Title:
Sleepaway Camp
What Year?:
1983
Classification:
Irreproducible Oddity
Rating: Who
Cares??? (2/3)
With this review, I’m filling out the 1980s lineup, and that brings me not just to a movie that I had in mind since I started the No Good Very Bad Movies feature but to a genre I knew I really had no way to avoid covering sooner or later. I speak, of course, of the slasher movie, and the thing about me and slasher movies is that I despise and reject them so completely that I really only watched them on the rare occasions I have chosen to go looking. Yet in those few forays, I feel that I have gotten enough of a sample to identify the best and also the worst, if not in terms of absolute quality then at least as egregious representations of the trend. That brought one movie front and center. I present Sleepaway Camp, among other things the one you can’t review without spoilers.
Our story begins with a gruesome boating accident that I literally didn’t connect with anything else in the movie before looking up a synopsis. After what’s apparently a time skip, we meet Angela, apparently the sole survivor of the accident, returning to the lake as a counselor for Camp Arawak, a wholesome establishment where the adult authority figures joke about statutory abuse in broad daylight. Soon, one of the creeps tries flat assault against Angela, who narrowly escapes. Soon after, he is hideously maimed in an incident that the management insists is a kitchen accident. Meanwhile, Angela struggles with friendships and possible romance, either freaking out or going catatonic whenever the possibility of mild nudity comes up. Soon, more people who have harmed, scorned or annoyed her start turning up dead, without any signs of a police presence. As the finale draws near, the kids and adults are paranoid enough for friendly fire, but none suspect Angela’s secret. Oh yeah, she’s a boy.
Sleepaway Camp was a 1983 horror/ slasher film written and directed by Robert Hiltzik. The film starred Felissa Rose as Angela, with the late Mike Kellin in his final role as Mel, the camp owner. The movie was filmed in late 1982, mainly at the actual Camp Algonquin, which Hiltzik reportedly attended at one time. Rose was 13 at the time of filming, one of several actual teenagers in the cast. The film was released in November 1983. It was an immediate commercial success, earning $11 million against an estimated $350,000 budget. The movie was controversial for portraying an effectively transgender character as the killer, as well as gore and a scene of male homosexuality. Two sequels were released in 1988 and 1989, written but not directed by Hiltzik. An additional film was shot after 1990, but did not receive a theatrical release. Rose was inactive by the 1990s, but returned in 1998. She appeared in a franchise “reboot” film, Return To Sleepaway Camp, in 2008, in which Hiltzik also returned as director.
For my experiences, if there’s one thing that’s truly interested me about slasher movies, it is that the most well-known examples are relatively late and often atypical. For example, since the giallo days, the genre could be differentiated from “traditional” horror by the absence of supernatural elements, which is one of several reasons why I prefer to count a certain franchise as an outgroup. This was in turn representative of a secular, often amoral aesthetic where anybody could die a brutal and meaningless death. Given that context, the present film is an instructive example both in its time and in hindsight. The franchise machine was only just getting in gear for Jason; Freddy Krueger hadn’t even shown up; and as of Halloween 3,Michael Myers was still technically dead. (Now that is one I want to get to…) And in the midst of it all we got this movie, a 1980s offering that still had a certain giallo feel (see Phenomenon for further comparison). Unfortunately, it also happens to be awful.
Moving forward, the main thing to note is the quite unique treatment of sexuality, certainly far removed from the pseudo-moralizing that I find more prominent in latter-day parodies than anything else. (Dear Logos, I hate Scream, and I like Wes Craven.) While the usual preoccupations are out in force, the actual goings-on are as mild as a sock hop, which in itself becomes uncomfortable long before the end. (Lest we give anyone too much credit, what we see probably as much as they could legally get away with given the actual underage cast members.) It becomes all the more disconcerting to see the kids escalate to murder over each other’s PG-rated favors. If it comes to that, there’s more than enough “head canon” room for multiple killers in the Twitch of the Death Nerve tradition. (Maybe…) What’s jarring if not entirely distracting is that the adults are far more perverse than the kiddies, murders and all. Mel absolutely should be sued into the ground and thrown in jail, and he’s still one of the very few authority figure you can be pretty sure doesn’t have designs on the kids. Almost everyone else over 30 could justifiably be shot on sight if they got near a minor. The real difference would seem to be that the grown-ups have the mature cynicism to recognize that it’s easier to stay out of jail without leveling up to homicide. That’s a point worth making, but an already wonky movie is not the ideal place to do it.
If that still seems to leave the movie in a potentially favorable light, the real downsides start with the kills. If what you want is gore, what you get here is going to be dissatisfying. There’s only a handful of rather un-graphic attacks, one of which doesn’t even lead to an unambiguous on-screen death. Worse, the staging and photography are done in the strangely awkward fashion that I find best described as “stilted”. This is evident especially in the token shower slaying, which only makes sense if the attacker was carving straight down through places that would be hard enough with a chainsaw with an actual wall in the way. (Dishonorable mention goes to the death of the Angela’s arguable main antagonist, which has been described as far more brutal than I can make out.) All of this plays against a story that makes absolutely no sense. I may have paid less attention to this one than I usually would to an Italian movie, but I swear, I didn’t find anything to suggest a connection between Angela’s backstory and the eventual “reveal”, which by any standard comes out of nowhere. That just becomes a lead-in for the one shot that shows far more than we needed to see.
That leaves the “one scene”,
and I’m going with what I find to be the most interesting kill. About halfway
through, one of the jerkier teenagers goes to the bathroom after a swim. While
he’s presumably occupied, someone slides a broom handle through the handles for
two of the stall doors. Then, in a rather inefficient move, the unseen killer
goes back outside, slashes a mesh screen window, and drops an entire hornets’
nest inside. It’s really so ineffective that a good lawyer could argue it’s not
even intentional homicide, as even large numbers of insect stings are usually
only dangerous to people with pre-existing allergies. (I suppose there could
have been some earlier dialogue to set that up, but it’s already established
that this crew is bad at showing their work.) The guy’s immediate reaction
could just as well be considered comedy. He yells loud enough that you wouldn’t
think he could be in that much trouble, but his distress becomes more extreme.
Finally, in perhaps the most truly brutal moment of the whole film, the broom
handle finally breaks. Almost immediately, he collapses, revealing an aftermath
that doesn’t make any more sense than anything else. Still, it is the most
intriguing and well-executed sequence of the movie, and that’s something even
here.
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