…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.

Title: Sleepaway Camp

Cast and Crew

Written and directed by Robert Hiltzik

Felissa Rose as Angela
Jonathan Tiersten as Ricky Thomas
Karen Fields as Judy
Christopher Collet as Paul
Mike Kellin as Mel Kostic
Katherine Kamhi as Meg
Paul DeAngelo as Ronnie Angelo
Susan Glaze as Susie
Loris Sallahian as Billy
Amy Baio as Brooke Warner
Tom Van Dell as Mike
John E. Dunn as Kenny
Ethan Larosa as Jimmy
Willy Kuskin as Mozart
Desiree Gould as Aunt Martha
Owen Hughes as Artie the Chef
Robert Earl Jones as Ben
Frank Sorrentino as young Peter
Colette Lee Corcoran as young Angela

Premise

Some irresponsible teen campers cause a dreadful boating accident involving two children, their father, and his same-sex partner.

Eight years later, we learn that only the daughter, Angela, survived. She has been adopted by her disturbed Aunt Martha and lives with her cousin, Ricky. Martha’s sending them off to summer camp. What follows involves a bizarre fusion of Friday the 13th and Meatballs, plausible teen shenanigans juxtaposed with horrific slasher film excesses. Some of these provide disturbing contrast when the killings occur. Others provide the justification. Whereas contemporaneous slashers target teens for their sexual or social transgressions, this one goes straight for the young bullies and adult predators.

What happens to them is not pretty.

High Points

The decision to cast actual tweens and teens in an often gruesome R-rated movie gives it a credible edge that other slasher films lack. The kids are not consistently the best actors, but they look and behave like kids. Oddball Angela becomes a target of bullying, but she also finds friends and supporters. The film acknowledges and explores the darker sides of adolescence, but it doesn’t present every single teen (think Carrie) as complicit in bullying.

Of course, one of Angela’s supporters is a highly inventive homicidal maniac. But which one?

Low Point

The movie grows less plausible as the plot develops, and far beyond the killer’s genre-based ability to move about and murder so effectively in a small summer camp. Kids face surprisingly few consequences from authority figures for extremely bad behavior, actions that exceed what would have been tolerated as youthful hi-jinks and pranks. And it beggars belief that the camp would remain open after so many disturbing deaths. The only concession to reality here are some medical people who arrive on the scene and the cigar-chomping camp director’s lament that so many of the campers have fled for their homes.

Nobody thinks to call the police until the last ten minutes.

The Scores:

Originality: 2/6 Even in 1983, the slasher genre felt old, and the film’s final twist is a variation of one that had been used before in horror movies.

That said, the final freeze on the screen remains in the brains of everyone who has ever watched Sleepaway Camp.

Effects: 5/6 …which brings us to effects. For the most part, this film has credible and often quite grotesque (or just gross) practical effects. The film lingers on the nasty fate of one especially nasty adult. Some of the others who die horrifically are young teens. Indeed, the filmmakers decided to edit one of the murder scenes significantly and, so far as I know, the full scene has never been restored. It’s incredible that the film even implies this particular demise for a character played by a minor. That they originally planned to show it indicates how far the filmmakers were willing to go.

Production: 4/6 The film reveals its $350,000 budget in ways other than often mediocre (or even bad) acting. They shot at an actual summer camp in September and early October. In many scenes, it’s clear from the trees that summer has passed. I exclude the most obvious example here, the opening scene; that takes place after the events of the film.

Acting: 3/6 Some of the leads do very well. Felissa Rose, thirteen when she landed the role of Angela, gives a memorable performance. She would appear a few more times on screen before following other pursuits. With Sleepaway Camp‘s rediscovery in this century, she has found regular work, mostly in low-budget horror. Karen Fields as mean girl Judy plays like a lesser actor in a small town school show. Desiree Gould performs deranged Aunt Martha in a stylized manner that suggests she wandered in from an entirely different film, perhaps by John Waters. Paul DeAngelo as sympathetic, athletic camp counselor Ronnie has sincerity but his acting is laughably stilted.

Story: 3/6

Emotional Response: 4/6

Overall: 3/6 The film exerts a fascination. It is, however, the product of a time and place. I have no interest in seeing its panned sequels.

I refer you back to the Bartlomiej Paszylk quotation at the start, which pretty much sums up what you need to know about this movie to decide whether or not you want to watch it.

In total, Camp Sleepaway receives 24/42

SPOILER: Some Controversies

Much of the discussion of the film, then and now, involves the ending. Any attempt to Google the film will spoil that ending. If you’re going to watch it, perhaps do so before reading further, here or elsewhere.

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