31 Days of Horror: Sleepaway Camp (1983)
What’s with summer camps in the 1980s?
What is it about summer camps that cause people to go on murder rages? Is it the fresh air? Or is it the lack of patience when faced with a plethora of irritating children?
For Halloween Eve, I decided to watch Sleepaway Camp (1983). Written and directed by Robert Hiltzik, this is such a bizarre film that if watched in today’s cultural lens is chalk full of problematic themes, scenes, and content.
Angela (played by Felissa Rose), is a shy, traumatized young girl who is sent to summer camp. Her silent, shy nature provokes pretty much everyone in the camp and people soon enough start dying.
The deaths are all very gory and pulled off really great. Especially the death by bees, almost death by hot boiling water, death by curling iron, death by arrow, death by decapitation, etc…
There’s a total of two people that I feel sympathy for and one of them is the killer. If you’ve never seen the film, I won’t spoil the ending for you since it’s a pretty decent one. Decent and extremely creepy.
Overall, I thought this was a great slasher film for the time. Watching it now, I think it still holds up.
Ranking for 31 Days of Horror (1 being the best):
