YIKES

AN INTERVIEW WITH DAVID SCHMOELLER – PART 2: TOURIST TRAP

Tourist Trap (its Unsung Horrors entry here) is the most insane movie you likely haven't seen. I'd attempt to explain exactly what it's about, but I would become lost in the subplots and sub-sub-plots and I'd question if I were actually remembering everything significant to mention, and then I would likely wander away to satisfy my impulse to watch the film again. Simply, it is a 1979 oddity about a group of stranded kids, living mannequins, a man with telekinesis, and a lot of nightmarish imagery. It is terrifying and absurd and hilarious and disturbing somehow all at once. It is a mind-blowing film that offers dozens of questions with little answers. If there's one person who could shed light on this unheralded little beauty, it would be the film's director, David Schmoeller, returning again to The End of Summer for a frank discussion on the film's origins, a little about Puppetmaster, working with Charles Band, and the 1970s.

The End of Summer (TEOS): I think the best way to start off is for you to provide the genesis of Tourist Trap. This is a film that I saw for the first time several years ago and just did not know what to think. It was horrific and strange and alternately kind of hilarious. I've revisited it several times since then, and not only does it hold up, but it gets better – and I find more to appreciate about it – with each viewing. This isolated man's nightmarish house seems to exist in its own world and with its own rules, and nearly all of it defies explanation. How on earth did you come up with this concept?

David Schmoeller (DS): There is a “why” and a “how” aspect to this question. The “why” – why did I come up with this idea? The answer is a very practical one. I had just graduated from film school and was looking for a way to break into Hollywood as a feature director. When I was in grad school at the University of Texas at Austin shooting my thesis film, Tobe Hooper was in Austin shooting The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. It was a low-budget hit that launched his career. So, I decided to do a horror film in the same vein.

The “how?” My thesis film – The Spider Will Kill You – was a "Twilight Zone" short about a blind man and mannequins. I thought the aspect of mannequins coming alive – and their ability to scare you (or creep you out, at least) – was a good ingredient. So, I used some of the basic structure of Chainsaw (van full of young victims) and the lone madman who appears to be okay (Psycho).

TEOS: Tourist Trap exists in a very surreal and nightmarish landscape – if I had to compare it to another film, I would cite Phantasm, due to its dreamy tone and its lack of explanation in regards to the film's more oddball offerings. It's this kind of dreamy tone that makes Tourist Trap stand out from its other late-1970s counterparts. At what point in the production phase did you realize you wanted to push this kind of surreal and unusual approach?

DS: I think that dreamy quality was in the script, and also in previous short films I had made. (The Spider Will Kill You* and Lora Lee's Bedroom* – those are just two of my shorts that had the same quality.) And the tone of those short films probably came in part from my literature studies from my days living and studying in Mexico – the influence of magic realism. And of course, the main influence of The Spider Will Kill You was this bizarre line of mannequins I found in J.C. Penney’s that was so perversely surreal, it makes me laugh to this day (this was the late 1960s). The infant mannequins had some facial features – eyes, nose, mouth, ears – but parts were starting to disappear. As you went up the age-representation of the mannequins – say, the three-year-olds – they started losing whole features – maybe just a single eye. It was just smoothed over. As the mannequins aged, they lost more and more features – until you got to the adults, and all their features were just gone…all smoothed over…so that they almost looked alien. They were so highly stylized; they just didn’t seem to belong in a place like J.C. Penney’s – very surreal and very bizarre. That was when I came up with the story for The Spider Will Kill You.

TEOS: There is a wonderful juxtaposition of legitimate terror and strange, almost absurd humor. I'll cite the "dinner scene" – when Slausen and his "brother" share a meal of soup, which ends with the brother's head falling off – as an example. Noticeably, the film doesn't inject any humor until the kids are already in peril. Because of this, the humor seems to come out of nowhere and feels unexpected. Was this a conscious choice?

DS: Well, I certainly hope the humor was intentional. Although, at the first cast and crew screening in L.A., there was some unexpected laughter in places that surprised me – I remember asking the person next to me, “Why are they laughing?” It could have been nervous laughter – or they could have been laughing at the absurdity of it all. Or, maybe they just thought something or other was just so awful that it was laughable. L.A. cast and crew screenings are full of people who are very cynical – not at all like the cast and crew screenings in Las Vegas, which are nice love-fest screenings. In L.A., they have seen and worked on everything and they tend to judge film work much more harshly. It’s like: “Show me what you got, sucker. I am not very easily impressed.” By the way, that is not the brother in that surreal dinner scene – because he is dead. It is a figment of Slausen’s imagination – it is not real; it doesn’t really happen; it is a dream…it is Eileen, in fact, as far as Slausen is concerned.

TEOS: In a movie like Tourist Trap, especially after a point, I feel like anything could happen, and I stop questioning what I'm seeing and I just kind of hold on for the ride.  I guess that's the beauty of Tourist Trap. About that dinner scene, I need to know: How did you manage to concoct such a strange exchange between these characters? Were you channeling "Abbot and Costello" as you wrote that scene?

DS: This particular exchange just came out almost in whole – as is. Writing generally is very easy for me, but in this case, I think it can be explained this way: the scene is completely organic. Slausen is having a meal with Eileen, who is just a mannequin with Eileen’s face-mask, scarf, and clothes. Slausen has a conversation with her and she responds in Davey’s voice, which is just Slausen slipping deeper and deeper into the abyss of his madness. And at the very end, the lines get crossed (Eileen/Davey gets ahead of the question) and then her head snaps off. It was one of those scenes that came to me in its entirety, and I just had to type it out…the best kind of scene.

TEOS: The character of Slausen possesses incredible superpowers. He has the ability to move objects with his mind, and because of this can seemingly bring mannequins and dolls to life. Yet, there is absolutely no explanation for this. Why did you choose to leave his abilities vague and unexplained?

DS: The power of telekinesis was suggested by Charlie [Band, producer]. It was his only contribution to the script, which was complete when we submitted it to him. At first, I really didn’t like the idea, because the story was entirely psychological. Giving Slausen the power of telekinesis actually explained a lot of the occurrences – not directly, but just vaguely. The audience may assume that the mannequins move because Slausen is making them move with his T-powers. I thought I was already explaining too much, so I certainly didn’t want to explain how or why he had this power. The historical figures in his museum (Custer, Sitting Bull, et al.) are automatons; they are mechanical creations and move because of science. If [audiences] think they move because Slausen is making them move with his telekinetic powers, that’s okay with me.

TEOS: Tell me about the film's musical score.

DS: How Pino Donaggio became the composer was just a stroke of luck. I was asked to be an interpreter by Joe Dante, who had hired Pino Donaggio to score Piranha. Pino did not speak English, so Pino and I spoke Spanish. After we finished spotting the film I asked Pino if he would score Tourist Trap. We screened it for him and he agreed. Charlie Band had spent much of his childhood in Italy, so he was fluent in Italian and he and Pino hit it off immediately. Somehow Charlie came up with another $50,000 dollars for Pino’s fee and the entire orchestral score, which was recorded in Rome. The budget rose from $300,000 to $350,000. I learned so much about scoring a movie from Pino.

TEOS: Charles Band has a somewhat divisive reputation in the horror community. You collaborated with him on this and your 1989 film Puppetmaster. How would you describe your working relationship with him?

DS: For me, Charlie was a very good producer to work for, because he left you alone for the most part. And for most of my movies, we had enough money to make a reasonably good movie. He was not an on-set producer at all. He didn’t pay very much, and sometimes it was hard to get paid, but in my case, I always got paid – until I left his employment. He owes me money for Puppetmaster, and when I tried to collect it he took my name off the movie and put his name on it. (He took my "A Film By David Schmoeller" credit off, and put his name above the title: Charles Band’s Puppetmaster.) That’s a real shitty thing to do – and very petty and small-minded. He’s starting to get old and I think the business is more of a struggle for him, so he feels the need to crib credits. So be it.

TEOS: I don't suppose you're lucky enough to receive any royalties each time a new Puppetmaster film is made, are you? I believe the series is hovering somewhere around ten entries, now...  

DS: Yes, that’s the money he owes me – Puppetmaster residuals.

TEOS: One could argue that the 1970s produced some of the best genre films to date, and Tourist Trap was released at the end of its run in 1979. What was it about this ten-year period that resulted in films like The Exorcist, Halloween, Phantasm, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and the many more?

DS: The '70s also produced some of the most original mainstream movies, too, so it wasn’t just genre films. I think it mostly has to do with the fact that filmmaking was considered more of a director’s domain, and the writers and directors were not interfered with as much as they were in later decades, when the cost of movies started to rise considerably. While The Exorcist was a big studio movie, William Friedkin was just coming off winning an Oscar for directing The French Connection, so he had almost complete control. There is a very funny story of how these three studio executives were assigned to The Exorcist and when Friedkin was way over schedule and way over budget, one of these executives finally had had enough. So he picked up the phone and called Friedkin on the set and said, “Billy, this has just got to stop, it has to stop. And if it doesn’t, well, I’m just going to have to pull the plug.” And Friedkin said, “Okay, go ahead – pull the plug.” And the executive quickly backtracked and said, “Well, Billy, I don’t mean I would REALLY pull the plug.” At which point, Friedkin hung up. Back at the executive’s office, when HE hung up, one of the other executives said, “That was the most expensive phone call you have ever made.”

Halloween was an auteur film, made by Carpenter with no interference from anyone. Same with Phantasm and Texas Chain Saw. The budget [of The Exorcist] greatly eclipsed the budgets of these other three films, but they were all directed by extremely talented filmmakers.

TEOS: Shout Factory is revisiting another of your earlier films, Crawlspace, for a special edition re-release. Has there been talk about seeing a similar release for Tourist Trap?

DS: Catacombs was released by Shout Factory in October with a new director commentary, and Crawlspace comes out on blu-ray in December with a director’s commentary. I was contacted by the person doing the new blu-ray of Tourist Trap to do a new commentary of the movie, but I haven’t heard back from him, so I suspect Charles Band killed the idea (even though I was perfectly happy to pay for the recording myself). It is supposed to come out in December.

TEOS: Now that Little Monsters*, your newest feature, is available on video, do you have anything next in the pipeline that fans can look forward to?  

DS: Yes, I am writing a new horror film called Dead Angels (from the children’s refrain: “When angels fail, they go to hell.”) It’s about dead people whose souls are stuck in the netherworld until they can track down and kill the person who killed them in the first place. It deals with who is really the living dead among us and how many times do you have to kill someone before they stay dead. It’s horror film noir.

 

* David Schmoeller's new film, Little Monsters, is currently available on DVD here, and the director's early short films are available on DVD directly from his official website. 

Follow David at his website and Facebook. 

DO THE FREDDY

FATHER AND DAUGHTER

Late one evening, a husband and wife were enjoying a romantic drive along a lonely mountain road. They were just rounding a sharp bend when a little girl came tearing out of the bushes by the side of the road. She stood right in the path of their car, holding out her hands and crying loudly.

The husband was so shocked by her sudden appearance that he almost ran over her. Luckily, he managed to swerve at the last moment and avoid her. Glancing in his rear view mirror, he saw her running off into the darkness. She couldn’t have been more than 6 or 7.

When they had calmed down, the couple began to dicuss what they had just seen.

“What is a little girl doing out here all alone after dark?” the husband wondered.

“I don’t know,” replied his wife. “It gives me the creeps. Do you think she was a ghost?”

“I don’t think so,” said the husband. “She seemed so upset. Maybe she was lost and in trouble…”

Just then, they noticed a man on the road ahead. When the man noticed their car, he put out his hand and flagged them down. The husband pulled over to the side of the road.

The man was out of breath. “Have you seen my daughter?” he asked.

He said that he had taken his daughter for a walk along the mountain trail and they had lost track of time. In the darkness they had become separated and now he was desperately looking for her.

The couple told him they had seen a little girl running across the road only a few minutes before. The husband felt so guilty about not stopping for the child that he offered her father a lift back to where they had seen her.

“No thanks,” replied the man. “You don’t have to that. Thank you very much though.”

When they described where they had seen his daughter, the man thanked them again for their help and took off running down the road.

A week later, the husband and wife were watching TV together. On the news, a reporter was saying that the dead body of a little girl had been found on a lonely mountain road and the police had arrested the man who murdered her.

Looking at the picture that was displayed on the screen, the couple were horrified.

It was the same man they had spoken to.

He wasn’t the little girl’s father at all.

The little girl had been struggling to escape the clutches of her kidnapper and, without knowing it, they had helped him catch her.

Story source.

CLOSE CALL

HAPPY THANKSGIVING: SHITTY FLICKS: BLOOD FREAK

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've ever wanted to see a film in which a man does drugs, eats diseased meat, and turns into a chicken, then, sorry, you're barking up the wrong tree here. Blood Freak is actually about a man who does drugs, eats diseased meat, and turns into a turkey. 

Sure, sure, some of you may argue "tomato tomato" (if you pronounce that second tomato differently), but there is a huge distinction. I mean, would the camera still shake a lot, and unintentionally? Would the acting still be so hideous as to be non-existent? Would the audio still drop out whenever it damn well pleases?

To all of the above, yes.

Then what's the distinction?

All that fucking gobbling, I'd say.

As for the film...

In the world of Blood Freak, drugs are bad, but pot is a-okay. 

"Please don't do any other drugs while you're here," some broad says to some dude at a party before he even takes off his jacket. SHE looks like Peggy Bundy, and HE looks like Elvis. Apart, they're just two people, but together, they are two people really really frightened of the hard stuff. And HE rocks an awesome pompadour. 

She (Angel) leaves and he (Herschell) is left alone with the siren of the party. She compliments him and calls him handsome. "Don't you have a boyfriend?" he retorts. Then he calls her a tramp, because this film is, like, super moral.

Later, Herschell hangs around outside with a bunch of girls who speak like they've just woken up from a coma-dream in which they were sorting periodicals. It's a wild scene, man. They also talk about the Bible a lot.

In fact, I think this whole movie is about the Bible. This movie called Blood Freak.

Pretty far out!

From time to time, The Most Interesting Man In The World, your narrator, shows up to wax philosophic about the events which have transpired so far. Or, you know, whatever he feels like. He has a magical power, which is to look like every father everyone has ever had. He also hearts leisure suits.

"Welcome to my Rec Room of Philosophy."

But then he vanishes into a wisp of haughty air and it's back to the movie. Try to guess what our characters are saying to each other - losers get to keep watching! (Winners go home and fuck the prom queen!)

Herschell mumbles his way into a job at Angel's father's poultry farm, but for the time being the pool is calling him! While there he is mercilessly hit on by Ann, who keeps a Band-Aid tin filled with drugs on her person.

Look out, Herschell! You're at a crossroads! 

"I can do without it, thank you," he says about her pot.

"How could such a big hunk of man be such a damned coward?" she inquires.

Peer pressure has never been so textbook. He accepts the marijuana and filters it through his circulatory system. They pass the joint back and forth several times without saying a fucking thing. And THAT'S when the laughter begins.

HA HA HA HA!

OH, HE HE HA HA!

HA HA HA!

(SNORT)

HAAAAAAAA--

Then sex happens. It's about as hot as you might expect, considering this was 1972 and Herschell looks like Johnny Cash face-pummeled by oil-covered hammers. But mm, boy, do we get to watch it...minute by minute.

"And then he's all like, 'I've got BINDERS full of women! '"

After their tryst, Herschell is back to his own curmudgeonly self. He hops on his motorcycle and metals on over to the poultry farm. All the cocks are gobbling and he likes to get right up in there, finger them, and gobble back. 

Inside, Herschell meets two scientists doing turkey experiments. One of them, a large and in charge fellow named Dr., I dunno, Huge, is clearly in love with Herschell from the start. They explain that Herschell is to do some odd jobs around the farm, and even make a little more money by eating experimental turkeys to "see if there are any side effects," which is something no one would ever ever agree to.

"Okay, it's a deal," says Herschell.

Shit-kicker music soon starts and Herschell finds himself right at home feeding the turkeys and randomly throwing them around. Soon after he's tuckered out and appears violently ill. Ann grows concerned and calls Guy, who is this huge drug guy who likes drugs and has drugs a lot. He brings drugs right over and Herschell goes nutty for them. He smokes and smokes and soon his sweats and shivers go away. But he grabs Guy and threatens to "break every bone in his miserable body" if he doesn't keep him supplied with drugs, since Guy's the one who got him hooked in the first place (even though it was actually Ann).

Ohhhh, I get it. Angel and Ann! Angel didn't want Herschell to do drugs, but Ann did! Ann as in Sat-an!

How subtle!

Later, Herschell eats experimental turkey meat RIGHT in front of the living turkeys because he is a fucking sadist.

Then the following happens:

Herschell falls into a bush.

Herschell has a seizure. 

Herschell temporarily stops having a seizure. 

The scientists discover Herschell suffering from the turkeyhigh and they "dump him" somewhere. Afterwards, they all have a meeting about what they're going to do. Watch as everyone flubs their lines but forges ahead, anyway.

Their plan is: do nothing. 

Time passes, night falls, and Herschell is still having that seizure. It just may be the longest in history. It also kinda looks like air guitar. 

Later that night, I guess, Herschell goes to Ann's house to knock shit off her tables. Then it's revealed that Herschell has a goddamn fucking huge turkey head now. Ann, not the least put-off by his new bird head, immediately begins describing the future they could no longer have, since Herschell is now Turkish. The longest one-sided conversation in history then occurs until it's implied that Herschell and Ann make turkey whoopy, and he gobbles as they touch beaks.

--"I know I asked for some Wild Turkey, but this is ridiculous!"
--"Shut the fuck up, Barry."

Ann calls an emergency meeting with the Allman Brothers to show them Herschell's new look. Herschell enters the scene, shocking music plays, and then I'm...not quite sure what happens, because it cuts immediately to him walking around outside in his big stupid turkey head.

Herschell ends up at some chick's house, so he grabs her from the car and carries her away as she frantically kicks her feet in fear...without making a fucking sound. It's...the most awkward thing I've ever seen. 

Back at the Herschell Intervention where Herschell isn't, Ann and the Allman brothers talk shit out. They bemoan the fact that it was Guy's drugs which made Herschell an addict and that basically this was all Guy's fault.

"The only thing Guy was ever good for was always having drugs," Duane Allman says, apparently completely missing the point of the conversation he's a part of.

"Smoke pot?"

"Well, all right."

"It's not just Herschell's physical appearance that worries me," explains Greg Allman. "It's his head."

"Maybe later, man, I've gotta run to the sto--"

 

Meanwhile, with Herschell, he hangs up the broad he kidnapped to stick her, bleed her out, and drink her drug-addled blood, which he is now addicted to. Another broad happens upon this and hilariously screams the exact same scream, over and over. Apparently the editor only had one scream on file, and so he used it nine fucking times in a row. 

He then discovers a couple in a car doing some unsubtle heroin. The dude giving the chick the injection never even pushes the plunger, but she gets hiiiiiiiiiigh anyway. She immediately becomes Herschell's next victim and we're treated to that same scream again two more times. And since this chick is wearing an American flag pattern blouse, now covered in blood, all I can think is, "Yeah, maaan. America is like...a dead drug addict being sucked off by a mutant turk-man...maaaaaan."

An old guy stumbles upon this scene of a dead American girl, strung upside down and covered in her own blood, and is clearly, openly, obviously smiling. He is soon killed by the giant turkey that is Herschell. 

THEN some overweight dude that must have loved that old man hardcore stumbles across his dead body, flips his shit, and then attacks Herschell, only after repeating some of his own screams. I guess Herschell survives this fight, because after a cut, we see him wandering around a field looking disoriented. 

Meanwhile, Guy must be super terrified of Herschell's threat of bodily harm, because he's meeting his dealer to score some drugs. Once Guy and his dealer meet to make the trade, Guy comes up short because he's a dead beat, so he tells the dealer her can just have Ann, since she's there. The dealer agrees and goes immediately for the tits, to which Ann objects. The dealer runs away in fear and runs afoul of a giant turkey named Herschell, much like we all will when our time is up. The dealer ends up on a table saw and Hershell cuts off one of his feet. As Herschell sits below the stump to be douched with the dealer's blood, and as the dealer screams the same scream over and over, I have to confess that this is probably the most amazing thing I've ever seen in film.

This guy loves the cock.

The film pre-ends with Herschell getting his head cut off by the Allman Brothers, which is substituted with an actual shot of a turkey being beheaded. Because, ya know, we needed that.

And then the film actually ends with the revelation that it was all a dream! And Herschell learns a valuable lesson: It was wrong of him to take recreational drugs in addition to the prescriptions he was receiving at the military hospital after his experiences in Vietnam. They must play Blood Freak at every Congressional hearing as a reminder of what could happen if marijuana were ever legalized nationwide. Better just limit our drugs to prescription only, which, as we all know, has never killed anyone.

At film's honest-to-gosh end, Angel tells Herschell to pray to God and ask Him to increase his faith. And he does. But does God answer?

Probably not, since there's no such thing. 

P.S. At the tail end of the Most Interesting Man In The World's final monologue, you can clearly hear the director call "cut."

That's a good idea!

HEY, KNOW WHAT'S A REAL MOVIE?