Turns out Tourist Trap was a test run of sorts for director David Schmoeller in the Shit That Should Not Move horror subgenre. Having made that low-budget chiller and its mannequins so effective in 1979 for producer Charles Band, Schmoeller earned himself the gig of helming Full Moon’s flagship, Puppetmaster, which has served as Band’s bread and butter ever since, for better and often worse.

Set at the Bodega Bay Inn, this inaugural entry in the Puppet Master series (two words beginning with the first sequel) isn’t so bad. In a 1939 prologue, puppet creator Andre Toulon (William Hickey, Tales from the Darkside: The Movie) already has discovered an ancient Egyptian method of giving life to the inanimate. As the Nazis come charging in his room to swipe his secret, Toulon bites a bullet, ensuring it stays out of the Führer’s hands. Fifty years later, a select few people gifted with extrasensory powers are summoned to the inn at the behest of colleague Neil Gallagher (Jimmie F. Skaggs, 1988’s Ghost Town) who has unlocked Toulon’s secret … and since committed suicide.

Gallagher’s cohorts stick around to collectively figure out, y’know, what the hap. They include an anthropology professor (Paul Le Mat, Strange Invaders) with midtransformed-wolfman hair and dreams of things to come; a fortune teller (Irene Miracle, Dario Argento’s Inferno) who carries a stuffed dog; and, most hilariously, a scalding-hot psychic (Kathryn O’Reilly, Jack’s Back) who experiences the past of her surroundings. Seriously, she steps in the elevator and senses a rape; she plops onto her hotel room’s bed and feels the oohing and ahhing of Clark Gable and Carole Lombard’s mattress activity of decades prior. (Apparently, the Bodega Bay Inn doesn’t retire mattresses.)

Oh! And there are killer puppets. No one in Gallagher’s party possesses peripheral vision, because Toulon’s puppets roam about the halls rather freely and without causing alarm … until they decide it’s time to commit murder. Although they have no names in the movie, Band’s Full Moon catalogue of action figures, comics and other merch will not let you forget their cute monikers. Each is labeled for his or her defining trait, e.g., Jester, Pinhead and Tunneler. Leech Woman pukes up the slimy, bloodsucking worms onto the chests of her prey (an act that look like she’s defecating from the wrong end), while the skeletal-faced Blade (a dead ringer for Invasion U.S.A. villain Richard Lynch) stabs his victims. In arguably Puppetmaster’s most overt point of humor, Blade’s pupils pop out as bolts when he peeks through the keyhole as the sexy psychic in undress.

With more of a mystery vibe at play, not to mention legitimate storytelling in general, Puppetmaster bears little resemblance to the double-digit sequels Band continues churning out, now with crowdfunding assistance. While the puppets are the draw, they are not the focus. When they are onscreen, however, it’s for the benefit of Schomeller’s picture because David Allen’s stop-motion animation is quite good, particularly on a Band budget. Then again, on projects big (Young Sherlock Holmes, for which Allen was Oscar-nommed) and small (this) and really small (Equinox), Allen delivered. —Rod Lott

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What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas — you just gotta get there first. Tell that to the terrified trio of showgirls who find themselves cast in a Terror Circus when their crappy car blows a radiator and breaks down on a rural route frequented only by tumbleweeds.

The interchangeable ladies (played by Buckskin’s Manuela Thiess, Sisters of Death’s Sherry Alberoni and Warlock’s Gyl Roland) are pleased to accept a ride from total stranger Andre (Andrew Prine, Eliminators) … until they realize they’re then trapped. In fact, they’re the latest additions to Andre’s ever-expanding menagerie of “my little bears”: women he keeps chained up in his Barn of the Naked Dead (one of the movie’s alternate titles, with Nightmare Circus being another). Justifies one of the comely captives, “He had nice eyes.”

Guess what, gang? Andre’s got mommy issues. As a self-appointed ringmaster, Andre dons a top hat, takes whip in hand and works the women over, toward his goal of building a “trained animal act.” And if the ladies don’t obey his orders? Easy: Those deemed “untrainable” are let loose in the field to play tag with his not-so-trained cougar. Me-OW!

Prine’s antagonist is perhaps even more wacko than his serial killer of The Centerfold Girls; regardless, his portrayal is just as committed (no pun intended). As if you needed telling, Terror Circus is not in the greatest of taste, then or now, yet it actually has more in store for viewers than first glance. The most interesting thing about it would be the deformed cannibal freak (wearing a wedding ring!) whom Andre keeps in the shed, if not for the fact that the film is directed by Robert Altman protégé Alan Rudolph (Breakfast of Champions), who — according to reportage in 2013’s Forgotten Horrors to the Nth Degree by Michael H. Price and John Wooley — not only disowns it, but denies involvement entirely. Nice try, Alan! He should be proud that his Circus takes an end turn in defiance of both genre beats and audience expectations. —Rod Lott

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