Sleepaway Camp (1983)

I think maybe I haven't been indulging in enough '80s movies recently. For too long have I been wallowing in the shaggy beards and flared jeans of my beloved '70s...I'd totally forgotten that there were some serious short-short-wearing gentlemen who needed appreciating ten years later. Sleepaway Camp is gloriously kitsch, with its high tolerance for guys with crop tops and hotpants and girls with...well, more on that later...

The film starts on an interesting note: a dad and his son and daughter are out on a boating trip, and fall into the water. This isn't really the issue. Issue is, there's a teenage lifeguard in a motorboat nearby who's being hassled by some girl (who rocks a fat fold on her stomach -- thanks for the achievable body image, '80s!) to let her take a turn at the wheel. The darn fool concedes and she manages to cause a major freakin' wipeout, killing the dad and one of the children. As if this isn't bad enough, the motorboat was towing a waterskiier whose college major is most likely in Hysteria. She makes more of a fuss than the kid and father did.

Wilkommen, Bienvenue, Welcooooome!

Flash forward eight years and two cousins, Ricky (Jonathan Tiersten) and Angela (Felissa Rose), are being sent off to camp by Ricky's absolutely demented mother (Desiree Gould), whose looks are reminiscent of the Emcee in Cabaret and whose delivery is too over-the-top, even for melodrama. She fusses over them and says "Wasn't that nice of me?!" a lot. She, being a doctor (surely not a GP, but a Barbra-Streisand-as-Mrs.-Focker kind of doctor) has filled out their physicals in an overly dubious manner, which she warns them not to draw attention to. I guess with this, we're either thinking that Dr. Demento here is an utter freak, or that the kids have some kind of creepy illness. Or perhaps both. Yeah, probably both.

The kids arrive at Camp Arawak, which appears to cater to the delicious age range of 13-18, facilitating all kinds of hilarious clashes and insults, and the younger ones ain't as meek as I expected! Ricky is one of those tough pubescents that Corey Feldman played a lot of. He kicks and spits and tells people to "eat shit" a lot. Angela is withdrawn; she never speaks to anyone, and has a permanent wide-eyed look of anxiety on her face. Ricky is very protective of her and makes her excuses when her introversion causes social spectacles.

Shit kicks off pretty early for Angela. In the girls' cabin, we have one bitch counsellor, Meg (Katherine Kamhi) and one overly-gentile counsellor, Susie (Susan Glaze), and for some reason, Meg's constant harrassment of Angela in front of others never seems to cost her her job. Ricky's friend Paul (Christopher Collet) takes a liking to Angela, but is being teased by the Jessica Rabbit of the camp, Judy (Karen Fields), who also makes it her mission to torment the girl. It struck me as a little odd that Judy seemed several years too old for a kid like Paul, but then, as is pointed out..."girls mature faster than boys."

It's not just the cabins that are filled with weirdos and assholes. The proprietor of the establishment is one Mel Costic (veteran Mike Kellin in his final role), the kind of cigar-chomping greaseball in checkered pants who'd be a more likely candidate for pornographic direction than for childcare management. Luckily, his right hand man is chipper and muscly Ronnie (Paul DeAngelo) who wears the speciality Eunoch range of shorts and gets the kids all pepped up for campouts and baseball games and whatnot. However, the rest of the staff are just as creepy as Mel...the first shot we get of the kitchen staff is unsettling to say the least. Head cook and professional fat slob Artie (Owen Hughes) stands leering over the "fresh chicken", telling the boys that where he comes from, "we call 'em Baldies." Wow...wherever he's from probably ain't on the map.

The pervert becomes the pervee

So what could possibly go wrong in a summer camp inhabited by teenage sluts, teenage assholes and the odd paedophile? Well writer/director Robert Hiltzik made the wise decision to nip the pervert character in the bud before it got too creepy to handle. Artie's comeuppance serves as the first in a nicely-varying range of mysterious killings going on at the camp, always shown from the killer's perspective with only their hands coming into view. And the best part is... every character does one of those hilarious unsuspecting lines of dialogue (which remains ambiguous so as not to give the game away) before getting sliced. Things like, "Oh, it's you, what the hell do you want?" To the film's credit, we are left changing our mind as to the culprit for a good half of the movie. Towards the end it filters down the suspects for us, until there's only one we haven't seen doing non-suspicious stuff at the right time.

I suppose the main thread of the story (which back in the '80s they did their best to include around the slashing) is Whatever Happened To Angela? The kids and counsellors get real sick o' her shit, and one day Meg decides to grab her and throw her into the lake, while Judy follows and taunts her. Meg remains within the camp's employment after this incident too. This, of course, further traumatises the girl, and when she finally gets to know Paul, their makeout session is interrupted by very weird flashbacks to Angela and her brother as children, and her father with his male lover. Well the story with Angela is the basis for Sleepaway Camp's notorious twist-ending, and because of its sudden nature, it was really impossible to be handled both as a serious subject and a shock....

***Spoiler Alert***

The means by which I came across Sleepaway Camp spoilt the ending for me. The terrific documentary Going To Pieces examined the 'rise and fall of the slasher movie', and interviewed Felissa Rose about various movies. When the time came to talk about her famous role, they lingered mostly on the infamous ending, complete with matching VT. So I sought out the movie because of the weird ending I had been given a glimpse of. Because even out of context, it struck me as a real killer of a twist! So, as aforementioned, the movie whittles it down, by process of elimination, to us suspecting Angela as the killer. And something is most definitely wrong when she meets Paul at the beach and insists they both get naked.Meanwhile, a single policeman has turned up, and the remaining counsellors do their best 'concerned' impressions, with highlights including, "Oh no...there's a killer on the loose". The cop sends the counsellors off to search the camp..."even the empty cabins," he advises. Wow, what would they have done without him?! Everyone knows that criminals never hide in unoccupied spaces!

Mr Short-Shorts has graciously changed into a full-length tracksuit. Well, I dunno. Perhaps his ball-bearing hotpants would have proved the killer's antidote. Never know. But he and Susie (possibly the worst-acted character in the whole picture) have gotten their pretty permed selves down to the lake, where they see Angela sat, humming and cradling Paul's head in her lap. They approach from behind, cooing her gently to come with them. Then another flashback, of crazy Aunt Doctor, inheriting little Peter after the opening speedboat accident killed his family, and deciding to raise the child as the girl she always longed for, deducting that two boys "simply will not do"... see where this is going? Up hops Angela, mouth agape and growling like an animal, Paul's severed head rolling from her lap. And there she is... naked... with a penis. A penis! In the words of Felissa Rose, "I was the chick with the dick!" 

Now, if this moment hadn't been the very reason I ended up watching the preceding 80 minutes, I would have been whooping and hollering at its awesomeness. Ironically killer twist: perfectly executed; puns most definitely intended. But I have one question about it...killer Angela remains perfectly still whilst the camera zooms out to reveal her secret. Why? Perhaps it was to accommodate the obviously immobile Felissa Rose mask worn by the drunken college boy stand in. I guess it doesn't really matter. Even if Angela's weirdly wooden stance was the only thing that gave me a weird feeling about the shot, then it still achieved its desired affects regardless.

One may also come to assess what the makers may have meant by this ending. It's deep enough to be about more than shock value, so what statement is Sleepaway Camp making? Some may argue that it's an offensive sweeping suggestion that transgender or transsexual people are in some way sociopathically ill. Some may also see a link between the brief flashbacks of Angela/ Peter's father in bed with another man and the child's subsequent issues, But on the other hand, is the real evil not, in fact, evil Doctor Auntie, who decided to gender-reassign little Peter to suit her own selfish ideals? Perhaps the plot was first imagined as a reversal on the life of a transgender person: where they might choose of their own accord to change their identity to how they feel is right, Peter is forced by someone else to change his identity to how he feels is wrong. This is probably not a terribly common situation, but perhaps by extension, it is a statement about children's need to be their own person, and not live out the ideals and fantasies of their parents or friends. The more thought I give it, the more meaning I see in this cheesy old slasher flick.

Terry from Reno 911! (right) and some fashion victim at camp (left)

Sleepaway Camp is the kind of movie that I felt the compulsion to tell my sister about. She and I are both raging horror connoisseurs and have shared many a movie, not to say we always agree. But I know she too would appreciate all the straight men dressed like Terry the Homo from Reno 911!, the surprisingly imaginative and gruesome killings (did I mention curling tongs getting put in the most ridiculous of places?!), and the kind of creepy predatory style that could only have been used thirty years ago. This is a wicked flashy piece of the '80s which takes a number of increasingly unexpected turns, and even in 2015 feels quite original. Sleepaway Camp is definitely one of my new favourite slashers!