In Tourist Trap, a group of young people stops on a back road at a wax-figure museum run by Mr. Slausen, an affable, somewhat melancholic man who welcomes them with a host's hospitality. The film's title says it all: it is a tourist trap in the literal sense. The museum does not exist to exhibit figures, but to stop curious travelers and turn them, one by one, into the new pieces of the collection. For the theory of risky facilities, Slausen and his museum are the roadside trap-venue in its purest form: an establishment whose façade of innocent attraction exists solely to bait the victim.
// The theoryThe attraction as a capture mechanism
Eck and Clarke noted that one trait that makes a facility risky is its capacity to attract and retain the right victim at a point where surveillance is missing. Slausen's museum is designed for exactly that. Its location —a back road, remote, little traveled— guarantees isolation. Its lure —the picturesque, the curious, the promise of an unusual attraction— does the work that alcohol or partying does in other venues: it stops the traveler, pulls him out of the safety of his route and draws him into the premises. Once inside, the facility closes in: the museum is a maze of rooms, mannequins and dead ends, a design that makes it impossible to flee or call for help. The theory stresses that the establishment does not commit the crime, but it architects it: every element —the sign, the location, the interior— is calibrated to lead the prey from wonder into the trap.
The picturesque lure as bait
Slausen illustrates a specific mechanism of risky facilities: the use of curiosity as bait. Just as the bar uses partying and the motel uses rest, the roadside attraction uses wonder —«come see something strange»—. It is an especially effective hook because it disarms suspicion with a positive emotion: the traveler does not enter fleeing a danger, but seeking an experience. And that is the perversion of the trap-venue: it turns the most innocent impulse —curiosity, the urge to stop and look— into the first step toward the slaughterhouse. Eck and Clarke taught reading establishments by their real function, not by their façade, and Slausen is the textbook case: a museum whose stated function (to exhibit) hides its real function (to capture). The practical lesson is to learn to tell the legitimate lure from the bait, always asking what happens to whoever accepts the invitation. When an attraction is designed to leave you alone, with no way out and no witnesses, it stops being an attraction: it is the mouth of a trap.
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// The subjectThe affable host as the venue's façade
What is disturbing about Slausen is his affability. He is not an ogre who scares people off; he is a cordial, almost endearing host, who welcomes with hospitality and converses with nostalgia. That cordiality is the human extension of the museum's façade: just as the sign promises curiosity, Slausen promises warmth, and both lower the visitor's defenses. In terms of the theory, Slausen is the manager who has fused his person with the trap: the museum is his extension and he is the venue's friendly face. His melancholy —that of a lonely man, clinging to a dying attraction and to his «figures»— adds an unsettling layer: the risky facility as the refuge of a pathology, a place built not only to kill, but to people its owner's solitude with victims turned into immobile company. Slausen does not separate the business from the crime or from himself: the museum, the host and the killer are one and the same.
Mr. Slausen
// The fault lineNeither suspect every attraction, nor ignore the design
The fault line in reading Slausen is paranoia: concluding that every roadside attraction, every picturesque lure, hides a trap —when the overwhelming majority are harmless and often endearing businesses—. The theory does not authorize that general suspicion; it demands looking at concrete traits: extreme isolation, absence of witnesses, a design that prevents leaving. Tourist Trap plays precisely with that tension —Slausen's hospitality against the architecture of his museum—, and the honest reading sits in between: not demonizing curiosity or hospitality, but learning to read the design of a place beneath its façade. The risky facility betrays itself not in what it promises, but in what happens to whoever accepts the promise: if the place leaves you isolated, with no way out and no one to see you, the façade, however friendly, was bait.
That Slausen's victims end up turned into museum figures —the crime built into the very attraction that served as bait— is the image Tourist Trap offers the theory: the perfect trap-venue is the one where the victim ends up becoming part of the lure that will attract the next.
Reading the real function of a place
Slausen matters because he teaches how to separate the façade from the real function of an establishment. The most dangerous risky facilities do not announce their danger: they disguise it as service, as rest or —as here— as curiosity. Eck and Clarke's lesson is that a venue is judged by what happens to whoever trusts it, not by how welcoming its sign is. Slausen's museum, with its innocent lure over the slaughterhouse, is the reminder that hospitality can be the architecture of the trap, and that prevention comes from looking at the design —does this place retain you, isolate you, leave you with no way out and no witnesses?— rather than the host's smile. Learning to make that reading is what distinguishes the curious traveler from the prudent one, and the legitimate attraction from the trap.
Three key takeaways
- Mr. Slausen runs the wax museum in Tourist Trap, the roadside trap-venue in its purest form: a tourist attraction whose real function is to capture whoever stops to visit it. The façade of innocent curiosity is the bait; the isolated premises, the trap.
- It illustrates the picturesque lure as bait: curiosity —a positive impulse— disarms suspicion better than fear. The theory teaches reading the establishment by its real function (to capture), not by its stated façade (to exhibit).
- Neither suspect every roadside attraction nor be swayed by the host's hospitality. The risky facility betrays itself in the design: if it retains you, isolates you and leaves you with no way out and no witnesses, the lure was bait. A venue is judged by what happens to whoever trusts it.
Sources · further reading
- Eck, J. E., Clarke, R. V. & Guerette, R. T. (2007). «Risky Facilities». Crime Prevention Studies, 21.
- Clarke, R. V. (1997). Situational Crime Prevention: Successful Case Studies. Harrow and Heston.
- Clarke, R. V. & Eck, J. E. (2005). Crime Analysis for Problem Solvers in 60 Small Steps. COPS.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
¿Quién es Mr. Slausen?
Mr. Slausen («—») es un villano de Tourist Trap, analizado en KRIMINIS con la lente de la criminología. A rickety sign invites you to visit a wax-figure museum on a forgotten road.
¿Por qué Mr. Slausen (—) se convierte en villano?
Mr. Slausen and Tourist Trap: the roadside attraction whose true purpose is to capture whoever stops to visit it. Tourist curiosity as the bait of the slaughterhouse.
¿Qué teoría criminológica explica a Mr. Slausen?
El caso de Mr. Slausen se analiza desde la Instalaciones Criminógenas. Risky facilities (Eck and Clarke) include the establishment designed as a trap. Mr. Slausen, the owner of the wax museum in Tourist Trap, embodies the roadside trap-venue in its purest form: a tourist attraction whose true purpose is to capture whoever stops to visit it. The façade of innocent curiosity —the museum, the picturesque lure— is the bait, and the isolated establishment does the rest: tourist hospitality turned into a slaughterhouse.
