1983 Directed by Robert Hiltzik
Slightly disturbed and painfully shy Angela Baker is sent away to summer camp with her cousin. Not long after Angela's arrival, things start to go horribly wrong for anyone with sinister or less than honorable intentions.
I tear up every time Angela speaks for the first time. I love this movie. For all the reasons I love my favorite slashers. I love that it's half summer camp movie. I love the camper melodrama. I love the baseball game and that kid's Asia shirt. As a former "quiet kid," I find myself empathizing with Angela as she's constantly harassed. If only I had a killer stare like that as a kid.
More stuff I love:
1. When characters hang out and do 'not plot stuff' like play baseball for a solid 5+ minutes. I don't why, but I find this vaguely rebellious. It makes me giddy.
2. Vague, deeply problematic, but potentially subversive and radical…
This review was written in 2011, I believe:
How many times is a rip-off able to surpass the thing it owes its' existence to? Only two films come to mind (Piranha is the other). Friday the 13th had great pieces but really didn't come together to be the best it could be (though it's still a personal favorite and always will be). Sleepaway Camp aims lower but nonetheless passes with Sleaze Honors. In the arena of so-bad-it's-good horror movies - bad acting, character stereotypes or costumes that garner a reputation of their own, expository lines of dialogue that inspire riotous laughter ("Meet me at the waterfront after the social" has become this movie's "Nilbog! It's Goblin spelled backwards!") - this…
Holy shit...I did not see this one coming at all.
I've heard that Sleepaway Camp had an interesting ending so for years now I've been waiting to get my hands on the box set and making sure I never read anything about the series. It definitely paid off.
Friday the 13th and The Burning this is not...You won't find the same quality but that doesn't mean this movie suffers. As far as I'm concerned I just watched a trashy slasher classic.
I would list the kills here but I don't want to ruin them for anyone. Some are better than others but the really cool ones are fantastic.
The last thing I wanted to point out is that apparently the 80's was filled to the brim with bulges. They're everywhere.
Hey you! Yeah, you! Avid horror fan and lover of every nook and cranny of the genre. Tell me, why have you not watched this yet? A mere 800 people have logged this film as watched on Letterboxd which is a crime as it is a cult and genre classic that should get more attention.
Sleepaway Camp is the epitome of 'so bad it's good'. This has a lot to do with the fact that I cannot get rid of the feeling it was all done intentionally. Many performances, especially from the adult cast, are so unbelievably camp and bad they have a feel to them as if they have been told to act badly in stead of them being…
I recently watched Final Exam and mentioned how very gay all of the subtext was, but damn I had forgotten about this camp slasher that is dripping with homoeroticismness, right? Not many horror movies feature guys wearing less clothing than girls, male nudity with no female nudity, and unambiguously gay characters that aren’t caricatures, but here we were in 1983 and Robert Hiltzik couldn’t give a f*ck about your genre expectations and I say well done to that.
The kills are also pretty fantastic and even though some are only implied, they are still brutal af. I’ll never not be a tiny bit afraid of a hot curling iron again. Felissa Rose and Jonathan Tiersten are great as the main…
The Crying Game meets Friday the 13th meets Degrassi Jr High meets Meatballs meets 80's fashion nightmare meets what the fuck did I just watch.
this is the one slasher film that has been engraved in my mind ever since I was younger. I’m now realizing though how problematic it is after not watching for so long but the ending is still one that always creeps me out
Honestly, what's there to say? There's a 14-year-old who magically grows breasts and turns into a 25-year-old over the span of a year aka Scumbag Judy. There's a cop who has the fakest mustache I have ever seen in a serious movie in my life. There's a bodybuilder with a heart of gold and a love of short shorts (thank you). There's a camp where you can't tell who's a counselor and who's a camper. There's an actual loving scene with two guys in bed cuddling and their children (didn't really explain the family dynamic that much) watching and giggling, which is actually a pretty positive scene for a movie made in 1983. There's a shocking reveal that (SPOILER) leads us to discover the true villain is a rich older white lady who was probably a total sociopath and damaged the psyche of a young child. Damn, I think I kind of love this movie, y'all.
[Trash Night]
The meanest Saturday Morning Show in the world, where all the kid actors are age appropriate but uncomfortably sexualised, the sun is always shining bright on the (not particularly gory but still upsetting) child-inflicted violence, and the crop tops are glorious. And then, in one shot, all of that horrific delight falls away for pure horror, as an extremely problematic (if actually fairly well seeded) twist is presented in one of the most jaw-droppingly bizarre and upsetting shots I've ever seen. I knew it was coming, but the pose, the expression, the unreality of the head, and the sounds all conspire to break the fucking ceiling off the theatre.
Extremely strange and all the better for it; takes the low-budget candy-coloured 80s slasher formula and adds cruel kids, borderline pedophilia, hairy-chested dudes in crop tops, wildly inconsistent acting performances and and a jaw-dropping ending to make something genuinely shocking, bizarre and unforgettable.
Angela's vacant stare haunts my dreams, and I'm going to be thinking about that curling iron murder scene for the rest of my life (not least because I'm not actually sure what the film is suggesting in terms of how a curling iron would be used to kill someone? I really hope it's not what I imagined).
A truly bizarre film, and every bit living up to its designation as a cult classic (whereas usually I find cult classic can fit any number of boring movies with inexplicably large fanbases), this movie is camp without all that much camp, but also a good dose of honest horror, and some truly morbid bits. The plentiful grotesque details get swallowed up in the Z-rate B-movie atmosphere, but its snowball effect leaves us with one of the wildest climaxes and gonzo endings I've seen. It doubles as both a warped view for the individual and ripe for the group watch to hammer with any number of ironic comments and/or zingers to point out just how little moral integrity is at…
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