October Countdown: Sleepaway Camp

…a good slasher movie doesn’t have to be well-acted, believable or suspenseful. It’s quite enough that it keeps you entertained, includes several good, violent set pieces, and leaves you shocked. Robert Hiltzik’s Sleepaway Camp is a perfect example of such an effort. It’s an exceptionally bad movie but a very good slasher.
—Bartlomiej Paszylk, The Pleasure and Pain of Cult Horror Films: An Historical Survey. McFarland, 2009.

This 1983 slasher did not fare so well in the shadow of better-known examples of the genre, but it gradually developed a cult following. It’s one of three films we will be reviewing this October 31.

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