Movie Review: Sleepaway Camp

Ewww - definitely need a shower after this one.

Most famous for its final reveal, this is otherwise a pretty creepy slasher film, and I don't mean creepy in a good way. It says something when one of the first extras we meet is the pedophiliac camp chef, who greets the oncoming rush of shorty-short wearing teens with the comment "where I come from we call 'em baldies". And the old black caretaker chuckles knowingly, as if to say "Yep, he's a greasy disgusting pervert, but he's our greasy disgusting pervert."

Ewww.

From there we move onto the slutty teen bitch, camp hijinks that were passed over by Meatballs 3 (including an all-male skinny-dipping scene), and oh yes, the camp owner inviting over one of his camp counselors over for dinner on her night off. All of this is taking place with a cast of unknown teens all running around in shorts that the 70's Celtics would take one look at and go "damn - those are short shorts!" Not to mention the guys wearing half-length t-shirts.

Please - not to mention them.

Beyond all of the fashion desecrations, we have a fairly generic slasher film. The deaths don't come very quickly until the end, and there isn't much mystery as to who the killer is. The script tries to make it appear as though the quiet Angela might have a secret protector, well, I wasn't buying it. It's not until the end when we start getting some interesting kills, with the death by curling iron (!!!) and a great low-tech shot of an arrow through the neck being stand-outs.

And of course, the infamous ending shot of Angela revealing the "motivation" for her actions - not that it really explained anything. She had a nutbag aunt that warped her in some amazing ways (how did she get away with that, anyway?), but it doesn't really explain why she snapped at camp. Wouldn't all of these same things happen to her anywhere else?

Oh well, I was going to give this one two stars until the action picked up at the end, but there was enough there to barely bump things up to a middling three stars. But really - the ending is really the only part of this movie that is worth catching.