Friday, December 13, 2013

Movie review - "Sleepaway Camp" (1983) * (warning: spoilers)

Teen slasher films of the early 80s were an often indistinguishable bunch but this one, while it has the most basic of basic ideas (someone runs around a summer camp killing off kids and counsellors one by one) this manages to be special by virtue of sheer insanity.

The plot focuses around young Angela, survivor of a hilarious family boating accident when young who grows up under the charge of what seems like a female impersonator. She goes to stay at summer camp where she is picked on by many of the kids there - who subsequently wind up dead. Most of the victims are played by actors who seem to be really young, which is actually a bit upsetting - but you're more likely to be distracted by the bad acting, porn movie moustaches (one painted on) and Village people haircuts, skin tight shorts, comments about women being flat chested and having no pubic hair, a camp owner who refuses to believe anything is wrong no matter how many corpses show up.

There's also a lot of gender/sexual politics with two kids being traumatised at the sight of their father in bed with another man, and a woman raising a boy to be a girl, and a Crying Game type ending. So you have to give it some points for at least imagination. Also one or two deaths are different (killing with bees while on the toilet... although they could have gone under the door, and being stabbed and sliced in the back).

A random note - if this film was made now it would probably breach all sorts of child porn rules because I'm pretty sure it depicts sex acts for under sixteens.

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