The Sleepaway Camp Franchise (1983, 1988, 1989, 2008, 2012)

Slasher films have been a staple of horror for decades.  Many people cite the inspiration of the horror subgenre as coming from the movies Psycho and Peeping Tom.  They may have been the inspiration for the horror movies that followed, but the true point where slasher movies broke through was in the late 1970s.  That was when Black Christmas and Halloween were released, two movies that pioneered what slasher movies would be known for.  The two movies did not tell the story through the killers’ perspectives, instead following the victims of the terror.  They helped usher in a long string of slasher movies throughout the 1980s.

In 1980, another definitive slasher movie was released.  The movie was Friday the 13^th, and it saw the rise to popularity of camp slashers.  What is a camp slasher? The name says it all, really.  A camp slasher is a slasher that takes place at a camp.  In the case of the Friday the 13^th franchise, that camp is Camp Crystal Lake, a summer camp at which Jason Voorhees, a camper, died because the counselors were too busy fulfilling their sexual desires to pay attention to his safety.  As the camp is getting ready for another season, someone begins killing the counselors one by one.

Friday the 13^th led the way for many more slashers set at summer camps.  The Burning was released a year later.  By the end of the decade, Cheerleader Camp would come out.  And early in the new millennium, there were movies like Bloody Murder and Klown Kamp Massacre.  But the biggest non-Friday franchise to come out of the camp slasher classification is the Sleepaway Camp franchise, which has survived from the 80s to the present day with five films.

For the first week of October, I made my way through the five Sleepaway Camp movies, and I’m now writing about them for the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  I’m going to go over each movie, but before that, I want to mention a few things.  First, there WILL BE SPOILERS throughout the rest of the post.  That’s because the ending of the first movie has a great influence over what happens throughout every other movie.  That moment is a big twist and must me mentioned because of how the other movies talk about it.  Second, there are two continuities as the movies progress.  One continuity has every movie except Return to Sleepaway Camp.  The other continuity is only Sleepaway Camp and Return to Sleepaway Camp.  I’ll get more into that later on.  Finally, I am going to crap all over Sleepaway Camp IV, so I’m warning you about that right now.

Sleepaway Camp

The movie was released only three years after Friday the 13^th and took what was already a dark story about people who weren’t the greatest, and made the people even worse.  Camp Arawak is filled with despicable people.  The counselors are mean to the outcast campers.  The owner doesn’t give a damn what the counselors do.  The cook wants to have sex with the kids at the camp.  The only bright spots are Angela (Felissa Rose), the camper being unfairly picked on; and Ronnie (Paul DeAngelo), the head counselor who is actually caring.  As the movie goes on, the people in the camp are killed one by one.  Not everybody is killed, but a lot of them are.  It is revealed at the end of the movie that Angela is the killer, and that Angela is actually Peter, a boy whose father and sister were killed in a boating accident.  Peter was taken in by his aunt who turned him into her new daughter Angela.

Sleepaway Camp is one of the dirtiest slasher movies out there.  It’s not that the location itself is dirty.  In fact, the camp is fairly clean.  The dirt of the movie comes from the material.  The characters are horrible to each other in ways that are rarely matched.  It is bullying at its most excruciating.  Also dirty is the simplistic look of the movie which makes everything feel worse.  When you add in the racy (for the 1980s) material of the gay parents and the gender bending killer, there is a uniqueness to the movie that makes watching it different than watching other slashers.  It is a movie worth seeking out.

Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers

The 1988 sequel sees the return of Angela (now played by Pamela Springsteen), this time as a counselor at the new Camp Rolling Hills.  It seems like a perfectly fine and happy camp until Angela decides to punish all of the people there in the most deadly way.  That is, everyone except for Molly (Renee Estevez).  The characters aren’t as terrible as in the first movie, but they are disposed of in equally, if not more gruesome ways.  Particularly, there is one kill with a drill that, while the gore isn’t shown on screen, is one of the most inspired deaths in the franchise.  Why is a drill inspired?  The bad joke that comes out of nowhere and sets it up.  Did I mention the movie is darkly comedic?

There are a few things that make Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers a notable movie in the franchise.  One, Angela went into psychiatric care and received a full sex change before escaping.  She is now entirely a she.  Two, the movie added an obvious comedic side to the franchise with Angela spouting off bad jokes and attempted one-liners throughout the movie.  I guess the new behind-the-scenes people wanted it to be a little lighter than the first movie.  Three, the characters are all named after people involved in the 1980s teenage movie boom.  The owner is Uncle John (Walter Gotell), Molly is named after Molly Ringwald, head counselor T.C. (Brian Patrick Clarke) is named after Tom Cruise, and there are two kids named Charlie (Justin Nowell) and Emilio (Jason Ehrlich), named after Renee Estevez’s brothers Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez.  The movie is an explosion of the 1980s and was filmed back-to-back with its follow up.

Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland

Angela got outed by the end of Unhappy Campers.  Somehow, after killing everyone, word got out that she was the same Angela.  So, in order to become a camper at Camp New Horizon, Angela kills a girl named Maria (Kashina Kessler) and takes her identity.  Identity theft is bad, guys.  Anyway, the camp is filled with bad people again.  Uncaring owners, bad poor people, bad rich people.  Nobody is good.  But they’re an exaggerated comedic bad rather than the grounded mean bad of the first movie.  Angela of course does her thing and kills them all.  The end.

Teenage Wasteland, though still semi-entertaining, suffers from starting with some not-so-great kills.  At this point in the series, the movies are about watching Angela kill bad people because they deserve it.  You want to see some good kills.  The first couple kills, opening scene aside, involve Angela beating people with sticks while bad sound effects happen.  It makes me sad that they couldn’t figure out anything better.  One interesting aspect to the movie is that Barney Whitmore (Cliff Brand) is the police officer father of one of the counselors from Unhappy Campers, Sean (Tony Higgins).  Knowing that there will be a showdown between the two characters later on in the movie makes any interaction between the two feel a little tenser.

Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor

If you want to watch the first three Sleepaway Camp movies without watching the first three Sleepaway Camp movies, then this is the movie for you.  Somewhere out there, there are 34 minutes of original footage shot for this movie, but the version I saw was about five minutes of original footage and 70 minutes of scenes from the other movies.  It’s a waste of time for people who have seen the other three movies.

Basically, from what I can tell, this is the story.  Angela sits on a lake and contemplates things.  Then she finds a park ranger who tries to sex her up.  She doesn’t like that.  She never has.  She runs, finds a hunter, kills the hunter, finds a knife, and meets up with the ranger again.  Then the movie ends with the dead ranger’s body in a cabin.  That’s about it.  Most of the movie is the kills from the other movies.

I understand that the production was shut down due to the production studio going bankrupt in 1992.  I get it.  No money, no movie.  Simple as that.  To, twenty years later (2012), release the movie like this… I don’t understand.  Make the footage a bonus feature on the home video release or something.  Don’t throw footage from the other movies into it to bulk up the runtime.  It’s bad form.

Return to Sleepaway Camp

Made in 2003 and released in 2008, this installment of the Sleepaway Camp franchise saw the return of director Robert Hiltzik, who had directed the original Sleepaway Camp film.  It was very much an updated version of that original concept.  There is a kid at a camp being mercilessly picked on by all of the other campers.  The mean people of the camp begin dying in gruesome ways.  Everyone suspects one person of killing the people, only to have a twist at the end of the movie where it is someone else.  It feels like the best sequel to Sleepaway Camp that has been released.

Not only did the director appear, but a few of the actors whose characters survived the first movie returned.  Ronnie is back and Angela’s brother Ricky (Jonathan Tiersten) showed up.  There are some big differences in the story though.  The deaths have a wider variety than the first movie.  There is more preparation to them, for the most part.  Also, the kid getting picked on is as much of an ass as anyone in the movie.  But I’m okay with that since Ronnie is back and he’s the best character in the franchise.  I’ll let the kid being an ass slide because Ronnie is so entertaining.

The Sleepaway Camp franchise is one that has earned its place in the horror landscape.  The original movie tackled topics that few movies of that time would go near.  It gave one of the most memorable twists in movies.  And it stands out as a unique camp horror film.  Each movie (The Survivor excluded) in the franchise is worth checking out at least once.  My only advice is that you don’t watch all of them as closely together as I did.  It makes you feel very dirty since all of the people in the movies are bad people.  You will want to take a super long shower after watching these movies.  But they do what they do and they do it well.  So, check them out at some point.  You might not like them, but they should be seen.

Something else that should be seen is this list of notes:

• Sleepaway Camp was suggested by @lawrence_jason.
• Pamela Springsteen was in Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers, Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland, and Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor.
• Felissa Rose and Jonathan Tiersten were both in Sleepaway Camp, Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor, and Return to Sleepaway Camp.
• Paul DeAngelo, Dee Dee Friedman, and Mike Tatosian were in both Sleepaway Camp and Return to Sleepaway Camp.
• Most other actors in the first three movies were shown in Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor during the long spans of archive footage.
• Finally, Vincent Pastore was in Return to Sleepaway Camp.  Before this week, he was featured in a movie called Money Train.
• I mentioned Friday the 13^th and Halloween in this post.  I’ve covered films from each franchise.  I’ve watched Friday the 13^th: A New Beginning, Jason Goes to Hell, and Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers.
• Have you seen any of the Sleepaway Camp movies?  What did you think of the movies?  If you want to discuss them, there’s a comments section below.
• You could also use the comments section below to suggest movies that I will watch for future installments of the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  Or you can suggest them to my Twitter account.
• Next week, I will be watching a movie called Gnome Alone.  That’s right.  I’m back down to one movie next week.  I have no idea what to expect of Gnome Alone.  Next week, I’ll post something about or related to it.  See you then.