This post contains spoilers!
Summer camp has long been a traditional place for deformed, masked killers to do their slicing ‘n’ dicing. Thanks to Friday the 13th, the slasher film found a home away from home, an isolated location where there would be 1) plenty of nubile young people roaming the area, 2) separation from any sort of protective adult authorities, 3) forest terrain in which the mysterious killer could massacre a handful of pretty, bikini-clad cheerleaders and their horny boyfriends without anyone catching wise—until it’s too late.
One of the most (in)famous summer camp slashers is undoubtedly 1983’s Sleepaway Camp. Several years after witnessing her father’s death in a boating accident, mentally damaged teenager, Angela (Felissa Rose)—now living with her kooky aunt (Desiree Gould)—is, along with her cousin, Ricky (Jonathan Tiersten), sent to Camp Arawak for a summer of fun and sun. Once there, Angela is introduced to an assortment of characters: Judy (Karen Fields), the camp tramp; Meg (Katherine Kamhi), the eternal sourpuss; Paul (Christopher Collet), the love interest; Mel (Mike Kellin), the camp owner; and Artie (Owen Hughes), the cook-slash-pervert.
Most of these lively characters exist to make the severely shy Angela’s time at camp a living hell, especially the bitchy duo of Judy and Meg. But when those who are mean to Angela—which seems to be just about everyone—begin turning up mangled and dead, all fingers point to Ricky, Angela’s protector. It’s no surprise to anyone reading this that the assailant is Angela, who’s actually a boy named Peter, a secret revealed in the film’s shocking twist ending: Angela, standing butt-naked on the moonlit lake shore, bloody knife in one hand, a decapitated head in the other. . . dick and balls out. The shot has become the stuff of slasher movie legend. (Interesting tidbit: Sleepaway Camp might be the only ’80s slasher to feature exclusively all-male nudity.)
Sleepaway Camp is in a category by itself. It took a theme Friday the 13th introduced—a killer at summer camp— which SC mirrors, but elevates it to the level of absurdist masterpiece. No other slasher flick of the time period captures the wonderfully ostentatious essence of the pure, unadulterated ’80s like Sleepaway Camp. The movie doesn’t try to be another Friday, yet it’s obviously aware of the footsteps its following. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime work of genius that can’t be replicated. Director and writer, Robert Hiltzik, wisely handed over the Felissa-less Sleepaway Camps 2 and 3 to Michael A. Simpson and Michael Hitchcock, possibly with the realization that he wouldn’t be able to top himself—and he didn’t. Hiltzik returned in 2008 to direct the “official” sequel, Return to Sleepaway Camp, which is, despite Rose’s participation, an unfortunate failure.
Coming on the tail end of the Golden Age of slashers is 1988’s Cheerleader Camp. Set at an isolated, pom-pom-waving getaway called Camp Hurrah, a competition for the upcoming state finals is interrupted by the apparent suicide of popular Suzy (Krista Pflanzer), which is followed by a series of murders. Could the killer be Pop (George Flower), the creepy camp custodian? Or maybe Pam (Teri Weigel), the jealous, booby-flashing Queen Bee? There’s also Brent (Leif Garrett), the horny cheer coach whose advances were turned down by Suzy hours before her death. But what about Alison (Betsy Russell), the nightmare-plagued, emotionally fragile protagonist who just happens to be Brent’s girlfriend?
The story crescendos during the crowning of the Camp Queen when bodies start piling up, including amateur videographer, Timmy (Travis McKenna), whose disemboweling is recorded over his homemade porn. The major red herring is Brent, but the killer is actually Cory (Lucinda Dickey, Ninja III: The Domination), the dowdy team mascot who, in the final scene, frames Alison for the murders before donning a cheerleader uniform and breaking into a cheer, asking the audience to, “Give me a C-O-R-Y!”
Filmed as Bloody Pom-Poms, Cheerleader Camp is a cheesy good time. Never taking itself seriously, the movie functions as a whodunit, all the while being playfully humorous—this is a flick that knows it’s silly. All the characters are fun and likable, and the plot moves quickly. Russell (Saw III-V) makes a sympathetic leading lady, and McKenna is a lovable horn-dog. It’s not going to be remembered in the annals of slasher movie history, but for us hardcore ’80s slasher aficionados, Cheerleader Camp is a cheerfully trashy delight. Cheerleader Camp: B Sleepaway Camp: A
Please check out Part 1 of Summer Camp Slashers
And, let’s not forget the Sleepaway Camp sequels…
SLEEPAWAY CAMP 2: UNHAPPY CAMPERS (1988) The years after the massacre at Camp Arawak have been enlightening for Angela, a.k.a. Peter Baker, the 14-year-old who killed all those who made his/her life hell at camp. Having seen the errors of her ways, Angela is now more of a Puritan killer, bumping off teenagers who indulge in swearing, drinking, fornicating, drug-taking, and generally bad behavior. Moments after cutting out a girl’s tongue, Angela cheerfully tells someone, “There’s plenty of good kids. You’ve just got to weed out the bad!” Having had gender reassignment surgery and using the surname Johnson, Angela is now a counselor at Camp Rolling Hills, where the usual assortment of foul-mouthed campers become fodder for Angela’s array of weapons, including knives, drills, battery acid, and a guitar string she uses to garrote a poor girl who talks too much. Tonally different from Sleepaway Camp, Unhappy Campers is a straightforward parody of ’80s slasher movies—and of itself—right down to its jokey, self-referential nature; in order to give Angela a scare, two boys dress up as Freddy and Jason, but end up on the wrong side of Angela’s Leatherface-inspired chainsaw. And it all works extremely well, offering plenty of laughs and some juicy deaths. The cast is first-rate, with Renée Estevez (Emilio’s sis) a sympathetic Final Girl, but kudos goes to Pamela Springsteen (Bruce’s sis), whose adult Angela is both likable and nasty. B+
SLEEPAWAY CAMP 3: TEENAGE WASTELAND (1989) Having “slummed it” in the year following her bloody escape at Camp Rolling Hills, Angela (Pamela Springsteen), runs over a city girl on her way to camp with a Mack 10. The eternal moralist, Angela impersonates the dead girl and immediately goes to work eliminating those she feels are a bad influence, including a drug-taking news reporter to whom Angela gives a gram of Ajax while informing the TV correspondent, “It’ll really clean your pipes!” The camp in question is an experimental program mixing inner city and suburban teens, operated by a stingy layabout (Sandra Dorsey) and her lecherous husband (Michael J. Pollard), whose fling with one of the camping bimbos sends Angela into a tizzy—so she mutilates him with a tree branch. One of horror cinema’s most prolific serial killers, Angela wipes out the entire cast until a showdown with Last Woman Standing, Tracy Griffith, sends Angela off in an ambulance. Even more of a comedy than Part 2, Teenage Wasteland doesn’t contain the magic of its predecessors—the exhausting back-to-back shooting of this film with Sleepaway Camp 2 results in a clear disintegration in quality—with a majority of the characters being too imbecilic to care about. Most of the gore FX were trimmed, making the death scenes less enticing than Angela’s post-kill quips, the best of which comes after she rips the arms off an S&M enthusiast who plans on running for office: “Thank God there’ll be one less idiot in politics.” B–