THE MAN THEY COULD NOT HANG

Throughout the past 100 years, the myths surrounding John 'Babbacombe' Lee's story have taken on a life of their own.

Urban legends, ghostly sightings and tales of supernatural intervention have grown far beyond what anybody in 19th century South Devon could have imagined for the lowly manservant.

Lee, nicknamed The Man They Could Not Hang, came to prominence when he was convicted of murdering his employer, Emma Keyse, and setting fire to her Babbacombe home, called The Glen.

Mike Holgate, of Torquay, an expert on John Lee, said: 

During his trial, the prosecution portrayed Lee as a depraved lunatic capable of smashing an old lady's head with an axe, then slashing her throat with a knife. 

The judge, in passing sentence of death, remarked how calm Lee's demeanor had been throughout the trial. 

Lee is said to have leaned forward in the dock and replied firmly: "The reason why I am so calm is that I trust in the Lord, and He knows I am innocent." 

In the days leading up to the date of execution, Lee read the Bible prodigiously and proclaimed his innocence. 

It is said he told the prison chaplain the real culprit was the lover of his half-sister, Elizabeth Harris, who was cook at The Glen and expecting a child which was later delivered out of wedlock in Newton Abbot Workhouse.

The prison governor's logbook states on the morning of the execution, as Lee approached the gallows trapdoor, he told two prison guards he had dreamt "three times the bolt was drawn, and three times the bolt failed to act."

Lee was a lonely figure on the gallows — but each time an attempt was made to open the trapdoor, it stuck. After each failed attempt the trapdoor was tested and it opened normally, but when Lee stood on it again the door would not open. Three times this happened, each with the same outcome. It is rumoured that throughout the ordeal on the scaffold, a white dove perched on the gallows until the condemned man was led safely back to his prison cell.

The Home Secretary told Parliament he could not expect a man to "twice face the pangs of imminent death." Lee began a 23-year prison sentence in Exeter, and from that day the myths about his life spread across the world. Witchcraft and devilish incantations were often talked of when people tried to reason Lee's escape from death. Friends of Lee claimed they had paid a white witch handsomely to save him from the noose.

Other people told stories of how Lee's mother had visited the church graveyard near her home at Abbotskerswell, recited the Lord's Prayer backwards and summoned the Devil to save her son. Also, an old woman called Granny Lee, from Ogwell, is said to have told locals 'they shall not hang him' as she walked to Exeter on the morning of the execution and cast a spell on the gallows from a spot overlooking the prison.

UNSUNG HORRORS: TOURIST TRAP

Every once in a while, a genuinely great horror movie—one that would rightfully be considered a classic, had it gotten more exposure and love at the box office—makes an appearance. It comes, no one notices, and it goes. But movies like this are important. They need to be treasured and remembered. If intelligent, original horror is supported, then that's what we'll begin to receive, in droves. We need to make these movies a part of the legendary genre we hold so dear. Because these are the unsung horrors. These are the movies that should have been successful, but were instead ignored. They should be rightfully praised for the freshness and intelligence and craft that they have contributed to our genre. 

So, better late than never, we’re going to celebrate them now… one at a time.

Dir. David Schmoeller
1977
Compass International Pictures
United States

For this edition of Unsung Horrors, we have a very different beast. Being a genre aficionado, I like my horror in all sizes, shapes, and colors - but I generally prefer a serious tone. I prefer feeling unnerved, and I enjoy the feeling of being in the presence of a filmmaker whom I don't entirely trust - not in the sense that I feel the filmmaker is not up to the snuff of delivering a good fright, but in the sense that said filmmaker might just be a little...off; perhaps eccentric, or even insane, to have delivered such a god damned strange, indecipherable, and flat-out bizarre little picture like the one we'll be celebrating today. To watch Tourist Trap is to wonder if the film had been accidentally made by an escapee from an insane asylum after he had held a mini-studio hostage so that his film may be realized. And when I insinuate the filmmaker was approaching this in as unconventional manner as possible, I don't allude to such high-brow works of art like E. Elias Merhige's Begotten or even Buñuel & Dalí's Un Chien Andalou, which are artistic to the extreme of defying convention. No, Tourist Trap is a different kind of insane - one that sports a straight-forward concept that became rather go-to in the late '70s and early 80s thanks to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre: a group of kids getting lost in an unknown territory and falling victim one by one to a madman. On its surface, one would assume that's all it would seem to entail. But oh, how wrong one would be to assume such a thing. (That filmmaker, by the way, is David Schmoeller: read my interview with him here.)

Have you ever heard the expression "a mystery wrapped in a riddle wrapped in an enigma?" Tourist Trap is that movie, in spades, but with mannequins. It, truly, is the most bizarre film I’ve ever seen - one that at some points is deeply unsettling, and at others completely ridiculous, whimsical, and odd. It’s almost as if two directors, whose styles completely contradicted each other, directed different portions. Picture an unhappy studio executive screening the latest film from David Lynch, then picking up a phone and requesting an immediate meeting with the guys who made Airplane.

The beginning of Tourist Trap introduces us to a group of young teens as they are temporarily stalled by a flat tire on their way cross-country. One of the unlucky boys, who is the spitting image of the late Steve Irwin but sans accent, rolls the flat to the nearest service station for help. Upon getting there, the boy is haunted by weird, ethereal, slightly erotic moaning emanating from an unseen source. The boy locates the source: a blanket-covered woman lying on a cot in the back of the service station. The boy approaches gingerly, asking the woman if she needs help. Suddenly, she springs forward, laughing in vicious glee, revealing herself to be...a mannequin.

Your mind barely has time to process what appears to be the film's first major development before all hell breaks loose in this little room. The mannequin continues to laugh, its plastic jaw clomping wildly in glee. The boy, understandably freaked, tries to escape the room, but windows close and lock themselves as doors slam themselves shut.

Another mannequin, this one headless, smashes through the outside window. The boy is then assaulted by yet another mannequin, bursting forth from the closet and laughing more creepily than the previous dummy. As the boy backs up in fear, he kicks a small mannequin head that lies on the ground. He looks on in fear as the head slowly turns and opens its mouth wide.

And your reviewer is utterly disturbed.

The room begins going insane as cabinets open and close and objects are mysteriously hurled at the boy as he tries to escape, and all during this fiasco the mannequins continue to laugh.

My God, is this what it's like inside Gary Busey’s head?

A metal pipe is suddenly hurled through the boy, killing him instantly, and the commotion comes to an end. We then pan around the room, taking in the sudden serenity, as if the mannequin-screaming, object-hurtling, window-and-door-slamming shitstorm of a fucked up Quaalude hallucination never took place.

This is certainly not a case of establishing something insane for the purposes of securing a massively crazy opener, but failing to live up to that insanity for the remainder of the film. Rather, Tourist Trap wants to hit the ground running. It wastes no time in easing the viewer into the insanity that is soon to unfurl. "We've only got 90 minutes here, people," the film is saying, "so strap in for the worst nightmare you've ever had while wide awake."

The dead boy's friends, among them Molly (Jocelyn Jones),  the "final girl," come looking for him, and this is when they meet Mr. Slausen (Chuck Connors), owner of Slausen’s Lost Oasis, who approaches them with a large shotgun and cowboy hat. Soft guitar music plays as Slausen lays down his airing of grievances he has with the local town bureaucrats as the girls, having previously stripped down and leaped into a nearby watering hole and are now naked as they day they were born, cover their dirty pillows and stare at him with a mixture of fear and confusion.

Despite the fact that he is clearly the last person anyone with half-a-brain would want to be around, they accept his offer of a lift back to his house under the guise of getting some tools to help fix their car. But don't worry, these kids aren't going anywhere. Both the audience and Mr. Slausen want to see these kids get haunted and slaughtered by sighing mannequins. And boy, will they.

To attempt to explain or make sense of what's soon to unfold is a fool's errand. To date, I have seen Tourist Trap three times, and I am completely unable to decipher anything that occurs. A rather simple-minded premise about mannequins with a life of their own soon morphs into a story featuring quirky and potentially dangerous twin brothers, split personalities, telekinesis, necromancy(?), and even heartbreak.

All of this, on the surface, feels easy to mock, and I fully admit the first draft of this column was written to be included as the newest edition to Shitty Flicks. But my latest viewing of this flick confirmed I could not in good conscience do so. Low brow concept it may have been, and populated with not-so-great teen actors as was often the case for low-budget horror, writer/director David Schmoeller knew exactly what he was doing behind the camera. Without hyperbole, every single solitary shot of a mannequin, or doll, or masked madman, is eerie, or disturbing, even deeply unsettling. Because nothing makes sense. And no explanations are provided. If you're looking for the James Bond villain-esque explanation at the end where the antagonist lays it all out on the table - "here's how I bring the mannequins to life / here's how I learned to move objects with my mind / here is how I resurrect the dead" - forget it. You're barking up the wrong tree here, and you're way way way in the wrong film. I've long said that gaps in logic can be detrimental to a screenplay unless you are in a filmmaker's such capable hands that you not only forgive those gaps, but actually respect them and allow them to enhance your reaction to the story. It gets to be that you want to ignore these gaps, because to do otherwise would result in over-thinking and ruining the experience for yourself.

Each insane development occurs with no for warning, because Schmoeller wants you to feel just as broad-sided as his characters. "Wait a minute, since when can this guy move shit with his mind?", etc. He wants every new occurrence of supernatural territory to slap you across the face. He wants you to feel uneven and on edge, honestly believing anything could happen at any moment. At one point someone could have opened their chest to reveal they were a robot the entire time and it would have felt right at home. (Not to mention something like that kinda-sorta happens.)

Schmoeller is also wise to exploit the hordes of mannequins found everywhere in Slausen's Lost Oasis to immense satisfaction and disturbance. At one point the killer is chasing one of our victims and holds out, at arm's length, a severed mannequin's head.

“See my friend?” the killer grumbles, as the mouth on the mannequin head opens widely and screams.

At this point we have seen enough insanity and unexplained activity that we know this is not a simple case of ventriloquism: This head is somehow alive, and it's screaming at our victim like it is being brutally murdered. This is later confirmed when the killer heaves the screaming head at her as she turns and flees. The head, landing on the ground in front of her, promptly turns by itself and yells at her again.

Adding to this insanity are the occasional bouts of humor. Not unintentional humor, mind you, but honest-to-gosh scenes in which Schmoeller forgot he was making a haunted mannequin, masked-killer movie and was perhaps instead directing a vaudevillian stage play featuring Abbot and Costello.

That decision results in the following scene in which our killer enters a room wearing a mask and sits down next to a mannequin. For no reason whatsoever, after the killer places a bowl of soup in front of the slumped-over mannequin, the dummy suddenly springs to life:

Killer: Eat your soup. It’s nice and hot.

Mannequin: Let’s eat.

Killer: That’s what I said, let’s eat. Is it good?

Mannequin: Yes, it’s very good.

Killer: Want some crackers?

Mannequin: I’d like some more crackers, please.

Killer: That’s what I said.

Mannequin: Yes, the crackers are very good.

Killer: Aren’t da crackas good??

The mannequin’s head falls off directly into the soup, ruining the rest of the date. All of this in the midst of teens being killed and transformed into mannequin parts, one by one. All of this while mannequin heads scream and move on their own, while objects fly across the room without having been touched, while people whom we thought were perfectly real and alive are torn apart limb-from-limb, revealing they were actually mannequins.

Also adding to this insanity is the completely wacko score by Pino Donaggio, perhaps most famous for having scored the majority of Brian DePalma's earlier films like Carrie and Dressed to Kill. Much like Tourist Trap itself, the score alternates between chilling, with stabbing strings, and goofy, with clumsy xylophone hits. It's an awkward pastiche that at some points is trying to drive you mad with fear, but at others is trying to convince you you're in the presence of someone whimsical and eccentric and you should be having a really amusing fucking time.

The last shot shows our lone survivor driving down the street with mannequin versions of all her friends filling out the car that now suddenly works, as Pino Donaggios’s score assaults your every sense, slamming home the fact that, yes, what you just experienced was real, and no, you will never forget it.

Tourist Trap was unofficially remade in 2005 and dubbed House of Wax, as that was the title Warner Bros. happened to own. And yes, while it includes a killer who turned his victims into wax dummies, the similarities end there. But it would go onto lift, from Tourist Trap, the killer-brothers concept, the broken-down-car concept, the weirdo-attraction-in-the-middle-of-nowhere concept, and hordes of mannequins/dummies particularly placed and posed to give off the illusion of being real people.

David Schmoeller would go on to direct more straight-forward genre fare like Puppet Master and episodes of "Silk Stalkings," but Tourist Trap will always be remembered as the movie that made people say: “That was fucking weird. I don’t feel good…”

God bless you, David Schmoeller.

God bless you, Tourist Trap.

God bless us everyone.

I’m gonna go take a shower and hide under a blanket, because I feel really uncomfortable.

HELLO, MOLLY

Attention: 

Please read this sentence aloud: 

"Hello, Molly." 

If you read it aloud as I instructed, you should be safe. 

If you read it in your head… 

Molly is now safe, too. 

Inside your head.

NIGHTMARES

WEDDING DAY GHOST

SHITTY FLICKS: SHARK ATTACK 3: MEGALODON

Shitty Flicks is an ongoing column that celebrates the most hilariously incompetent, amusingly pedestrian, and mind-bogglingly stupid movies ever made by people with a bit of money, some prior porn-directing experience, and no clue whatsoever. It is here you will find unrestrained joy in movies meant to terrify and thrill, but instead poke at your funny bone with their weird, mutant camp-girl penis. 

WARNING: I tend to give away major plot points and twist endings in my reviews because, whatever. Shut up.

If you can believe it, there was once a time when low budget shark movies were made simply because someone said, "You know what the world needs? Another killer shark movie." It wasn't due to stunt casting or a deliciously stupid gimmick (sharks with two heads, sharks with bombs inside them, sharks chasing after "Jersey Shore" knock-offs) that a killer shark movie was made. No, it was during this purer time when the Shark Attack trilogy thrived, and when it reached its peak of utter stupidity with this:

Shark Attack 3: Megalo-Fucking-Don, starring John Fucking Barrowman and directed by David Fucking Worth.

It begins, much like any other killer shark movie, with a bunch of divers looking for something uninteresting and being killed off-screen by some pretty gnarly Shark Week footage. The Bulgarians-Playing-Americans (Bulgmericans?) really don't like this, and they chomp cigars and scream "oh, jeeze, no!" right into our faces.

After this terror, we cut immediately to Big Grins Island, which, based on the music, must be in Mexico (Bulgaria). 

Oh, okay - someone just said "chica" - definitely Mexico. (Bulgaria. Bulxico?)

We meet some young studs who love to grin and smile, make some jokes, and then do some more grinning and smiling. I'm not sure what's so funny or fun, but my mood has already drastically improved.

These men, who are some sort of lifeguards, take time out to randomly say aloud what the other person should already know. This is called "exposition."

In Shark Attack 3: Megalo-Bitchin'-Don, it looks like this:

My thanks to Arbitrary Nonsense for the script grab.

Our men separate so that one may dive and the other may remain in a boat and say more Mexican things. "Asta la vista!" Or, you know, something else.

It's soon established one of these men - the one who speaks the best English - will be our lead. And why not? He's young, handsome, and a no-nonsense type of guy capable of showing off one simple emotion: smile.

And to mix things up:

Main Guy Diver swims along the bottom of the ocean and finds a shark tooth, confirming years of scientific theory: There are sharks in the ocean. Some Jaws rip-off music leads to a fake scare and the scene ends, and I have lost nearly ten years off my life from the white-knuckle tension David Fucking Worth has mastered.

This diver, who doesn't have a name yet, goes home and logs onto his Shark Fan Forum and posts this message (verbatim):

MYSTERY SHARK

Found This Shark's Tooth ,

But Can't Determine Species.

Any Suggestions Anyone?

Then he sits back and anxiously awaits someone else to solve his problems for him.  

Meanwhile, in San Diego (another part of Bulgaria - Bulgiego?), we're introduced to our female marine biologist, who shares a brief conversation with perhaps the most incoherent security guard since someone hung a guard's uniform on a cactus and another person accidentally asked that cactus for directions to the gift shop. She goes into her office and logs onto Shark Fan Forum and sees the MYSTERY SHARK message. Her intrigue is palpable. 

Later we meet even more characters who struggle with English, one of whom looks uncannily like H.P. Lovecraft. They discuss how some of their underwater equipment is getting fucked up by sharks, and after a bit more unintelligible conversation, the nameless diver leaves. 

As we meet a couple fucking in the water, and as their passion is inter-cut with stock footage accidentally showing two different shark species (oops!), I'll take this time to share with you that the best film of this director's filmography is Kickboxer (yes, with Van Damme, and yes, from 24 years ago). 

And we have a name!

The San Diego-ahn (San Di-eh-gan?) marine biologist scours the beaches looking for one Ben Carpenter. "I saw your message on the Internet," she explains. "One time I saw sandwich at the food store," she might as well say. But Ben is tickled pink to see her. Speaking of tickling pink, Shark Attack 3: Megalo-Fucking-Don features perhaps the best improvised line of dialogue of all time. I'll share it with you a little later.

While our characters enjoy some bland conversation, allow me to point out the acting in this film is fucking abysmal. Normally that goes without saying, but I still feel the need to confirm it. If smiling was an emotion, some would call Ben Carpenter emotionally reckless. It's also painfully obvious everyone's dialogue has been ADRed, so it makes the already lifeless performances that much more awkward, as everyone inadvertently sounds like a 1930s hard-boiled detective.

After setting out into the deep blue for some recon, our marine biologist and her two stooge deckhands marvel at the grainy and cropped stock footage happening right next to their vessel.

"Whoa, look at it!" someone shouts, as I expect to hear Discovery Channel's Mike Rowe rattle off a random shark factoid and then make a wry comment.

The shark attacks, bites dumbly at nothing, and leaves behind a tooth. Our marine biologist, whose name I forgot to mention is Cat, confirms it's the same kind of tooth Ben earlier discovered, so she tags the shark with her tagger pole and celebrates with some unconvincing profanity.

Ben goes to tell Cat the shark has eaten another man when he discovers her terrible secret: she is actually a paleontologist. He does this by picking up her business card that says "paleontologist" on it (do paleontologists have business cards?). It seems obvious she had meant to keep this a secret from him, yet she still felt compelled to bring her business cards that say "paleontologist" to Mexico (Bulgaria) AND leave them scattered all over the table.

Ben runs off because he's really sensitive and the two later reconvene at the dock, where they share some awkward sexual tension. He lets her come aboard his boat, so long as she recognize he's in charge.

"At the first sign of trouble, I'm taking it out," Ben tells her as I laugh.

She agrees, they set out on their expedition, and they find the shark pretty quickly, considering the ocean is fucking gigantic.

"Full throttle, now!" demands Captain Ben, his hand hovering inches from his wang, ready to take it out at the first sign of trouble. They film the shark with their huge VHS camera as they see it approaching the shore.

They chase the shark for a bit and Ben shoots at it, but then they lose sight of it because, ya know...it's a shark in the ocean. With horror they realize the shark is going after a group of drunk para-sailors (always a good idea), as the one in the chute bellows "yes, sir!" in her utter joy at defying gravity. She sees the shark and yells a lot, but her drunk boat captains just think that's just her fun-scream. Too bad for them, as one ends up in the water by accident.

"We're not gonna make it!" Cat screams.

"Sheeee-it!" Ben replies.

We then see stock footage of the shark eating giant chunks of pork, which we are to play along with and pretend to think it's a human body. Then the shark bite-grabs the tow line for the parachute and drags the girl beneath the water, where he feasts on her supple feminine body and growls like a tiger as he tears her apart.

Later, Cat is in bad shape, feeling immensely guilty for being unable to save the poor girl. "If only I hadn't lost my grip on the girl's wrist 37 times..." she wonders.  Ben cheers her up by taking her to meet his old man friend, who provides a theory on why the sharks are going crazy: electricity. He tells Cat he is going to "hack" some government files to see what he can discover.

They leave and Ben has an idea. He points to a church and says, "We're gonna need all the help we can get!" The two go inside and light some official God candles, and the choral music suggests everything is going to be just fine.

During this, the old man makes good on his promise to hack some government files. In case you're wondering, his idea of hacking is to look up in the air and wonder aloud, "Okay... what's... your... password?" Somehow, this works, and like every other movie about killer animals, he finds it's actually people to blame!!!!!!!

Our heroes set out to kill the shark... with a shotgun... and as you can assume, it doesn't work all that well. Instead, the shark bursts through the underbelly of the boat and attacks Cat, but luckily Ben is there to beat it with a stick and scream "DIE!" over and over.

Through some very poor luck, or perhaps bad circumstances, this tactic simply does not work. But it does allow Cat to grab the submerged shotgun, bellow "You're extinct, fucker!" at the shark (which is a great white, so, not extinct) and blow its shark brains off.

So all is well, right?

Of course, WRONG. This movie is called Megalodon, after all, and considering we've only seen normal-sized sharks, it was only a matter of time before the big bastard made an appearance.

With more glory than Jesus Christ himself, our filmmakers take footage of a real shark breaching the surface and chomping its jaws, and digitally insert boats or divers inside his mouth, making it appear as if they are being devoured by a gigantic shark.

It doesn't look at all good - especially when they use the same stock footage for different sharks - but my god do I love it.

Ben tells his Lovecraftian-looking boss about the megalodon and shows him a gigantic tooth, but in an effort to try something new, this time the government bureaucrat refuses to do anything about it. Ben says "then I will!" and then for some reason leaves behind the only proof they have.

Ben, Cat, and the old man all meet at the dock to discuss their next course of action. Then, the following exchange takes place:

Cat grins, and they do just that, set to the same Christ-like music we heard earlier, now complementing some glorious, Prism-era, slow-motion, soft-core action. Buttocks are squeezed, neck bones are licked, watches are checked (mine).

The next day, our heroes set off on Mission: Kill the Shark. They have everything they'll need: an arsenal of explosives, a vessel, and their bland white personalities.

Across the water, pretty much all the people we've been conditioned to severely dislike are on the same yacht for some kind of presentation about some pretty cutting-edge technology. Each jerk-off we don't like each has a hand in the presentation; watch as each actor struggles to remember their elongated dialogue, pausing for full stops to allow their brains to catch up.

The shark bumps the yacht and knocks all the rich people's diamonds and cash out of their clothes. Panic immediately ensues, and rich folk begin strapping on life jackets and throwing themselves overboard... right into the waiting jaws of some badly manipulated stock footage. Some of the jerk-offs throw grenades at the shark (which they have on board for some reason), which doesn't work.

Somewhere along the way, this happens:

And then this:

It is transcendent.

After a lot of fumbling around and light swearing, Ben and the old man manage to shoot a missile directly into the shark's big fucking mouth and blow it into Chicken of the Sea.

"Megala-WHO???" Ben jokes at the end, as the blood of the innocent fallen diffuses into the ocean tide around him. He also smiles.

HEY, KNOW WHAT'S A REAL MOVIE?