If any one genre of films dominated the 80’s it would be the slasher
film. It just wasn’t a good time to be a teenager, as your chances of
living to the end credits was very slim indeed. While Jason was out
stalking his victims in 3D, director/writer
Robert Hiltzik decided to take a stab at the genre with
Sleepaway Camp.
As a child I was never sent to summer camp, but going by all the “
Lord of the Flies”
activities I’ve seen depicted in the movies I can’t say I’m all that
sorry to have missed out on the experience. Having a large group of
unruly kids being looked after by a smaller group of unruly teenagers
seems like a recipe for disaster, and that’s not even taking the serial
killer factor into consideration.
And with these two in charge, what could go wrong?
A key ingredient to this type of movie is setting up the tragic
backstory that must contain at least one wrongful death that will turn
out to be the root cause of the film’s death toll. In the case of
Sleepaway Camp
a single father (we assumed widowed as I can’t see an 80’s judge
granting custody to a gay man over the mother even if she was Lizzie
Borden) along with his son and daughter are in a tragic boating accident
where a distracted idiot girl runs them over with her boat.
Teen stupidity was the number one cause of death in the 80’s.
We then get the standard time jump “eight years later” and are introduced to our two leads; Ricky Thomas (
Jonathan Tiersten) and Angela Baker (
Felissa Rose) who are being sent off to camp by Ricky’s wacky mother Dr. Martha Thomas (
Desiree Gould).
Angela was taken in by her Aunt Martha after her father and sibling
were killed in that boating accident. Her cousin Ricky has been to the
camp before, but this is Angela’s first time, and after watching Aunt
Martha for two minutes I can’t believe she hasn’t tried to flee home
years ago.
“Oh, that just wouldn’t do.”
At the camp things don’t go too well. It turns out that Angela is an
extremely shy introvert, one who apparently goes the first three days of
camp without talking or eating, and with most her free time filled up
with being bullied by her fellow campers. Now you may think this is
impossible, what kind of people running this camp would allow that? But
once you see cigar chewing camp owner Mel Costic (
Mike Kellin) and uberbitch Camp Counselor Meg (
Katherine Kamhi)
at work you quickly come to the conclusion that this camp is far from
top notch. I haven’t even mentioned that the camp cook is a pedophile
that tries to molest Angela in the walk in cooler.
“Pardon me while I whip this out.”
Lucky for Angela her cousin Ricky walks in and interrupts the cook
before things get out of hand, but not so lucky for the cook who later
gets a giant pot of boiling water poured over him by a mysterious
intruder. I’m assuming that the filmmaker’s reason for only showing us
the killer’s hands is to hide the fact that Angela is the killer and
that maybe it is protective Ricky who is killing anyone who antagonizes
or attacks his cousin, but after repeated scenes of Angela just creepily
staring into space one can’t help but realize she’s our only real
suspect.
“She’s got… lifeless eyes. Black eyes, like a doll’s eyes.”
The movie then follows a pattern of someone being mean to Angela and
then that someone dying horribly. The pedophile cook is only unbearably
maimed, but everyone else who even looks at Angela sideways gets the
axe, and in the case of several small children who flung sand at her,
they get it literally.
Sleeping bag massacre.
Mel at first tries to cover up the deaths for the obvious reason
that if word got out he’d have to close the camp, but eventually after a
couple more deaths parents start pulling the kids from the camp, which
leads us to believe that the parents of the kids who stayed must have
really hated their children.
“Tommy was always a bit of a wash out.”
The two defining elements of a good slasher film are its killer and
its cruel and unusual deaths. Felissa Rose as quiet sociopathic
murdering Angela is really quite convincing, and for the most part we
can enjoy her revenge fueled killings… well, that is until she rams a
curling iron up her cabin mate’s vagina and the aforementioned murdering
of little kids with a hatchet. These kills would even give Jason
Voorhees pause. Hats off to the make-up effects guys who do stellar work
here for a low budget movie.
Though I’d love to find out where Angela found those killer bees. Yikes!
*SPOILER AHEAD *SPOILER AHEAD* *SPOILER AHEAD* *SPOILER AHEAD* *SPOILER AHEAD* *SPOILER AHEAD*
Now we come to the big twist. While at the camp Angela had only one
ally other than her cousin Ricky, and that was a sweet kid named Paul (
Christopher Collet)
who got along well with Angela until he tried to move to second base
and was firmly rebuffed. When Angela later catches him kissing her
bitchy cabin mate this results in the curling iron incident and leads to
Paul’s grisly end. Angela lures Paul out to the beach under the
pretense of a possible reconciliation and some heavy petting, but
instead the police and surviving campers find a naked Angela holding a
bloody knife and cradling Paul’s severed head.
Also Angela is a dude.
In a flashback it is revealed that the surviving child was the boy, but that Aunt Martha already had a son and two boys “
Would just not do”.
So poor Peter was forced to become Angela to please his crazed aunt.
What is not made clear is where Ricky fits into this crazed twist. It’s
hard to believe he lived in that house eight years with his nutty mom
and not find out his cousin wasn’t actually a girl. Some people believe
that Ricky was actually in on the killings, and as actor Jonathan
Tiersten was the on screen hands and silhouette of the killer there is
some credence to that theory.
Such manly hands.
Director Robert Hiltzik went on to become a self-employed lawyer
instead pursuing a career in the movies, which is a shame because his
darkly twisted movie was easily better than half the dreck other horror
directors were churning out at the time. It’s by no means a perfect
movie, the endless and pointless baseball scene nips that claim at the
bud, but it is entertaining and the cast lead by Felissa Rose all give
credible performances, and that ending, oh my god that ending makes this
movie a must see. I knew the twist going in and still that ending was a
bit of a shocker.
Bonus Trivia: Actor
Allen Breton
who plays the local police officer left the production and shaved off
his moustache and then when he returned to film the climax to
Sleepaway Camp their solution to his missing moustache was less than convincing.
Can you spot the difference?
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