Almost everyone is familiar with the horror franchise associated with a summer camp location involving a big dude in a hockey mask, but what about the other camp slasher franchise? Friday the 13th debuted in 1980, riding the slasher success coattails of Halloween, which came out a few years prior. Riding the coattails of Friday the 13th’s success is Sleepaway Camp, another slasher film that takes place at a summer camp. It’s slightly lesser known and less regarded than the slasher films that inspired it and for good reason.

I’m certain I mentioned it years ago when I first reviewed the Friday the 13th movies, but I’ll mention it again. Unlike Halloween, which is a franchise of mostly bad movies with one or two good ones (the original two), Friday the 13th has never had a genuinely good movie in its catalog. Only the first two and the fourth approach anything of quality, while the rest range from laughable to unwatchable. I’ve yet to see the other movies that follow Sleepaway Camp, but if the trend of the first film being the best of the franchise holds true, my interest in watching the sequels is at a profound low, because Sleepaway Camp makes the original Friday the 13th look like a Hitchcock classic by comparison.

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Pros

Bad acting is laughably funny in spots
Easy to make up a drinking game
Less than 90 minutes long
Bold enough to kill off characters who aren’t even in their teens

Cons

Such acting, much art
Everyone screams their lines like the mic they were using was broken or something
No tension
Kills are boring in comparison to other slasher films
Twist is too telegraphed; red herrings can barely be regarded as “pink fish” because of how poorly they are implemented
Lots of pointless scenes to go along with pointless characters

Plot & Thoughts

A tragedy befalls a family during one summer vacation when two small children are involved in a boating accident. Years later, the surviving sibling, Angela (Felissa Rose), who was traumatized during the event, is sent to summer camp with her cousin, Ricky (Jonathon Tiersten). I’m not sure if it’s intended as a way of trying to get her to open up and socialize once again, but if that’s the case, that’s not likely to happen. The camp is filled with children and camp counselors who are complete dicks and do their best to make themselves seem like they’re not worthy of any social interactions without a sharp blade involved. Also, there’s a killer on the loose at this camp who is (somewhat inefficiently) using this prescribed manner of interaction.

There’s not much else to the plot other than Angela and Ricky being harassed by the other kids and the camp counselors for no reason. Everyone acts like some unknown force is compelling them to be jerks rather than how normal human beings would actually behave towards a kid who is mostly shy or silent. Maybe their short-shorts were too tight and cut off the blood to their brains. Maybe they were all just sexually confused and frustrated by their softcore, homo-erotic wardrobes, which caused their self-loathing to manifest in outward bullying behavior. Maybe there was something in the water that made the ugliest people attractive and the harmless ones worthy of scorn—it’s the only way I can explain how one of the young female counselors asked the owner, who was twice her age and far from the most handsome guy in Daisy Dukes on the campus, to go out to dinner with her. Regardless of what was in the water, how tight the shorts were, and how sexually confused everyone ones, I still doubt that any reasonable camp counselor would take a young teen, whom they know has a traumatized past involving a boat in the water, and willingly toss her into a lake. Yet, this sort of thing does occur because we have to hate these people enough for them to be murdered by the mysterious killer.

10-11-2019 4-32-48 PM.jpg — Image: United Film Distribution Company

SPOILERS** However, even if you haven’t seen this movie, you probably already know who the killer is because it’s the only notable thing about Sleepaway Camp. Just typing the film’s name into a search engine gives you the iconic final shot of the film, disclosing the identity of the killer as none other than Angela. If you take off safe-search, you might also find out that Angela is actually a boy who was raised as a girl, which is the real surprise of the movie. Sleepaway Camp doesn’t do a good job of making you think it’s anyone other than Angela, even when it has characters acting like it’s someone else. So the twist that she’s the killer is no surprise. The twist that she has a penis just comes out of nowhere and is certainly far more surprising, but it’s not like that drastically improves the quality of the film. The only reason anyone remembers this movie is for the creepy facial expression Angela has in the final shot and for the fact that she’s got male genitalia.

Everything else about this movie is laughable at best and uncomfortably boring at worst. The acting is stiff or over the top. The direction and cinematography is awful. Some shots have blurry objects in the foreground that obscure the focus of the scene. There are also moments that go on for way too long, like the scene in which the pedophile gets burned by hot water, lies on the ground, and screams into the camera for a full two minutes. It seemingly takes forever for any tension to finally occur in the movie and the scenes that take place between the murders are overflowing with pointless moments and pointless dialogue.

TL;DR (Conclusion)

Sleepaway Camp often appears in lists of notable slasher films from the 1980s, but I wouldn’t even put it alongside Friday the 13th, which I don’t even hold in high regard. It’s a bland, boring movie that is only really notable for one thing and you either have to wait for the end of the film to see it, or you can just look it up on the internet and save yourself the time. The only thing I think is good about it is that you can pretty easily come up with some drinking game rules to make the experience slightly more tolerable.

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