Tag: House of Wax

Tourist Trap (1979)

TOURIST TRAP

 

TOURIST TRAP (1979) Three stars

TOURIST TRAP belongs to a rather fine and distinguished horror movie tradition I’ll call “American Gothic” (forget the famous 1930 painting by Grant Wood).

Other films that fit the bill are several Universal productions, Val Lewton productions beginning with CAT PEOPLE, HOUSE OF WAX, PSYCHO, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, EATEN ALIVE, THE HILLS HAVE EYES, and FUNHOUSE. As you can see, directors Wes Craven (1939-2015) and Tobe Hooper (1943-2017) both liked this mode.

“American Gothic” horror films are heavy on atmosphere, whether they’re filmed in black & white or color. They often delight in exposing the darker underbelly of American society after such happenings as the closing of the local slaughterhouse or the roadside wax museum that once existed on the right side of the road before it was bypassed. They sometimes take on the disintegration of the family unit or any number of issues plaguing our society. “American Gothic” films are rich in metaphorical readings.

Since it belongs to such a fine tradition, you’ll be able to recognize TOURIST TRAP right off the bat and see that it’s a dab of HOUSE OF WAX layered on top THE HILLS HAVE EYES or any of the seemingly hundreds of horror movie plots that begin with car trouble and the wrong gas station and end after several deaths.

Later on, you’ll note that it’s also a pinch of PSYCHO and a dash of TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE — Chuck Connors plays wax museum proprietor Mr. Slausen in the grand old Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates style (a hallmark “American Gothic” element)  and production designer Robert Burns worked on both TEXAS CHAINSAW and THE HILLS HAVE EYES.

Just like the Bates Motel had seen better days before PSYCHO, so had Mr. Slausen’s “Slausen’s Lost Oasis.” Nowadays, Mr. Slausen’s wax museum would have been profiled by Roadside America, the guide to “uniquely odd tourist attractions,” and it could have survived and even thrived off this exposure.

If you find wax figures, mannequins, human replicas, et cetera, repellent or they weird you the fuck out, then you will enjoy TOURIST TRAP.

I especially recommend seeing the film before stopping in at Jesse James Wax Museum right off the highway in Stanton, Missouri.

It’s your patriotic duty.

TOURIST TRAP creates a creepy, claustrophobic atmosphere transcendent of the standard issue plot.

From the brilliant opening scene all the way to the bitter end about 90 minutes later, there’s somebody eyeball stalking the protagonists in every scene in TOURIST TRAP.

That somebody’s usually a wax figure, mannequin, human replica, etc., and that’s just creepy, for lack of a better word.

For many years, TOURIST TRAP itself met the fate of “Slausen’s Lost Oasis,” seemingly forgotten and consigned to being a relic of a bygone era of horror movies. Never mind Stephen King’s recommendation in his 1981 book “Danse Macabre.”

The film has made a comeback in recent years.

Cinemassacre’s “Monster Madness” featured TOURIST TRAP in 2014.

In July 2018, Joe Bob Briggs opened “The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs” by showcasing TOURIST TRAP.

It just goes to show you that nobody can ever keep an “American Gothic” horror film down for too long.

House of Wax (1953)

HOUSE OF WAX

HOUSE OF WAX (1953) Four stars
I’m a big fan of the late, great St. Louis born Vincent Price (1911-93).
 
Like most people from my generation, I first discovered Price through his voice work on Michael Jackson’s mega-hit “Thriller.”
 
Over time, of course, I began to encounter more and more of his work and I became more and more of a fan.
 
A couple of my favorites include his narration on Alice Cooper’s “Black Widow” from the 1975 Cooper album “Welcome to My Nightmare” (AC’s first solo LP) and THEATER OF BLOOD (1973).
 
“Black Widow” foreshadowed Price’s work on “Thriller.”
 
THEATER OF BLOOD lets Price sink his teeth into a juicy role and plot scenario — an irate Shakespearean actor who takes ultimate revenge on all his critics. It’s a lot of fun.
 
Several movies have taken cheap shots at critics over the years — for example, GODZILLA ’98 gave us the buffoonish Mayor Ebert and his aide Gene and LADY IN THE WATER (2006) knocked off that pretentious killjoy Harry Farber, a no-count film and book critic — but THEATER OF BLOOD gets it just right, unlike both GODZILLA and LADY IN THE WATER.
 
In the case of GODZILLA, Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin didn’t even have the guts to have their Godzilla devour their Siskel & Ebert parodies. Chicken shits. I mean, were they holding out hope their film might still get a positive review? You know it’s bad when M. Night had more balls than you.
 
Anyway, in the spirit of a Camper Van Beethoven song, I have to ask ‘Where the hell am I?’
 
Oh yeah, Vincent Price and his incredibly entertaining HOUSE OF WAX, a remake of the 1933 horror film MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM.
 
By the way, Warner Bros. packaged together the 1933 with the 1953 film on a DVD and it’s not every day that you get two good movies for the price of one.
 
Now, I can add HOUSE OF WAX to the Price favorites list.
 
Price stars as Prof. Henry Jarrod, who’s absolutely committed to his wax museum. They’re not just wax figures to him. After all, they are extremely lifelike — a fine art — and he sums up the essence of his art with this dialogue, “Once in his lifetime, every artist feels the hand of God, and creates something that comes alive.”
 
Jarrod especially loves his Marie Antoinette, “Everything I ever loved has been taken away from me, but not you, my Marie Antoinette, for I will give you eternal life.” (Just pretend using Price’s voice while reading the dialogue.)
 
Jarrod thinks first and foremost in artistic terms, whereas his business partner Matthew Burke (Roy Roberts) hatches a devious scheme. If they set the wax museum ablaze, they can collect the $25,000 insurance policy and split it straight down the middle. Jarrod cannot believe his ears, for he loves his wax museum and his creations too much to see them destroyed for money.
 
Burke and Jarrod fight it out, with Burke ultimately winning the upper hand and burning down the wax museum with Jarrod inside. Burke believes Jarrod died … of course, Jarrod survives, enacts his revenge, and starts his wax museum all over bigger and better.
 
File the wax figures burning under “Great Movie Scenes.”
 
In early September 1988, a fire claimed the lives of 300 wax figures from the Southwestern Historical Wax Museum in Grand Prairie, Texas.
 
Lost were figures of Elvis, JFK, Robert Redford, and Paul Newman.
 
“One of the things that has made this fire so difficult to fight was the fact these figures are just like a candle,” Lt. Doug Conner said. “They generate tremendous heat. It appears it’s totally destroyed.”
 
The burning down of the wax museum certainly proves to be a great opener for HOUSE OF WAX.
 
HOUSE OF WAX came in the wake of the first 3-D feature, BWANA DEVIL (1952), and it gives us one of the best 3-D scenes I have ever seen. This scene comes right after intermission.
 
We have a barker for Jarrod’s new wax museum known as the House of Wax. We all know barkers, right, are people who “attempt to attract patrons to entertainment events, such as a circus or fair, by exhorting passing members of the public, announcing attractions of show, and emphasizing variety, novelty, beauty, or some other enticing feature of the show.”
 
Our barker seems to be an elite paddle ball player and he breaks the fourth wall, as he directly addresses the audience and hits the paddle ball toward us.
 
“Well, there’s someone with a bag of popcorn. Close your mouth, it’s the bag I’m aiming at, not your tonsils.”
 
This is better than anything in JAWS or AMITYVILLE 3-D.
 
There’s more choice moments in HOUSE OF WAX, and it’s essential viewing for Price fans.
 
Five must-see Vincent Price films:
— HOUSE OF WAX (1953)
— THE FLY (1958)
— HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (1959)
— THEATER OF BLOOD (1973)
— VINCENT (1982)