The Death of Summer: ‘Tourist Trap’ & ‘House of Wax’ Make for a Perfect Double Feature

We are still in the heat of summer, and that means there’s still some time for the pool, camping, and leisurely road trips across the country. If you’re inclined to take to the open road, may I suggest sticking to major highways and leaving dusty backroads alone. You don’t wanna end up like the kids in either David Schmoeller’s Tourist Trap or Jaume Collet-Serra’s House of Wax (2005). You’re smarter than that. Sure, there’s a compelling case to be made for swapping out hardtop for gravel and dirt. Perhaps you want to witness relics of the past for yourself – abandoned towns and roadside barbeque pits, or even the scarce side-show attraction (if those still even exist). But don’t be a fool. If there’s anything to be learned here, it’s that disaster awaits around the next bend.

In 1979’s Tourist Trap, a group of youths ignore every possible red flag and venture off the main road in search of their friend. Woody (Keith McDermott), who set off on foot to get a spare tire fixed, stumbles upon a derelict gas station. The place is eerily empty, with no one manning the desk. Against his better judgment, he tiptoes to the backroom, where he hears the muffled cries of a woman. But when he approaches, a mannequin pops up from the sheets and cackles. Several more plastic figures bounce from the shadows, screeching with their mouths agape and bobbing their wigs. It’s an unholy scene – and the entire reason I became fearful of mannequins as a kid. Woody inevitably dies from a deep flesh wound. As objects come flying from a cupboard, a metal spike impales in him the back.

Meanwhile, the rest of the group make their way off the main drag onto a gravel road and pass a sign which reads, “Slausen’s Lost Oasis.” When their Jeep breaks down, Molly (Jocelyn Jones), Eileen (Robin Sherwood), and Becky (Tanya Roberts) leave Jerry (Jon Van Ness) to fix the vehicle and go skinny dipping in a nearby oasis. Mr. Slausen (Chuck Connors) appears and laments the lack of business ever since the highway was built. He then offers to help Jerry with the automobile and gives the group a ride back to his wax museum.

Lurking in the shadows, a killer (Slausen’s brother Davey) wearing a mannequin’s face circles around the group. When the moment presents itself, he pounces on his prey – picking off the characters one by one. But he’s not your typical serial murderer. He wields telekinetic abilities. With such power, he frequently kills without even touching his victims (an unseen force chokes Eileen with her scarf, for example). What would be your ho-hum horror flick turns into a wonderfully disturbing funhouse. The mannequins, proving to be essential to the story, are basically the killer’s makeshift family. They have personalities of their very own, each one bending to the will of their master.

Once Becky and Jerry are captured and tied in the basement, we meet another traveler named Tina (Dawn Jeffory-Nelson). In the film’s most frightening scene – the scene I remember most as a kid – Davey puts sticky plaster over Tina’s face. Blob by blob, her face is completely covered. “You’ll die of fright,” he snarls, claiming she won’t die of suffocation. Her heart will burst from her chest before that happens. Her heart throbs in our eardrums, each pulsating beat growing in intensity until she stops squirming. She heaves one last time before her body becomes cold and lifeless.

Later, Molly runs for her life through the surrounding woods. Davey carries a mannequin’s head and tosses it to the ground, where it tumbles and screams into the night air. I also recall this chase scene the most; there was and is something about it that’s downright terrifying. I think it’s the mannequin head. It’s always the mannequins. Burn them all with fire. 

…but I digress.

Molly eventually meets Slausen driving in the woods, and he takes her back to the museum. He hands her a shotgun while he heads inside. Unbeknownst to her, Davey sneaks up from the darkness and attacks her. Molly fires several shots, knocking Davey to the ground and shattering his mask. Slausen reveals himself as the killer with a shit-eating grin etched across his face – one of the greatest killer reveals of all time!

Back at the museum, Becky and Jerry escape their ropes. Becky, unfortunately, meets a grisly fate, getting stabbed in the back of the head – but Jerry manages to come to Molly’s rescue. Molly, tied to a bed, breaks free and fends off her attacker just long enough for Jerry to arrive. But Jerry isn’t Jerry. Jerry is a mannequin under Slausen’s command. What a twist! After screaming her lungs out, Molly gets the upper hand and slaughters Slausen with an axe.

A very traumatized Molly hops in the Jeep and drives away, with the mannequin versions of her friends piled in next to her. Dawn has broken, and Molly has managed to barely get away within an inch of her life. The film stops abruptly, leaving the final moment to be a chilling reminder of her friends’ untimely deaths.

Tourist Trap captures the sheer terror of being stranded in the middle of nowhere. There’s a sense of isolation that presses upon you from every edge of the frame. It’s claustrophobic and unrelenting. Connors undeniably steals the show with his dual-deranged performance, each character distinctly different from the other. Like many genre performances, he deserved major hardware for his turn as Davey/Slausen. While the rest of the characters are pretty uninspired, it ultimately doesn’t matter. The disturbing nature of the mannequins and several twists are more than worth the price of admission. As many times as I’ve seen this film, the curveballs still hit me. It’s one helluva trip.

The same can be said for 2005’s House of Wax, which takes cues from Mystery of the Wax Museum, the first remake released in 1953, and even Tourist Trap. The setup is much the same. A group of 20-somethings – Carly (Elisha Cuthbert), Nick (Chad Michael Murray), Paige (Paris Hilton), Blake (Robert Ri’chard), and Dalton (Jon Abrahams) – go on a cross-country road trip. They’re headed to a football game and couldn’t be more hyped. But they make their first grave mistake early on: they camp out in a random field for the night. While they sleep, an unknown stalker breaks the fan belt in Wade’s car. That means they’re stranded, so Wade and Carly head to a nearby town. A grungy-haired, slimy-smelling man named Lester (Damon Herriman) offers them a ride, on which they take him up. Lester is an oddball, to say the least. His strange behavior is certainly cause for concern, making him the red herring of the film. Carly and Wade quickly get the heebie-jeebies and ask to be let out along the side of the road. They’ll venture across the washed-out road on their own.

Once across the shallow creek, they enter the town of Ambrose. The streets are empty, save for a few parked cars peppered here and there. That should have been a tell-tale sign right there that something was amiss. Not as single person is found. But they walk further into town, anyway, first heading to the only gas station where they discover it abandoned, and then to the church. There, they interrupt a funeral, much to the dismay of the preacher and gas station attendant Bo (Brian Van Holt). Bo is dashing, and honestly, he’s quite a hunk. Nothing, in particular, seems off about him. While he finishes up the funeral service, Carly and Wade head up to Trudy’s House of Wax and poke around the various sculptures. Everything is made of wax, even the walls, the ceiling, and the floors.

Later, Bo gives Carly and Wade a ride back up to his house to get a fan belt. While using the bathroom, Wade gets bludgeoned over the head by Bo’s brother Vincent and yanked into the basement, where Vincent hooks a now-naked Wade up to a contraption that sprays molten wax all over his body. A horrific sequence that’s still burned into my brain. The first time I viewed the film, I recall the shivers that danced down my spine. Just last week I burned my fingertips on hot candle wax – can you imagine that sensation all over the body?!? Yikes.

Much like Tourist Trap, House of Wax follows the group being attacked, snatched, and killed in gruesome ways. Dalton gets decapitated; Blake is stabbed viciously in the neck; and Paige is iconically dispatched with a flying metal pipe through the forehead – then she slides down the length of the pipe. Next to Wade’s wax shower, it’s probably the most unforgettable moment in the entire film. People applauded Paris Hilton’s death. During those days, Paris was a hot topic of conversation, namely from her appearance in the popular TV series The Simple Life with Nicole Richie. People loved to hate Paris. I never understood it and still don’t. As we’ve come to learn, Paris’ affected public persona is all an act. She’s actually quite intelligent; she was simply feeding the public an exaggerated personality because that’s what they wanted in the era of reality TV. Nearly 20 years later, Paris’ inclusion in the film has been reassessed, and many now love her role and performance.

The film comes to an appropriately fiery end. When it’s “revealed” that Vincent is actually Bo’s brother – unlike Tourist Trap – the showdown happens inside the wax museum, which has now caught fire. Carly and Nick fight for their lives, staving off Vincent’s advances while also trying to survive the building’s slow melting. Carly beats Bo to death with a baseball bat, and later, Vincent is stabbed in the back and falls to his death into the all-consuming flames. Carly and Nick barely escape… The following morning, the cops arrive and survey the scene. The film’s twist comes when the cops expose that there was a third brother in the family: Lester, who waves to Carly and Nick as they drive away. I gotta admit, I was hooked on the idea. Too bad we never got a sequel. We deserved one! 

With their similarly-plotted stories, there’s no better double feature for summer than Tourist Trap and House of Wax. Again, there’s still time to hit the highway and go on a road trip, up the coast or into the mountains. If, perchance, you decide to venture deep into the wooded countryside, don’t forget the biggest horror rule of all: never split up. You’ll survive longer that way. But even still, just never leave the main road no matter what you do. Doing so only spells disaster.

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Double Trouble is a recurring column that pairs up two horror films, past or present, based on theme, style, or story.

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