| Enter the LaNd of your nightmares! |
| Sleepaway Camp |
Sleepaway Camp
Reviewed by BombA
Directed by : Robert Hiltzik
year : 1983
Tagline : ...you won't be coming home!
Cast
Felissa Rose .... Angela Baker
Jonathan Tiersten .... Ricky Baker
Karen Fields (II) .... Judy
Christopher Collet .... Paul
Mike Kellin .... Mel
Katherine Kamhi .... Meg
Paul DeAngelo .... Ronnie
Tom Van Dell .... Mike
Loris Sallahian .... Billy
John Dunn (I) .... Kenny
Willy Kuskin .... Mozart
Desiree Gould .... Aunt Martha
*CAUTION: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD*
Sleepaway camp is what many (including myself) would describe as a "standard horror package with a super-twist ending." It is true that in many cases there is a template used for horror films, and this one hits all the marks, except at the end where the film misses said mark and hits you straight in the genitals. I mean I first saw this movie when I was like 12-years-old, and the image at the end was pretty haunting, it took me like 10 years to get that image out of my mind, which is the around the time frame of the second time I saw it. Looks like it's going to be another lousy 10 years for me.
Anyway, at the beginning of Sleepaway Camp we find 2 kids, one girl and one boy, playing in the water with their father at a local campground. They're just your average standard nuclear family, except for the fact, that is, that this family seems to have 2 dads. A boating accident occurs, and one of the kids is killed. Cut to years later when young Angela and Ricky Baker are about to head off to camp. Angela is presumably the survivor of the boating accident, and seems a bit disturbed. None can blame her for being that way after we are introduced to her super creepy Aunt Martha, who has been taking care of her all of these years. Martha is a pretty scary sight, and obviously completely deranged, in a way she kind of reminded me of Marilyn Manson only not quite as feminine.
Anyway the 2 head off for camp where we are introduced to the standard fare: bullies, nerds, a witchy-bitchy counselor and her young camper counter-part who want to torture the shy Angela, the nice counselor guy and girl who want to help the shy Angela adjust, the old-Camp owner who is trying to make time with the much younger female counselors, a young and doomed love interest, and of course a super-creepy cook who is just dying to sexually molest someone. I don't know about you but this was pretty much exactly like my summer camping days, that is if I had any summer camping days.
Anyway what follows is several murders and one severe burning, and probably some marshmallow roasting (although this is done of-camera, or at least I speculate that it is). Some of these attacks are quite gruesome, and some just kind of goofy.
From the onset we, the viewer, are supposed to believe that it is in fact Ricky Baker who is committing these murders. You see all of the killings are shown from the murderers point-of-view, and what we see prior to the actual attacks is usually an enraged Ricky swearing vengeance on those who have mistreated his cousin Angela. The film is a bit ineffective at masking the killer's identity however; it is quite obvious that Angela is our psycho.
The first victim of course is the pedophile cook. He attempts to molest Angela and gets a 30 gallon pot of boiling hot water spilled all over him for his troubles. He immediately goes into shock. This part was actually a bit funny. Don't get me wrong the effects used for his hot-water-burnt-flesh were actually quite effective in being gross, but his screams are just so over the top that its hard to not have a slight snicker over them.
Young "shy-yet-cute" Angela has a bit of a romance with Paul, another camper who has been friends with Ricky for a while now, and she is just starting to come out of her shell. Of course this wont happen because Judy and Meg, bitch fellow camper and bitch camp counselor respectively, want to ruin Angela's life it would seem, and really get in the way of things. They pick on her, throw her in the water, and just generally act…well bitchy. I suppose one could expect this from Judy, a fellow camper, but Meg is a counselor, shouldn't she be preventing this sort of thing instead of encouraging it? Anyway Judy and Meg's bitchiness knows no bounds and they just wont let poor Angela catch a break. Will they be killed for their troubles?!?! Who could ever predict, guess you'll just have to watch!
Following that are some more murders, a drowning, bee attacks, and one particularly shocking moment where a girl gets impaled in a rather, ahem, unusual place by her own curling iron.
Angela eventually catches Paul kissing Judy, and by this point we know what is going to happen to them. This movie really follows a pattern. Someone is mean to Angela, someone gets killed by Angela, someone is mean to Angela, someone gets killed by Angela, it's pretty much just like that up till the end. Really almost everyone slain by Angela in this film really seem to deserve it. It's really hard to paint her as any kind of villain in the movie. I would guess that the makers of this picture had some rather bad experiences at summer camp when they were kids, and this was their outlet for slaying their inner-demons that were created from said experiences.
Despite the fact that bodies keep piling up, Camp owner Mel doesn't want to shut it down for the summer. Mel suspects Ricky Baker (just like we were supposed to) of all of the various misdeeds that have been going on at the camp, and intends to solve his little problem…OLD-GUY-STYLE!! What follows is a scene that struck me as being rather amusing. Maybe I'm a little sick myself, but this scene, in which Mel beats the crap out of Ricky, just really strikes me as hilarious.
Anyway more are killed. And Angela invites Paul for a moonlit swim. If Paul were paying attention he would ditch her and hang out at the rec. lodge and play a spirited game of Uno with the rest of the campers, but he doesn't and he will soon be beheaded for his early-teen horniness.
Right at the end, the 2 nice counselors approach a naked Angela as she is singing in the moonlight, stroking Paul's hair, she stands up to reveal two things, 1) Paul's head is not attached, and 2) she has a penis. The nice, Tito Santana-esque counselor says "she's a boy," and we are treated to a flashback where deranged Aunt Martha begins to push the poor little boy into a life of…girl-dom, as we find out that it was not the boy who was killed in the boating accident, but…well you get it. Anyway now we flash forward to Angela making some sort of creepy animal noises as the screen freezes and the credits role. The noises are really quite creepy so the credits are quite welcome. I would imagine that right before he was beheaded Paul questioned his sexuality.
This movie was really cheesy, but it is fun to watch. The little girl who plays Angela is quite good at her role, and the things that go on (except for the murders that is) really do seem like things that would take place in a summer camp. The ending is seriously disturbing; at least it was for me. Apparently for the far away shot where "Angela" is revealed to be a boy, they used a young, thin, male actor with an Angela mask. Another little factoid about this cinematic gem; a shot of Judy, after she was introduced more personally to her curling iron was cut by the MPAA for being overly shocking. I think that was a good call. Apparently while filming Jonathan Tiersten (who played Ricky Baker) and Felissa Rose (who played Angela Baker) had something of a puppy-love romance going on during the filming, which personally I feel is freaking adorable. I mean what is cuter than a couple of kids finding their first summer romance while in the process of filming a shockingly violent schlock fest?
