Be Careful Where You Stop on Your Road Trip
Never trust a road stop
Tourist Trap (1979) d: David Schmoeller
Dolls (1987) d: Stuart Gordon
Tourist Trap’s synopsis is absolutely dime a dozen: a group of scantily clad teenage caricatures on vacation stop at a roadside museum after car trouble then start dropping like flies. Don’t let that dissuade you, because this gem of a slasher is BIZARRE. I write little notes to myself after I watch a horror movie, and this one earned, “This movie was kookoo bananas and I loved every minute.” It’s tonally all over the place - some of it manages to be genuinely creepy before swinging into goofy camp. I think it’s really special.
Even though I love it, I wasn’t going to include Tourist Trap on any of these lists because I didn’t have a natural partner for it. Then I watched Dolls. These two are a perfect pair without being redundant. Come for the creepy dolls, stay for the giant killer teddy bear. I love the sense of justice here - if you aren’t a complete and total piece of shit in this movie, you’ll be just fine. It’s a silly blast.
When preparing this list, I discovered that these two movies actually share a producer - legend Charles Band (whose other producing credits include titles such as “The Gingerdead Man,” and “Evil Bong 3-D: The Wrath of Bong”, what even is the horror genre).