) that talk, move around, and attack! Tanya Roberts and Jocelyn Jones do their best to stay alive while looking beautiful. Davey wears lots of kooky masks and causes mayhem. Interesting but tedious in spots. I kept waiting for the pace to pick up, or for some jarring moments that never really materialized. I don't hate TT, I just think it could have been better...

Rating:
Summary: Big Disappointment
Review: Read the reviews--expected a great deal, and was very disappointed. The effects are great, the mannequins are really creepy, but the script is truly awful as is the acting. In addition, other than a few initial scares this movie runs more like a comedy than a horror flick.

Rating:
Summary: A Buried Treasure Of A Movie
Review: Certainly not one of the better-known horror movies out there, I'll admit that I'd never even heard of this one until a year or so ago, despite having been a major horror fan since the late 80s. While purchasing a few DVDs, I got this one thinking it might be good, but largely due to the very low price, thinking I wouldn't be out very much if I didn't care for it. I was blown away with what I got, which was a very sexy, atmospheric, genuinely frightening film which, despite an uninventive-sounding premise (a small group of teenagers/early twenty-somethings take a bad turn in the road and come across a wax musuem that's more than what it seems) packs a surprising dose of originality into the proceedings. It also delivers some vivid characters, high-level production values (including the gloriously eerie beauty of the blue fogs rolling through some of the nighttime scenes), and a couple of points in the movie where not everything is precisely spelled out, leaving what's really just happened open to the interpretation of the individual viewer. A couple of twists and surprises may seem a bit more predictable now than when "Tourist Trap" first came out in 1979 (before "Friday The 13th", "Sleepaway Camp". "Nightmare On Elm Street", et al., and only a year after the first "Halloween"), while others maintain full potency.

And don't let the PG rating on the box deceive you into thinking this is going to be a lightweight in horror movie terms. It got that rating long before there was a PG-13, and definately would have gotten the higher rating if released a few years later, so just remember some of the excellent movies that have succeeded with that rating - The Blair Witch Project, The Sixth Sense, The Ring, etc.

Highly, highly recommended for fans of "When A Stranger Calls Back", the "Friday The 13th" and "Halloween" series, "Wrong Turn" and the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" movies, as well as for those who think there's lots of potential for a horror movie using unnerving mannequins as a central theme.

Rating:
Summary: they don't make them like this anymore!!!!!!!!!!
Review: one of the most underrated horror films of all time!!! since 1973 when ("TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE") bursted on to the horror scene it was proclaimed the top dog (BLUE PRINT) of horror films. ever since then to many horror directors afraid of being called a COPY CAT have chose to stay away from (T.C.M.)instead of actually useing it as a (BLUE PRINT) like it should be!!!!!!! well horror fans director David Schmoeller lets the horror public know that (T.C.M.) was a huge infuence in his little known horror gem named ("TOURIST TRAP") all you have to do is watch the movie & you will understand what useing (T.C.M.) as a (BLUE PRINT) is all about!!! this flick is SCARY!! this flick is CREEPY!! this flick is a HORROR SHOW!! THIS IS WHAT A HORROR MOVIE IS SUPPOSED TO BE!!!! its a shame that its not as popular as other films because its so much like (T.C.M.) BUT ITS WAY BETTER THAN THE POPULAR FLOPS & IN THE LONG RUN IT WILL OUT LIVE MAINSTREAM BUDGET FILMS LIKE ("i know what you did last summer") just because its way scarier!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LATER ON FELLOW HORROR FANS!!!E!!!N!!!J!!!O!!!Y!!!

Rating:
Summary: I still don't like mannequins
Review: This movie is just crazy scary. I saw this on some channel in the early 80's and just couldn't believe it. I consider myself a horror movie fanatic and have seen hundred's of scare flicks but this is still one of the very few that can get to me. Every time you think it can't get any crazier it does. This has very little gore, but it doesn't need it. I don't even like to see mannequins in department stores anymore, and I've always hated dolls. Watch it with the lights out by yourself for maximum effect.