Sleepaway Camp

Sleepaway Camp (1983)

Runtime: 84 minutes

Directed by: Robert Hiltzik

Starring: Felissa Rose, Jonathan Tiersten, Mike Kellin, Robert Earl Jones

From: American Eagle

For the next month or so I’ll probably be doing mainly horror reviews, if not entirely. To start that off, here’s a flick you may have not heard of before, but amongst some circles, it’s infamous due to its ending. Of course I won’t reveal it for you if you don’t know it; it can easily be found online after some Google searching; but, you probably don’t want to be like me and find out what the ending was THEN track down the movie, which is what I did in the late 90’s. I’ll just say that the ending is a twist ending so out of left field and bizarre, not even M. Night Shyamlan could have come up with it! It’s definitely an odd little movie at times… or rather, most of the time.

The movie is about Ricky (Tiersten) and his cousin Angela (Rose). They are both raised by Ricky’s mom… more on her later. Those two youngsters go to camp. Now, they are young teenagers for the most part at this camp, except for the leaders and camp counselors, of course. As Angela is extremely introverted and acts oddly at times, she gets targeted by the other campers, and Ricky is always eager to defend her honor. Suddenly, incidents happen and people get killed, usually in pretty twisted and nasty ways. Who’s responsible for it, and just what is the twist ending?

I’ve given a bare bones summation of the movie, but it’s much more than that real brief synopsis. This movie, which I got for 5 bucks at K-Mart due to it being on sale, is something I watched last night for the first time in years. The DVD version, by the way, has some real brief moments cut out, but it doesn’t really affect anything so I’m not going to carp about it.

I still enjoyed it, and I was surprised I didn't remember how bad the acting was (not that I'll complain about Robert Earl Jones and his small role, and yeah, his son is exactly who you think it is), or how much homoeroticism was present; I know, that's a rich comment if you've seen the movie already, but some parts I honestly did not recall. But, I at least got a laugh out of it.

Sure, the movie isn't good on a technical scale, but it's wildly entertaining. I mean, there's a cook who I'll call Pedobear Chef and he's with his fellow kitchen workers and he sees a bunch of campers run by and he refers to them as "baldies" and "chicken" and how do his buddies react? Why, they laugh it up, as if it was ok for Pedobear to say this while working with a bunch of kids! Then there's the awesome Mel character, at least in his 60's and he has some sort of thing with one of the camp consolers, who may not even be 18! Then, there’s the fact that Angela lives with Ricky as the beginning of the movie is her and her brother with their dad, and there’s a boating accident with Angela being the only one surviving. Well, there’s a flashback later on where we see that their dad is a homosexual, romantically laying in bed with another man! Out of the blue, just like that. What a bizarre script.

But, there's stuff that's not so twisted which made me laugh. I.E., Kenny, the 20-something kid who's supposed to be a character half that age who wears a sweet, sweet mullet and dons a great Blue Oyster Cult t-shirt. There are some great shirts on display, believe me.

There's one other thing I do have to admit. The character of Ricky's mom (and Angela's aunt)... personally, that woman terrifies me even more than Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees! I don't want to commit libel here, but that woman makes me wonder if she was always a woman in real life or not! You know, a tranny or a transsexual. Honestly, that’s the impression I get. That wouldn't be too surprising given that... well, you know what I mean if you've ever watched this before. Even ignoring that aspect, the way she acted was so just... well, off, it was really unsettling. It's as if she was an alien trying to act in a movie after having observed human beings for a short amount of time; it’s the strangest thing, and something is just not right there.

Still, if you can track it down, it’s not a bad 80’s slasher to watch and enjoy, despite how strange it is. I’ll be back Saturday night with a review of a new horror movie that will be released tomorrow. As there are FOUR of them which fits this description (no kidding, four horror movies coming out the same weekend), it will be one of those, I promise. The month could be filled with reviews, depending on various factors. You’ll get at least a few reviews in October, I promise you that.