A Retrospective Review By Cesare Augusto Director: ROBERT HILTZIK Starring: Angela – FELISSA ROSE Ricky – JONATHAN TIERSTEN Judy – KAREN FIELDS Paul – CHRISTOPHER COLLET Mel – MIKE KELLIN Meg – KATHERINE KAMHI Most folks close to me should know about my vast love for cinema. I love, or at the very least try to appreciate all genres of film. Westerns, Action, Comedy, Drama, you name it, I dig it, often with great, unbridled enthusiasm. There are, however, certain genres to which I exhibit certain feelings of pickiness or fussiness, mainly towards Horror and Romantic Comedies. This isn’t because if I scare easily at frightening scenes, or if I turn my nose at sugary sweet romantic scenes played for laughs. In fact, I do enjoy the occasional jolting phantom-induced jump scare, and the pivotal true love’s kiss between boy and girl after many hilariously failed attempts at winning her heart. I’m usually hip to those scenes. But what I am not hip to are the lack of believable, compelling characters, and sharp, memorable writing which plague many horror and Rom-Com flicks. Too often I’ve viewed too many within the Horror and Rom-Coms genres that thrust boring, unlikable, or just plain lifeless characters on my face, resulting in a pretty damn lousy movie. For this review, I will forgo Romantic Comedies at the moment and save them for a future analysis. Instead, I will weigh heavily upon Horror, a film category that’s comparatively hit or miss with me. I tend to prefer particular sub-genres within Horror more so than others. For instance, I utterly LOVE Jack Clayton’s The Innocents, which screenwriter Truman Capote brilliantly adapted from the classic horror story “The Turn of the Screw” into one of the most devastatingly beautiful ghost stories ever created. Another terrific picture is John Carpenter’s The Thing. We can’t help but feel trapped along with the ice research team as they face a rampaging alien shape-shifter, and even each other. Both of these films are among my top favorites of the genre, all mainly due to the strengths of their characters. Pity I can’t say the same for some of their genre counterparts. Take, say, the gloriously schlocky and hokey Slasher flick. Of course, nobody goes to see Slashers for their artistic merit. Fans flock to these movies because they enjoy watching hulking, chainsaw-wielding freaks kill scores of attractive, yet horny and air headed teenagers, usually in explicitly graphic ways. The hot naked young people and their subsequent horrible demises are what sell Slashers, I get it. But let’s face facts: they ain’t scary, and have godawful dialogue. They just plain don’t appeal to the film snob in me. Happily, though, there is one Slasher flick that did strike me as unique and damn awesome compared to the rest. It is 1983’s Sleepaway Camp. At first glance, this may appear as a Friday the 13th ripoff. Both movies take place in a summer camp inhibited by teens looking to score with the opposite sex, and one by one the kids are butchered in gory fashion. Sound familiar? Yes, but only in terms of style, and not of contextual message. Friday the 13th proved to be so successful, it saw the inevitable return of series killer Jason Voorhees in countless sequels and even a crossover duel with fellow Slasher icon Freddy Kruger. Box office profits aside, the Friday the 13th saga doesn’t hold a candle to the twisty and inventive uniqueness of Sleepaway Camp. The movie comes well-equipped with strong characters that are realistically consistent with the teenage mindset. We the audience also witness firsthand the cruelty of young bullies and the warped sense of amusement they achieve when inflicting harm on smaller, weaker kids. Now, if you’ve never seen this movie and start to assume that this is nothing more than an afternoon special on steroids, stop right there. Sleepaway Camp is nothing of the sort, neither is it a conventional Slasher flick. In my eyes, it’s an anti-bullying revenge picture with a horror flavored body count and a doozy of a twist! The movie begins innocently enough, with a family vacation on the lake between a father and his son and daughter. The vacation goes horribly wrong after a boat accident kills the father and one of the kids. Flash forward eight years later as two young cousins, Ricky (Jonathan Tierstan) and Angela (Felissa Rose), head to a summer camp excursion, much to their shared dismay. Honestly, who in their right minds actually enjoys going to summer camp? Apparently Angela was the only survivor of the boating accident from years before, and continues to suffer terminal awkwardness to the present day. When they arrive at camp, they barely see any friendly faces. Almost immediately, Angela is besieged a wide array of bullies, from devilish uber-bitch Judy, authoritarian alpha-girl Meg, to a sweaty gang of sexist male pigs. Because of her overwhelming shyness and past trauma, Angela is an easy target for every scumbag imaginable. She even becomes the object of nasty obsession by a perverted fat older cook. The only folks decent enough to sympathize with Angela are Ricky, two well-meaning camp counselors, and Ricky's best friend Paul, who develops a crush on Angela. Before long, a rash of brutal killings descends upon the camp. An unseen figure is stalking Angela’s tormentors, and unleashing hell upon them. And boy, do they have it coming. Now personally, I don’t condone retributive violence, but the amount of abuse they inflect Angela is enough to drive many impressionable folks into homicide. This movie contains probably the most SAVAGE teenage bullying that I’ve witnessed since Brian DePalma’s Carrie. Apropos of nothing, this is still a Slasher flick, with enough camp-themed carnage to tickle any fan’s fancy. One victim is boiled alive in a vat of heated corn-on-the-cob water. Another is stung to death by a swarm of angry bees while sitting on the commode. One “unfortunate” victim (and I use the term “unfortunate” very loosely) meets her end by having a hair-curling iron shoved up her you-know-what. And as a bonus, we’re treated to a Psycho homage by death through shower stabbing! Being a modestly-budgeted B-flick, Sleepaway Camp’s special effects does pale in comparison to its genre fore-bearers, at least by measures of gore. Technically-speaking, the cheap-looking death scenes lack the graphic kick that makes Friday the 13th so notoriously fun. It could be because famous Horror effects wizard Tom Savini wasn’t employed in the crew. But all the killings act as a genuine buildup to the film’s climax, a true shock twist for anyone exploring the film for the first time. (SPOILERS) The movie reveals that Angela is NOT the DAUGHTER of the boating accident from eight years prior, but the surviving SON. The aunt who adopted her (Ricky’s mother) always wanted a daughter of her own, and in her infinite, albeit twisted wisdom, decided to transform her adopted son into the daughter she never had. Enter Angela at her current age as she cradles Paul’s severed head, butcher’s knife in her hand, eyes deranged and mouth wide open, and naked as a jaybird with his/her MALE junk in plain view. If you didn’t suspect Angela of the killings, (and Ricky, as fan theories abound he was in cahoots in the whole affair with his cousin), you’re either naïve as hell or you weren’t paying attention. Sure, it was Angela who did the dirty deeds, but did anyone suspect his/her TRUE deep dark secret? I never saw it coming, and neither did 1983’s audiences, or of any era for that matter! Yes, Sleepaway Camp borrows the template for many previous camping trip of doom Slasher movies. Yes, the acting is horrendous with predictable writing. But that shock ending was anything but predictable. It’s the stuff grimy nightmares are made of. See the original trailer here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9K2ARikYzE
2 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
About Yours Truly
Unearthing great forgotten and criminally underrated pop culture mediums is my specialty! Whether the topic be about cinema, television, music, or other fun bits of obscure minutiae, I love analyzing and unleashing these lost treasures to the unwitting public! Archives
October 2020
Categories |