The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2018: Sleepaway Camp (1983), directed by Robert Hiltzik

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "The Kid Who Drowned at Summer Camp", by Hot Sugar

     Well you know it just wouldn’t be a Halloween movie marathon without something from that Golden Age of Cheeze, the 1980’s. I know Pumpkinhead technically fits the bill here, being a horror movie from the 80’s, but I’m talking A-grade, chunky globs of cholesterol type cheeze here. Movies so campy that you have to watch them in a tent, soundtracks dripping with synth like Depeche Mode pool party, and all the pure, non-CGI blood and and gore that you can eat. The kinds of movies that you could  entire franchises and shitty modern reboots, that filled drive-in theaters, fanzines and video store bargain bins. If I was going to do any scary movie for this Marathon, and my record says I don’t, I always want it to be from the 80s. Because they were stupid fun, and not muddled, PG-13 bores.

     In a concept never before seen in a horror movie before, Robert Hiltzik’s Sleepaway Camp takes place at a lakeside summer camp. Specifically Camp Arawak, where cousins Ricky and Angela are being sent to spend a couple weeks of fun in the sun. Group activities, teen romances, persistent verbal and physical harassment by your peers, avoiding the statutory rapists on staff, the whole nine yards. Things start to take a turn for macabre as Camp Arawak start to see a series of serious and sometimes fatal accidents. Camp owner Mel is desperate to keep things on the down-low, but as the body count rises that’s not really an option the list of suspects continues to rise. Could it be Ricky, the outspoken boy? Angela, the shy, reserved girl? Judy the asshole? You’ll have to stick around to the grisly end to figure out this little mystery, and even then you might not see it coming.

     Sleepaway Camp is a bit of a weird one. While it is a proper slasher flick at its core, taking out horny teens and assholes with violent and ironic death, there’s this slight surreality in the air that separates it from its peers. Part of it deals into the ‘big twist’ of the film, but really it permeates every scene. At any moment you expect the movie to veer off into Troma levels of absurdity, but it always manages maintain a level of staidness that those movies in general lack. Treading the line between Black Christmas and The Stuff, a tough balancing act that many movies fail to succeed at in my experience, but Sleepaway Camp pulls it off.

     I’d also like to give props to the cast in this movie, which is made up of mostly teenagers of varying ages. We all know that often younger actors can be the make-or-break moments of movies, we’ve certainly seen it in the Marathon, but in a genre where the best you can hope for that the actor’s are utterly terrible I think they pull things off here pretty well. Even better than some of the adult actors in some cases, even though the entirety of one character’s scenes involve staring blankly at other people.

     Which, not to imply any spoilers, ties into that ‘big twist’ that movie was apparently famous for and my major point of contention with the film: It’s not really a twist. In fact I was able to parse out the twist within the first couple minutes, and I imagine that anyone else who watches would be able to as well. I’m also not sure how I feel about the wist myself, or at least how they present it, but it’s not so overwhelmingly distracting that it took me out of the film .

     Competently made, unique, and bloody, Sleepaway Camp is a hidden gem of 80s cult horror films, and as such easily earns a recommendation. Readers may scoff at my suggestions of westerns and absurdist comedies, but this is a classic, meat & potatoes kind of Halloween movie, perfect for watching with friends or throwing on at parties. For those in the mood for stabbings, beatings and a lot of water-based trauma, Sleepaway Camp is the film for you.