Sleepaway Camp (1983)

 

The early part of 1980's is thought of as the Golden Age of slasher films.  While everyone and their brother was making slasher films, the trope or sub genre was so new that most of what we saw in those early films all seemed fresh.  Halloween cornered the market on slashers happening on and around Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street took care of the killer in you dreams story and of course Jason and his hockey mask made it so nobody wanted to go camping anymore.  In 1983 we did go back to camp.  To Sleepaway Camp I mean.  Sleepaway Camp is another slasher loose in a summer camp story only thing is it's not during the off season like in Friday the 13th but right in the middle of the summer camping season when the camp is full of kids.  OK, fine, ignore all the trees that have already turned color for autumn.

 

Neat point is the writer and director of the film Robert Hiltzik actually went to the camp that was used to film in back when he was a kid.  Other than this and the sequel made twenty-five years later I don't know anything about him.  The film stars Felissa Rose (Tales of Halloween and Victor Crowley) as Angela a girl who lives with her aunt and cousin Rick after her father and brother were killed in a boating accident eight years earlier.  She is quiet, withdrawn, and obviously suffering from some sort of PTSD.  Angela and Ricky go to summer camp.  As soon as she gets to camp she is bullied by Judy, another camper, and Meg, a camp counselor.  The film has some really good death scenes and the special effects are spectacularly gross.  The camp cook Artie's death scene is exceptionally juicy. 

 

 

I won't give much more away other than to say this film managed to surprise me the first time I saw it.  And when I say "surprised" I don't mean what is possibly the most famous penis revealing moment in history since John Wayne Bobbit.  I just mean I was pleasantly surprised by the story, the tone, and the overall quality of the film.  I also have to hand it to Hiltzik as most films made featuring adolescent teens are filmed using young looking adults but here actual kids were used for most of the characters.  I gotta say I watched this film for the first time so many years ago that I forgot how I felt about it.  I thought I liked it but I wasn't sure especially after so many years later, does it hold up.  Well it was made in the 80's and it looks like it but the effects, and the story make it better than average.  I'll give this three and a half romantic canoe rides out of five.