Tourist Trap (Blu-ray Review)
Director
David SchmoellerRelease Date(s)
1979 (January 14, 2026)Studio(s)
Charles Band Productions (Umbrella Entertainment)- Film/Program Grade: B
- Video Grade: B-
- Audio Grade: B
- Extras Grade: B
Review
[Editor’s Note: This is a Region-Free Australian Blu-ray import.]
Tourist Trap is a nifty little 1979 horror gem that still has a small cult following these days, but it’s probably unfamiliar to far too many modern-day genre fans. Stephen King praised it in his 1981 horror survey Danse Macabre (calling it his own “discovery,”) but back in those pre-internet days, even props from a bestselling author didn’t necessarily have much reach outside the circle of his own loyal readers. King wrote that it demonstrated the “power that inanimate dummies, mannequins, and human replicas can sometimes cast over us,” and he wasn’t kidding about that. Tourist Trap may have its flaws, but it works as well as it does because it exploits the visceral hold that such figures have always maintained over us. From Michael Curtiz’s Mysteries of the Wax Museum in 1933 to Poltergeist, Child’s Play, Puppet Master, Annabelle, and beyond, wax figurines, mannequins, ventriloquist dummies, and other dolls have all been used quite effectively in the horror genre. No matter what kinds of flaws that any of these individual films may possess, the basic imagery of menacing simulacra retains its inherent power. It’s one of the most truly universal of fears (well, aside from clowns, anyway, which was why it was so ingenious to combine the two anxieties in Poltergeist).
Tourist Trap was writer/director David Schmoeller’s feature film debut (the script is also credited to J. Larry Carroll, but Schmoeller has been pretty open about the fact that Carroll didn’t do much actual work on it). It was loosely inspired by his 1976 student short The Spider Will Kill You, although in practice, the stories are largely unrelated save for the presence of mannequins that come to life. In its broadest strokes, Tourist Trap is essentially The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with dummies instead of chainsaws (and a 1974 Volkswagen Thing instead of a 1972 Ford Club Wagon). It follows a group of young people who make a fateful stop at a decrepit tourist attraction: Molly (Jocelyn Jones), Jerry (Jon Van Ness), Eileen (Robin Sherwood), Becky (Tanya Roberts), and Woody (Keith McDermott). The tourist trap in this case is Slausen’s Lost Oasis, run by its titular owner Mr. Slausen (Chuck Connors), who is now about as run down as his once-thriving facilities. But some of the attractions still work, especially the displays featuring some uncannily lifelike automatons. That fact alone should have raised more warning flags than a dingy roadside barbeque stand, but the young people stay put long enough to get picked off one at a time by a masked figure that may (or may not) be Slausen’s estranged brother Davey (Shailar Coby). (No one ever seems to learn the simple lesson that if the eyes seem to be following you, get the hell out of there.)
Tourist Trap was distributed by Compass International Pictures as a follow-up to their successful release of Halloween the previous year. Yet while Irwin Yablans served as an uncredited executive producer, the film was actually produced by none other than the infamous Charles Band under his Charles Band Productions label—and Band’s typical shoestring budget shows. Most of the flaws in Tourist Trap can be attributed to a lack of funds, but once again, those flaws evaporate once the mannequins start to move under their own power—or is that what’s really happening? Interestingly enough, one of the most crucial elements in Tourist Trap was actually added at Band’s suggestion: the fact that the figurines are brought to life via telekinesis. In the original script, they were genuine automatons operated by mechanical means, but since that was changed to telekinetic powers at the last minute, the film never bothers to explain how or why the villain has these abilities. Yet it still creates an eerie sense of menace that’s quite different than if the figures had been mechanical (or somehow possessed) instead.
Speaking of the villain, Schmoeller cast Chuck Conners after both Jack Palance and Gig Young turned down the part. (Jocelyn Jones has said that Henry Fonda was attached to the project when she agreed to play Molly, but it’s a little hard to believe that he ever would have seriously considered playing this kind of role). When Stephen King wrote enthusiastically about Tourist Trap, he didn’t share that enthusiasm for Connors, pointing out that “he tries gamely, but he’s simply miscast.” Yet the counterintuitive casting of Connors actually works quite well, as he successfully skated a fine line between being mildly sympathetic and utterly repellant. In comparison, Jack Palance would have started out over the top and kept going straight uphill from there, dragging everyone else behind him. And Jones plays off Connors quite well, which is a good thing since their characters end up having a somewhat different relationship than any of the rest of the cannon fodder. (Roberts is undeniably beautiful and Sherwood is as adorable as ever, but their characters are simply given less to do than Jones.)
Take all of that, add in a very interesting score by Pino Donnagio that veers sharply between oppressiveness and jocularity, and you have a memorable little horror gem in Tourist Trap that stands out from many other genre efforts of the era (including far more expensive ones like Magic). Unless, of course, you don’t find dummies or other figurines to be disturbing—but if that’s the case, there’s fair reason for everyone else to question your own humanity, too. (And for the record, sane, well-adjusted people also abhor clowns, so anyone who says otherwise is automatically suspect.) Yes, there are plenty of rough edges to Tourist Trap, but they add to its charm, and absolutely nothing can take away from the universal effectiveness of the central concept. As King said, it wields an “eerie, spooky power,” and that power still holds sway nearly fifty years down the road.
Now... Charles Band being Charles Band, the saga of Tourist Trap didn’t end in 1979. Fasten your seatbelts, because we need to take a detour of our own (and don’t worry, we’ll avoid the Slausen Cutoff). In 2014, Band’s Full Moon Pictures announced that they were releasing a Blu-ray version of the film, uncut and “remastered from the original 35mm camera negative.” Yet to paraphrase a curmudgeonly Jedi, every word of what the company said was wrong. Far from being uncut, this version of Tourist Trap was missing approximately five minutes of footage. Schmoeller didn’t even notice until it was pointed out to him later, as he had sat down to record a new commentary track for the disc without saying a word about the cuts. (Tourist Trap was his first film, made 36 years prior to that point, so we’ll cut him some slack for not remembering everything.) Band made a statement that “the issue of the 5 missing minutes of Tourist Trap is upsetting for all of us as we never touched the negative that has been in storage for 36 years. When the time came we simply had the lab deliver the negative to the color correction house who did their work and they then delivered an HD master back to us.”
Unfortunately, Full Moon’s HD master clearly didn’t come from the original negative, and it probably didn’t even come from an interpositive or an internegative, either—it looks like a print. So, it’s undoubtedly true that they hadn’t touched the negative in 36 years; the problem is, it appears that they still haven’t touched it yet, despite Band’s claims to the contrary. Rather than spending the money accessing the original elements, they simply used a print that they had available to them, but for whatever reason, it seems to have been edited down without their knowledge. There’s been speculation that it was a print that was created for foreign distribution, but even if Band was forthcoming about that fact, it’s hard to take anything that he says at face value. So, in 2020, Full Moon issued a new Blu-ray that purported to be really uncut, and that’s the exact same HD master that they provided to Umbrella for this 2026 Blu-ray. Yet we’re still talking about Charlie Band here, so there’s a major hitch involved, but more on that in a moment.
Cinematographer Nicholas Josef von Sternberg shot Tourist Trap on 35mm film using Panavision Panaflex cameras with spherical lenses, framed at 1.85:1 for its theatrical release (it’s been opened up slightly here at 1.78:1). For a transfer that was likely sourced from a print, with no real restoration work performed on it, everything is in reasonably good shape. There’s some light speckling and other damage throughout, as well as a few dropped frames here and there (for example, there’s a jump cut at 2:44 as one character is rolling a tire down the street). There’s also some horizontal wavering at times that makes any lateral pans have a stuttering effect—it’s noticeable in the two shots that immediately follow the one with the tire-rolling. Density fluctuations and other variations are visible as well. Contrast is fine, though there’s definite black crush during the night scenes and in the darkest interior scenes as well. On the plus side, the level of fine detail is definitely improved over the DVD version, and the color balance generally looks natural. The grain is moderately heavy, but reasonably well-controlled. Tourist Trap in HD isn’t exactly the best of times, but it’s not the worst of times, either.
There’s still that hitch to cover, though. The reality is that this is the exact same transfer as the one that was used for Full Moon’s 2014 Blu-ray, not a newly created one for their 2020 Blu-ray. Rather than scanning an uncut print (or other elements), upscaled inserts from the DVD transfer were used to replace the missing footage. So, there’s no need to figure out which scenes were affected, because they stick out like a sore thumb. On the other hand, that proves conclusively that the newer HD scan shows considerably more fine detail than previous versions, regardless of the source element that was used. It’s a genuine upgrade from DVD, despite any issues with the source.
Audio is offered in English 5.1 and 2.0 mono DTS-HD Master Audio, with optional English subtitles. That’s an upgrade from Full Moon’s lossy Dolby Digital versions of each, although in practice the differences are minimal. The 5.1 track still isn’t true 5.1, but rather just the original mono audio pushed into all three front channels. That might give the impression of a bit more spread compared to the 2.0 track decoded to the center channel, especially if your speakers don’t image accurately or if there’s a timbre mismatch between your center channel and your mains, but it’s still just an illusion. That said, both tracks are in surprisingly good shape, with only a bit of noise, distortion, or other artifacts to mar the experience. (Note that Full Moon’s disc didn’t offer any subtitles, so that’s a definite upgrade here.)
The Umbrella Entertainment Region-Free Collector’s Edition Blu-ray release of Tourist Trap includes a slipcover, 8 art cards, an A3-sized foldout poster, and a 48-page booklet featuring essays by Nat Brehmer and Justin Bream. As with most Umbrella releases, the insert is reversible, with the same cover art on each side but with the alternate one being free of the mandatory Australian Classification Board ratings label. Everything comes housed in a rigid hardbox, with the whole package designed by Johny ‘Visibly Wasted’ Bekavac (I bet he is, say no more). It’s limited to 2,000 units, but Umbrella is also offering a standard version that eliminates the hardbox and all of the swag (although it does still offer a slipcover). Regardless of which version that you choose, the following extras are included:
- Commentary with David Schmoeller
- Commentary with Nat Brehmer
- Exit Through the Chop Shop: The Making of Tourist Trap (HD – 24:37)
- Tourist Trap (SD – 6:54)
- Surviving Slausen (HD – 11:02)
- Roadside Nightmare (HD – 14:01)
- Slausen’s Lost Scenes from Script to Screen (HD – 11:47)
- Tourist Trap: Alternate Cut (HD – 85:01)
- Trailer (HD – :57)
Umbrella has added four new extras for this release, kicking off with a new commentary by Nat Brehmer, author of Puppet Master Complete: A Franchise History. He does provide a little bit of the history of Tourist Trap, starting with the Irwin Yablans/Compass International connection, but he mostly offers his thoughts about the film itself. He feels that it’s uniquely unsettling, like Psycho as being described by someone who is dosing on LSD. It’s an effective horror film even with the unexpected PG rating, relying more on atmosphere and general creepiness than violence and gore. Brehmer also mentions the Danse Macabre connection and the influence of other filmmakers like Mario Bava. Unfortunately, he also does the clichéd commentary thing of telling people to watch the film before listening to his track, and he spends a lot of time describing what’s happening onscreen, but there’s still some interesting stuff here.
Surviving Slausen is an interview with Jocelyn Jones, who explains how she took the part despite not liking the genre, since she thought she would be working with Henry Fonda. But Chuck Connors was still very helpful to her—a handful for the first-time director and his crew, but easy to work with for the rest of the cast. She also describes some of the challenges that she faced and how she got a stunt adjustment for the scene in the water where she’s trying to escape the villain. Roadside Nightmare is an interview with Jon Van Ness (he’s erroneously listed as “Jerry” Van Ness on the menu). He talks about working with the rest of the relatively inexperienced cast (Jones was an outlier in that regard), and he also gives credit to Connors for being so helpful. Van Ness had played baseball in college while Connors had played professionally in the minor leagues, so Connors used baseball metaphors to make things clear. Van Ness also discusses doing his own stunt work and dealing with the special effects.
The last of the new extras is Slausen’s Lost Scenes, where Jarret Gahan breaks down the differences between the original script and the final cut, including scenes that were eliminated completely and others that were significantly reshaped by editor Ted Nicolaou. Gahan doesn’t address the shorter cut, although he does acknowledge the missing negative.
The archival extras kick off with a commentary by David Schmoeller, although par for the course with the complicated saga of Tourist Trap, it’s not the only one that he recorded. He sat down for a new one for the 2014 Blu-ray, but that wouldn’t have matched up with the uncut version of the film, so this is actually the previous one that he did for Full Moon’s 1998 DVD. Schmoeller first provides some background about the film and then spends the rest of his time discussing the actors, the locations, and the low-fi nature of the special effects. He has some interesting production stories, especially about Connors, who apparently had some fun messing around with his inexperienced director. It’s a pretty sparse commentary overall, especially toward the end when he seems to run out of things to say. He also falls into the trap of describing the action onscreen, but there’s still some interesting nuggets to be had here.
Exit Through the Chop Shop is an interview with Schmoeller produced and directed by Daniel Griffith at Ballyhoo Motion Pictures for Full Moon’s 2014 Blu-ray. Unlike the commentary track, it’s a fast-paced and focused look at the making of Tourist Trap, covering the writing of the script, the cast and crew, production, post-production, and release of the film. Schmoeller also discusses the ending of Tourist Trap, and how the various fan interpretations vary wildly from what he intended. The most interesting revelation: prior to making his debut with this film, he interned on the Peter Hyams classic Capricorn One.
Tourist Trap is an older interview with Schmoeller from the 1998 DVD. He discusses using The Spider Will Kill You as inspiration, the low-budget special effects, the cast, and how he feels that the PG rating killed any potential box office for the film. Finally, Umbrella has also included the abbreviated version of Tourist Trap from the 2014 Blu-ray, presented here at 1.78:1 with English 2.0 mono Dolby Digital audio (no subtitles this time). Aside from the missing material, the video quality is otherwise identical.
Taken as a whole, it’s the most complete release of Tourist Trap to date, missing only the still gallery from Full Moon’s disc, plus some promotional materials, a YouTube review, and the Trailers from Hell with David DeCocteau that were on the 2016 Blu-ray from 84 Entertainment in Germany. (The original 84 Entertainment release also included a CD copy of Pino Donnagio’s soundtrack album.) Does that make this the definitive release of Tourist Trap? Far from it, but unless Band finally pays his bills in order to access the actual camera negative, it’s the best version that we’re likely to get. The video quality is comparable, the audio is upgraded to lossless, there are new extras, and the packaging is spiffy. If you’re a fan of Tourist Trap, you’ll definitely want to add this version to your collection, and if you haven’t seen it yet, this is an excellent place start. And any self-respecting horror fan should see Tourist Trap, so make it happen one way or the other!
- Stephen Bjork
(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).