31 Days of Horror: Day 5- Sleepaway Camp (1983)

Despite the gruesome creatures, flying limbs and buckets of blood, horror as a genre can feel pretty stale. For every excellent film there is a dozen forgettable or terrible ones. And there are so many that it takes a lot of wading through the rubbish to get to the interesting stuff. For each day in October I’m going to recommend a different horror film or film about horror. For the most part they won’t be the accepted classics. My selections range from the genuinely excellent to the delightfully strange with a few that are more fascinating than they are great. Hopefully there will be something for everyone and you’ll find something new to give you a scare or maybe a laugh. This is my 31 days of Horror and today I’m talking about: Sleepaway Camp.

Robert Hiltzik’s 1983 film Sleepaway Camp is one of the most bafflingly entertaining horror films ever made. This is not a film like Sharknado that is made half-heartedly to make an easy profit and becomes funny because it’s so sloppily thrown together. Sleepaway Camp is a film made with purpose and enough passion to warrant a dedication to the filmmaker’s mother at the beginning. The thing is, the film is completely insane. It is the perfect storm of bizarre script, bad acting, poor production and general filmmaking ineptitude that makes this one of the greatest “so-bad-it’s-good” horror films of all time. Saying that though, it is not devoid of good qualities and is surprisingly effective in one key scene.

Firstly I’d just like to say that if this article gets you interested in seeing the film you’d be best not to look up a plot summary. This film goes to some incredibly unexpected places that are best experienced as surprises.

After a young girl named Angela’s father is killed in a ludicrous boating accident she finds herself living with her oddball aunt and cousin. That summer the two kids are sent off to camp. Not only does Angela have to deal with her extreme social anxieties it seems that there’s a killer on the loose. Just as she settles in to life at camp a killer starts picking off ne’er-do-wells in increasingly wacky ways.

I often find that lower budget films act better as time capsules of their era in comparison to big budget features. When there isn’t money to build sets or make costumes for everyone we get a better sense of what people actually would have looked like “back in the day”. If Sleepaway Camp is emblematic of the 80s then what I take away from that is that short shorts were way more commonplace than they are now. Either that or most of the films budget went towards shorts. It really does have a strange authenticity to it though. Although the things people say and do are ridiculous it definitely captures the era without being too over the top about it (except for the shorts). The film is laden with era-specific touches that give it some charm, such as the cigar chomping camp leader who smokes and gets enraged around kids all the time. Or how all of the kids swear a lot in a way that isn’t really seen in films today. Everything about the film is so specific to when it was made in a way that makes it interesting to see even outside the madness of it all.

Speaking of madness, this film shows its inner crazy within minutes. After the opening scene we meet Angela’s aunt who is like a David Lynch character thrown in the midst of this seemingly normal story. The other characters talk to her like normal people but she responds as if she’s in a play. She speaks a little too loud, says every thought she has out loud, acts as if she’s talking to herself, seldom seems to blink and it is glorious to behold. What is particularly amazing is how her performance is completely re-contextualised by the end of the film. On first viewing it’s just funny because of the actress’s performance but new things come to light that do lend it some eeriness. The aunt is certainly the stand out performance which is saying something because almost every character is ridiculous in some way. Whether it’s the ridiculously mean girl Judy or the old camp leader who goes to stupid lengths to cover up the murders, they’re all on the spectrum of insanity.

The slasher genre is so cliché-ridden that the lesser films of the genre can be a bit of a slog because we know exactly how things will play out. There will be different characters in slightly different situations but what really sets these films apart are the kills. Sleepaway Camp is such an oddity because its kills are, for the most part, a little rote and it emphasises many of the tropes of the genre to ridiculous lengths. But this is all part of what makes it such a blast to watch. For example in many slasher films where the killer is one of the established characters, each victim will let that be known without giving it away. Maybe they will just give a look of recognition to the killer or shout out “*Gasp* It’s you!”. Sleepaway Camp does this with every kill and it really draws it out as much as it can. Victims will exclaim that they know the killer until their dying breath without giving it away. Through its relentless daftness it makes the things that make your eyes roll in other films a source of fun again.

As much as I may be mocking the film, Hiltzik deserves credit for creating one of the most entertainingly funny horror films. It’s because the chief source of hilarity is not from what is done poorly but what is done insanely. Dialogue between characters is more bonkers than it is poorly written. Like Tommy Wiseau’s The Room it just seems to be a film that comes from a distinctively mad place. Sure, it’s also funny when a previously moustachioed character returns with a terrible fake moustache because the actor clearly shaved theirs. But what makes it such a successfully comical film is how unbelievably demented it is. Then in the midst of its eccentricities it ends with a completely chilling and unforgettable final shot. Some of the earlier quirks make a little more sense and it becomes wholly unique.

Troll 2 is often cited as being one of the best “so-bad-it’s-good” movies but like a lot of these types of films there are periods of monotony. Sleepaway Camp on the other hand is consistently compelling due to its unrelenting oddness. It’s a film that just has to be seen, I have barely scratched the surface of its insanity and there’s nothing else quite like it.