Sleepaway Camp (1983)

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Day 12 of Sobriety.

Sleepaway Camp is one of the most well-known American “slasher” movies from the 1980s. At the time of its release, it was originally widely criticized for borrowing too much from Friday the 13th (1980) and similar films. In retrospect, considering the glut of such movies that followed throughout the 80s and beyond, and the fact that, to a certain extent at least, fans of these movies don’t particularly seem to mind the heavy-handed use of formula and tropes, such criticism seems largely irrelevant.

I enjoyed Sleepaway Camp a lot. I thought it was a good example of a formulaic slasher done right. It is lean (less than 90 minutes), funny, shocking, and very entertaining. I also thought that, while sticking to the formula, it had plenty of originality—and strangeness. The film is notorious for its shocking denouement, and even though I pretty much knew what was coming, yeah, it was pretty intense.

But, the less you know about this film going in the better, so I will (as usual) not say much about the plot. It’s a slasher set at an American summer camp for kids. I say kids, but that was something that really confused me about the film: I have no idea what such summer camps in the US are about, but I was confused that there seemed to be kids and teenagers of all ages at the camp together. Some of them seem to be elementary school age (maybe about nine or ten years old), some are clearly high school age, and some of them seem like they could be old enough to be university students. I found it hard sometimes to tell whether some of the characters were camp staff or whether they were kids staying at the camp. When I was a kid in the UK a thousand years ago, we had one summer camp in high school, which we attended with our classmates. What kind of camp is the one depicted in Sleepaway Camp? I have no clue.

I was quite amused by many of the 80s fashions on display—particularly some of those worn by the male characters: T-shirts cut off to show (often hairy) midriffs, cool logos (Blue Oyster Cult, Tequila Sunrise…), and shorts in the 80s were really short!

One thing that perhaps detracted slightly from the film was that a couple of the actors played their characters in an extremely camp and ironic way. Aunt Martha, the (foster) mother of the two main characters being the worst culprit. I have read comparisons to John Waters, and that is quite accurate. I think I would have preferred it if all of the characters were played completely straight (most were). The film also has the worst fake mustache in the history of cinema.

Apparently there are four sequels to this film, but they don’t have the lead actress from the original, who was excellent (she was replaced by Bruce Springsteen’s sister!). They are apparently more satirical and humorous in tone, so they are probably not for me.

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