You can’t say we don’t get around here at B-Movie Enema.

Over the last month and a half or so, we’ve gone from outer space by way of Japan to the sewers under Los Angeles before we hopped across the Atlantic to hang out with crooks in Italy to a top secret facility out in the American desert lousy with dinosaurs to New Zealand to Tromaville, back to Japan, and here we are… headed to Canada for some thrills and chills. We are definitely piling up the frequent flyer miles. Anyway, this week, B-Movie Enema is reviewing a 1982 film that has a few different titles. We’re going to refer to it, as seen above in this article’s headline, as Trapped. The other titles it is known by are The Killer Instinct and Baker County, U.S.A. The latter is one I’ve either seen at a video store or heard of somewhere along the way (as well as being the title given to the film by IMDb).

Trapped has some returning folks that we’ve talked about before. The director of this flick is William Fruet. Fruet directed 1986’s Killer Party, which is a VERY old review here dating back to, like, 2017. Fruet also worked on the 1983 Peter Fonda/Oliver Reed horror film Spasms, which is definitely one I remember from the video stores thanks to an eye-catching box. Seriously… was I supposed to be looking at the naked girl screaming in the shower or the monster-faced man below her?

The answer was “yes.”

The film was written by John Beaird. We know him from his classic 1981 slasher My Bloody Valentine. However, yes, we’ve done a William Fruet movie here. We’ve seen one of John Beaird’s scripts come alive. The thing is, though, they are far from the most recognizable name in this movie. That honor belongs to the film’s star, Henry Silva.

Silva has appeared in two wonderful films I’ve covered on this site. I should also stipulate that these are two wonderful films for two very different reasons. First, 1979’s Thirst is, in my estimation, one of the most critically underrated and underseen horror films of all time, let alone Australia. I just dig the hell out of the concept of vampires farming people to act as, for lack of a better term, blood sacks for their nourishment. He also appeared in 1982’s Megaforce. I’m not sure I need to say much more about that. You might think I need to defend my love of this goofy-ass shitfest of an action film…

But here’s the twist, dear readers, I do not.

Before diving off into the deep end, I also wanted to say that Trapped is produced by Herb Abramson. Abramson was the co-founder of Atlantic Records. Atlantic Records had a bevy of big-time performers, acts, and hits, especially in the 70s, and has one of the all-time great company logos. Abramson didn’t stick with Atlantic too long. He left after relations broke down between him and other investors in the late 50s. After leaving the record company, he sold a pretty key patent to toy manufacturer Mattel. That patent was for a process that would go into the creation of the Chatty Cathy doll. Trapped would be the only film Abramson ever produced.

The movie kicks off hot out of the gates with Henry Silva, a backwater hillbilly, already seemingly hunting. He’s lurking around with his shotgun. If I know anything about hillbillies, they are always lurking about in the woods and hills with their shotguns and their floppy hats. Naturally, he’s huntin’ a barefoot lady folk. You see… hillbilly women are typically traipsing through the wilderness in dresses, barefoot. Did I mention I know things about hillbillies? Did I also mention that this was a Canadian production?

It’s entirely possible neither I nor Canada knows much about the typical American hillbilly beyond the stereotypes.

While Silva, who plays Henry Chatwill, tracks down the woman, two other overall-wearin’ hilljacks are also following. They witness Henry taking the dress off the girl, exposing her jugs. This appeals to the two boys. To get a better look, they try to sneak around the rock they are hiding behind. This only leads to one of the boys falling off the rock and into the creek. Pissed that he’s now going to have to deal with blue balls for the next hour or so, he tells the kids he will kill them.

We transition to Southeastern Tennessee State, where we meet Roger Michaels. He’s one of them smart college boys who thinks he knows a thing or two about a thing or two. He’s in a contentious relationship with a professor, which often gets him in hot water. His buddy, Lee, suggests they pick up their girlfriends and head out to the country. We learn that Roger is from Indiana and Lee’s from New Jersey. Now, both of the guys are deemed to be “Yankees” because of where they’re from. I… I live in Indiana. While I’m a smart guy who knows a thing or two about a thing or two, I don’t know if many other Hoosiers recognize that we are, indeed, in the northern part of the United States and, sure enough, fought with the Union in the Civil War because I see a LOT of people around these parts that fly a Confederate flag, or, as I like to call ’em, “Loser” flags.

I digress.

Anyway, there are four college friends who are planning on spending the weekend in the boondocks out where there are some caves they want to go explore. We have the aforementioned Roger and Lee. Roger’s girlfriend, Diana, and Lee’s girlfriend, Caroline, are also going to the caves. A fifth member of this group, Dave, is going to meet them the next day.

Back in those boondocks, there’s trouble a-brewin’. Henry may have had a meetup with a girl with big knockers in the woods while he was out “checking traps,” but his sexy-ass wife, Amy, is up to no good herself. She comes sauntering seductively and saucily out of her and Henry’s house, looking for some lovin’. She asks around if anyone in the town has seen Henry, but a guy tells her that he was out checking the traps in the woods. She sees a car belonging to a welfare officer and makes her way out to greet the man.

When Henry returns and spots the same vehicle, he knows what that ultimately means. Henry makes a beeline for his house, where he finds the guy inspecting Amy’s cave, if you know what I mean. The rest of the town has never seen Henry this upset. They even try to get Henry’s sister, Miriam, to help de-escalate the situation. She tells the welfare guy, he needs to beat cheeks immediately, while Henry whips Amy for being unfaithful to her wifely duties.

The guy tries driving off, but Henry shoots the guy’s tires, causing him to turn his car over. Henry takes the guy and throws him in the cellar of Henry and Miriam’s general store and locks him in as a captive. He threatens to kill him if he makes too much noise down there. He then tells the entire town that they can’t let him go. This is the law of this hillbilly town.

While Henry makes his case to Miriam, with the whole town gathered in the general store, that he has his right to do what he needs to this guy who took his wife, we see how this town runs its law. And that would be kinda poorly. Look, we already know that Henry, himself, was looking to take a girl while he was out checking those traps. Bear traps, I presume, not, you know, lady traps. Anyway, regardless of whether it was rape or consensual, he doesn’t care. He gets to put some corporal punishment on this guy. Miriam’s like, “Alright, but whatever you do to that guy in the cellar, I reckon you best do the same to Amy. She’s a slut and stuff.” The Elders of this town have already voted on Henry’s side. That means Henry will handle Amy in whatever way, separate from dealing with the guy whom the town is going to turn a blind eye to being invited into her bed.

What I’m saying is this place sucks.

Now, I suppose we could say that giving both the guy and Amy the same punishment would have also sucked. That’s certainly true. But there’s a definite double standard going on in this place. I’m guessing one of two things allows this to be the case. Either 1) Henry is the best damn trapper this town has, and so they kind of depend on him being on their side, or 2) they are just flat out scared of him. I’m gonna guess it’s a little #1 and a little #2. I suspect if you piss Henry off, he might beat you, shoot you, or not share in what he traps with you… Pick any one of those things, or all of those things. Henry even says that his daddy brought these laws to this area and even preached to them how important it was to basically adhere to these laws as if they were godly. No challenge from within or without the area will interfere with what God has ordained as Henry’s rights in this matter. If anyone gets in his way, then God help them.

This is not even the first time they’ve done something like this to someone they didn’t like from the outside.

The next morning, Roger, Diane, Lee, and Caroline make their way out to the boonies. As they drive toward the caves, the community is about to do whatever they plan to do with Amy’s lover. They drag him out into the town and basically string him up and smear hot tar onto his bare back so they can eventually feather him. Amy is terrified. Miriam is irritated. It’s a bad situation. As Henry’s goons have a good laugh, this gives our prisoner a chance to grab the brush with the tar on it and hit Henry with it. He takes off running with the goons soon to follow.

Our four college friends get closer and closer to this area in the heart of Baker County. They are cavorting merrily in the woods near the creek before they plan to head off to where the caves are. They don’t realize that they are getting close to where all this other action is going on. As Henry’s right-hand man, Jeb, fires at the welfare officer, the college friends can hear the gunfire. In fact, the runaway officer runs into the friends, who realize there is a mob after him. They hide and ultimately play witness to the mob cornering the man.

They watch the man try to defend himself against Henry. However, Henry is… crazy? He’s got that crazy speed, strength, and agility? Anyway, he takes the man’s own weapon of self-defense, a branch, and beats him to death with it.

I really like the above shot. One, we absolutely know all four of the college students witnessed the murder and who it was that committed the crime. What better way to show that than to make sure they are in the frame? You could have done this from above their position on top of that rock, looking down as well, but that’s not the choice here, or why this becomes even better of a shot. This angle is so so so much better for one reason alone. This is, more or less, from the victim’s point of view. Not only did he ask for their help when they ran into each other, but now he can see that they were there, witnessing it, and completely unable to help. From the victim’s perspective, it could even look like they are UNWILLING to help him.

Now, I think we can make an assumption here about our college student characters. It’s not like we know them well enough over the course of half a first act (half is being generous because most of the first act is setting up our villain) to know their entire backstories or their principles. That said, we feel confident in knowing that if they knew what they stumbled onto, then we’d have to assume they would have helped if they could. The victim can’t possibly know that. For all he knows, they are cowards or completely unwilling to get themselves involved in this whole business. I like this shot, and I like how these two disparate stories have now intermingled.

In a nice little twist, it turns out that the four college students were closer to the town that Henry hails from than we originally might have thought. After witnessing the murder, they run into a clearing at the edge of the small town and ask for a phone to call the police. They are directed to the only phone in town… at Miriam’s general store. A place where a man is drinking the rest of the moonshine from the previous night’s party, when Henry was celebrating his opportunity to exact his own form of hillbilly justice.

Roger tells Miriam that he needs to use the phone to call the police to report a murder. Both she and the moonshine drinker know what that means. The drunk, Myles, tells them they didn’t see no murder and there’s no need for the sheriff to be involved. Myles says they need to leave, and Roger agrees that maybe what they need to do is go directly to the sheriff himself to report it in person. Roger tells Myles that he’s obstructing justice and will be held personally responsible for barring him from reporting the murder on a public phone.

Miriam is angry because the guy didn’t have to be killed for what he did. Myles tries to tell her that the Elders ruled and everyone accepted it, but it’s not so much Henry she’s worried about. It’s the others who were there. She’s worried about them and how they may have been influenced by Henry to do shitty things. Myles says nothing’s gonna happen. Miriam hopes he’s right about something for once.

Roger and his friends arrive at the sheriff’s station. They try to explain what they saw, and the sheriff is kind of cagey about all of this. They say they were trying to get to a phone in the town in the hills, and the sheriff immediately asks for their names, addresses, and where they can be reached by phone. The sheriff tells them to leave the area, and he’s going to go check in on this and see what he finds.

The sheriff goes to the town to talk to Henry. Turns out the sheriff, Tom, is Henry’s kid brother. Tom says he got a report of another murder in these parts. Another murder? How often do they tar, feather, and kill guys? Were they all Amy’s lovers?

Tom says he has to investigate this and call Knoxville for the investigators. So, Tom tells Henry he has until morning to get anything that doesn’t belong in the woods out of there. Once morning comes, it’s out of his hands. Henry mobilizes his crew to bury the guy’s body and start cleaning up his mess. Moreover, he’s pissed at Amy for, I guess, creating all this mess to begin with?

Roger is a do-gooder. He’s the kind of guy who takes up causes and stuff, you know what I mean? His values and his self-imposed righteousness get him into arguments with his college professors. At the general store, he mouthed off to Myles when he should have just played along and then driven to the sheriff’s station without making a big fuss. He gets a strange feeling that the sheriff isn’t going to do anything about this because he doesn’t ask for a description of the killers. Even when the sheriff tries to tell him to simply get the fuck out of the area for his own safety, he has to make right what went wrong even though he is a city boy from the north(ish) and he has NO idea what he’s going to get himself into with the aggressive Henry and his gaggle of idiot goons with more missing teeth than IQ.

Okay, sure, their gear they brought along is still in the hills, and they want to retrieve that. I guess that’s an okay reason to return to the general location of the murder. Fine. But when the sheriff drives past them without stopping, Roger gets the idea he is doing less than nothing and takes on this crusade himself.

I’m not going to say that Roger is a moron… necessarily. Look, this is a tough scenario for anyone to be in. You see a bunch of hillbillies kill a guy in the woods, where hillbillies live, it’s a hard situation to navigate. Trust me. I live in Indiana. I’ve seen my fair share of hillbillies create mob justice over a guy sleeping with one of their promiscuous wives. If you’re a Hoosier, you’ll see at least half a dozen of these incidents in your life. Roger is still in college, eh maybe this is his first interaction of this kind. But being an armchair participant in this situation, I say he should have beat cheeks. Get the fuck out of there, man. Pound sand, Roger! If you were alone, fine, get into your foolhardy quest for justice. You’re endangering your girlfriend… and Lee’s too! Maybe just get into your Jeep and drive away as quickly as possible.

But he doesn’t do that.

And he endangers his girlfriend… and Lee’s too!

While Henry was roughing up Amy and threatening her with a shotgun in the middle of the town, his goons found Roger, Lee, Diane, and Caroline in the caves where they stashed the body. Are ya happy now, Roger? Your little quest for righteous justice is gonna get everyone killed!

Henry has his goons put the four students into the cellar like they did the other guy. Miriam asks Henry if he plans on killing these kids, too. However, Henry reminds her that when someone gets in the way of their laws, they must be dealt with. At the town hall meeting about what to do with these kids, Henry makes an argument to handle this his way. That way, while the body count will rise, they are all going to be in the clear.

In the cellar, Caroline stops Lee from lighting a match to see anything because it’s a moonshine still. She grew up around the stuff, which gives our heroes some ideas. Outside, Henry tells Jeb that, in the morning, they’ll take the kids to the hills and do it quick and easy. Jeb says he’d like a go with the blonde (Diane) before they kill them. Henry’s like, “Yeah, that’s cool, but if she gets away, you gotta kill her.”

Miriam’s boyfriend or husband or whatever, Leonard, comes up with an idea. He’s tired of how Henry keeps everyone on edge. He’s had enough of his cruelty and general Henry Silva-ness. He tells Miriam they gotta free the kids. Everyone’s asleep, so they need to act now to help them before the morning comes and they are marched out to their deaths. Miriam agrees.

Leonard sneaks through the town to the general store. He lets the kids out while Jeb is making the rounds on patrol. They escape before he can shoot at them. He wakes Henry, who unleashes the dogs while Jeb is sent through the woods after them. Leonard is brought back to answer for what he did, and Henry hits him pretty hard with his shotgun, killing him. That pisses Miriam off even more.

Now, don’t forget that Henry is a trapper. Yeah, there are bear traps out in the woods that the kids don’t know about. Lee steps in one. He, Caroline, and Diane are captured. They’re brought back to town so Jeb can shoot his shot with Diane. When he gets back to town, Miriam tells Henry he’ll see him dead for killing Leonard. The rest of the town is none too pleased about Leonard’s death either. In fact, the elders are beginning to turn against him for how he abuses the law. They’re shocked when he says that he’ll kill anyone who gets in his way of executing justice as he sees fit.

With the start of the next morning, Dave is true to his word and makes his way to the caves to meet with the other four friends. He’s pulled over for speeding by the sheriff’s department. He tells the deputy that he’s out there to do some caving with friends. He asks the deputy if maybe he’s seen them, two guys, two girls, driving in a yellow Jeep. Upon hearing this, the deputy runs back to his car but warns Dave to stay out of the hills.

Henry keeps guard outside the general store while Jeb chases Roger through the woods. Luckily, Jeb is a guy with an IQ about as equal to having that name. Roger is able to double back around and sneak into town. When Jeb reports back to Herny that Roger is nearby, he has Jeb go get Diane to use as a lure. Henry rips Diane’s shirt open and yells out to Roger that he’s gonna fuck her real good. After taking her back into the general store with the leering Jeb, Roger says he’s gonna kill Henry.

Roger finds a hatchet. It looks like he’s about to go hog on Henry and his goons, but he gets knocked out instead. When he comes to, he’s been brought into one of the others’ houses, where Miriam tells Roger not to fall into Henry’s trap. She tells him to make Henry mad. That’s when he’s most likely to make a mistake.

Dave drives into town looking for his friends. Henry, with a shotgun in his hands, says he’s not seen anyone and he best get on up outta here. Dave is about to drive off when Diane screams for Dave to help them. Henry speeds off after Dave and chases him on the road while Roger, with Miriam’s blessing, takes a shotgun to get his friends. Roger is in a standoff with Jeb when he’s taken aback by Diane telling him to kill her captor, allowing Jeb to get an upper hand and forcing Roger to have to duck and hide.

Somewhat surprisingly, Henry’s beaten-up, shitty truck is able to keep pace with Dave’s sporty Firebird. Henry ultimately forces Dave off the road and into a ravine, where Dave’s car explodes, presumably killing him. Back in town, Jeb has gotten Roger dead to rights, as Roger, having lost his shotgun while running away and hiding from Jeb, is trying to climb a tin roof while Jeb clumsily tries to reload his shotgun to kill Roger. Roger knocks the general store’s antenna off the roof, which falls and impales Jeb just as Henry returns to town. Roger tries to hide in the general store, but Henry, fully unhinged and incredibly angry and stupid, drives his truck right into the general store, utterly destroying it.

Roger jumps onto the truck’s hood, calls Henry a fuck, and says he’s gonna kill him. Henry eventually exits the truck and plans to kill Roger in front of the whole town with an axe. As Henry sneaks up behind Roger with the axe, Miriam is able to warn him just in time to dodge it. While Henry yells at the assembled residents of the town, Roger unties the rope that holds the hot tar bucket, causing the tar to spill over Henry.

Still pretty unhinged, this does not stop Henry from chasing after Roger for long. Well, it is long enough for Roger to get his friends out of the general store’s cellar, but not long enough for a full-on escape. Henry tussles with Roger once more before Roger uses a lantern to light the tar on Henry on fire. He ends up leading Henry to fall into the cellar where the moonshine still is, and the whole place goes kablooey.

Dave and Leonard may be dead, but I’m not too sure the town is going to miss Jeb or Henry. They seemed to be a net negative to the town. Roger, Diane, Leo, and Caroline all escape with their lives, which is good and kind of surprising if I’m being honest. All said, here’s hoping the small town in the hills of Beaver Crotch, Tennessee, will soon recover from the tyranny of Henry and forge a new path forward with better laws to govern themselves and be more welcoming to the ideas and people from outside their community.

I think I probably like Trapped a little more than I’m supposed to. After a cursory look on Letterboxd, I found that the consensus says this is a 3-star movie. I think it’s a little better than just above average. It’s not a uniquely difficult movie to watch or understand. It’s really just about one really bad dude who really likes killing people. It’s kind of peppered with some other ideas, like how Roger’s initial argument with his professor is the idea that there is no excuse for taking another person’s life no matter the situation, or how law enforcement systematically kind of breaks down in these kinds of in-groups as is the case with the sheriff protecting Henry just because of familial relationship despite Henry not exactly respecting his brother’s authority. That’s just extra flavoring to make this a fuller meal of a movie.

By the midway point of the movie, Amy is kind of forgotten in the movie. She’s kind of there, but once Roger and his friends are captured by Henry’s goons, she’s no longer a character. That’s kind of being generous to begin with because she was hardly a character to begin with, I guess. She was really just the sexy little catalyst for this movie’s entire existence.

That said, it’s a nice little slice of exploitation thriller from Canada. It’s well-made too. It doesn’t require too much in terms of exciting camera work from Mark Irwin, but it’s more than competent. Irwin did work on Cronenberg’s Fast Company, The Brood, and Scanners before this movie, and then Videodrome, The Dead Zone, and The Fly after this movie. He worked with Fruet again on Spasms. But later, he’d go on to shoot major films like the remake of The Blob, Scream, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, and several of the films from the Farrelly Brothers.

But really, if there’s a reason to watch this movie, it’s for Henry Silva. It’s shocking there’s anything left of that little general store or the woods themselves from all the scenery-chewing he did while working on this movie. He’s always good, but he gets to really go nuts here, and I think the movie’s better for it. So, yeah, exceptional marks for Silva here.

That should just about do it here for this week’s review. Next time, if you can believe it, it’s the 500th review at B-Movie Enema. It’s amazing how fast that kind of milestone was reached. I’m not sure if I was doing myself a favor with the movie I chose for the review, but I was able to survive Honorable Men. So, why not give Dangerous Men a shot?

Come back next week and celebrate the big 500 with me!