Sleepaway Camp - with many spoilers

This was a very likable movie.

It’s as if someone took the dialogue and peculiarity of The Room, mixed it with a typical slasher movie, and then cast a bunch of 80’s gay pornstars to

Act as camp counselors to street children from the Bronx.

“In memory of mom, A doer” pops up at the start of the flick. When this first popped up I was hoping it was a clever, integrated shout-out that would become part of the film and have me giggling with excitement when it all fell into place. I’m not sure that wasn’t what the director was going for, but now I’m more convinced it was probably a badly thought out and quite offensive homage to his own mother.

The movie opens with a long, drawn-out shot of the camp, enticing viewers to imagine the horrors that are about to unfold in this space. It was over three minutes of footage which I get the feeling was added in after the movie's completion to try and edge that little bit closer to the 90 mark. Luckily, every scene following this was gold.

Older horrors seem to have rawer, more unpolished audio than their modern-day counterparts. The unsettling background noise in Texas Chainsaw Massacre seems to come from nowhere, yet doesn’t seem out of place and fills the viewer with dread. The jet ski rider screaming during Sleepaway Camp’s speedboat accident (where we see one of Angela’s Dad’s making like Kirsty MacColl) manages to absolutely nail sounding distressed. That made me more anxious than any one of the movie’s murder scenes. The noise at the climax of the film… I don’t know why Petergela was making such a horrid sound but it was creepy as fuck.

Angela’s bereted adoptive mother’s first scene showcases the brilliance of this movie. She’s completely overacting, yet she’s still nailing her odd character. And there is a seed planted… why did the kids have to lie about their “physical exam”...?

I generally like it when a director casts himself in a movie (Hitchcock and Tarantino, I’m mainly looking at you), but if I were Robert Hiltzik I’d have probably aimed a bit higher than ‘peadophile chef’. There’s a lot of peado-y things going on all over the camp, in fact. Even the cigar-smoking older gentleman in charge is trying to sleep with a camp counselor. It’s just… so 80’s.

The camp counselors themselves were an absolute joy and sported some of the finest denim shorts and cut-off tops I’ve ever come across. A particular favourite of mine:

These guys were straight out of an 80’s “Hunks” calendar.

The final scene in the movie was perfect. The nude image of Angela standing there with her pecker out and her mouth open whilst that awful sound came out was there on the inside of my eyelids whilst I tried to sleep that night, fading to green. I’m sure we’ve all googled it and discovered that the shot was of a thin male actor wearing a mask of Angela’s face. It’s hideously imperfect. which, instead of detracting from the image and making it laughable, somehow amplifies the horror of it all.

So, To Conclude:

More fun than an 80’s 8-bit boxing game on a calculator during a baseball match. Sleepaway Camp gets:

4 thumbs up

Here’s a meme

This also genuinely happened: