Sleepaway Camp (1983)
Directed by Robert Hiltzik
Written by Robert Hiltzik
Starring Felissa Rose, Mike Kellin, Paul DeAngelo, Jonathan Tiersten
Release Date November 18th, 1983
Published July 16th, 2023
When I first saw Sleepaway Camp, some time in my early 20s, I thought it was a goofy, silly, fun-bad horror movie. Now, in my 40s, the joke has worn thin. Instead of enjoying the terrible acting, the odd choice to show a large portion of a camp baseball game, and Felissa Rose's bizarre performance, all feel like a massive waste of my time. Where I once laughed at the outrageous gory death scenes and THAT twist reveal at the end, I am no longer enjoying myself. Is it maturity or a general grumpiness that has set in? I can't be sure. One thing that I am sure of however is, I now have a Sleepaway Camp box set DVD for sale.
Sleepaway Camp is a slasher film set at a summer camp in the early 1980s. Angela (Felissa Rose) is being forced to attend by her bizarre Aunt Martha (Desiree Gould). Thankfully, Angela has her cousin, Ricky (Jonathan Tiersten), who threatens to fight anyone who gives Angela a hard time. That, at least, keeps the boys in line but it doesn't stop Ricky's camp crush, Judy (Karen Fields), from mocking Angela, with her camp counselor pal Meg (Katherine Kamhi), always at her side. These two-mock poor, silent and shy Angela at every turn.
But they may not be the biggest threat Angela faces at camp. Not long after arriving, the camp cook, a dirty, crusty looking creep, sets his sights on Angela. Trapping her in the walk-in cooler, the threat to Angela is very real. Thankfully, Ricky arrives just in time to make the save. Just as fortuitously for future victims of this creep, he's soon dispatched by an unseen killer. In a scene that defies basic logic and physics, the creep nearly ends up being dumped in a pot of boiling water. Instead of falling in the far too tall pot, he falls and drags the boiling pot onto himself, leaving massive, eventually deadly, burns.
This is the first of what will be several dead bodies in Sleepaway Camp, each a gruesome but also logic defying death. All of this leading up to a nonsensical reveal that is shockingly graphic, considering the circumstances, but not well thought out or presented in a way that makes much sense. Spoiler alert, Angela is a boy. Her crazy Aunt Martha adopted Angela after his sister and father were killed in a boating accident in 1978. In the five years since that day, Martha has forced Angela to live as a boy, even fooling her own son into believing that Angela is his female cousin.
The murders are supposed to be the result of a growing sense of rage over his/her identity, his/her declining mental state, and the people who have mistreated and bullied Angela since she arrived at the camp. But the film is so oddly desperate to hide its big twist that it includes murders of numerous people who have nothing to do with bullying Angela. I know that logic isn't welcome in a movie this broad, silly, and low budget, but Angela's motivations aren't strong enough to sustain the narrative. What should be a cathartic rage is too often presented with the aim of creating a red-herring that never emerges.
Find my full length review at Horror.Media
