SLEEPAWAY CAMP parts 1-3

There’s no way around it: SLEEPAWAY CAMP is a blatant ripoff of FRIDAY THE 13TH. It borrows the summer camp setting, the child with a tormented past and messed up guardian, and the unseen killer who’s unmasked in a crazy twist ending that nobody could’ve seen coming because it came out of nowhere. Alot of slasher movies take the same formula and put it in a different setting, this one takes the same formula and puts it in the same setting. It’s like DIE HARD in a building.

The reason it’s survived in the popular consciousness, though, is that it has its own weird brand of sleaziness that gives it a feel different from any other slasher movie, including other summer camp slasher movies. For one thing, the kids at the summer camp are played by actual kids. The vast majority of ’80s slasher movies were about teens played by actors in their early to mid twenties. And FRIDAY THE 13TH focussed on the counselors. Adrienne King, who played FRIDAY heroine Alice, was 20. Felissa Rose, the star of SLEEPAWAY CAMP, was 13. It makes it more uncomfortable.

Rose plays Angela, a troubled new girl at the camp who barely talks or eats food, maybe because she’s so traumatized by that time 8 years ago when her brother and dad were killed by a motorboat. She went to live with her crazy Aunt Martha and her cousin Ricky. Now her and Ricky are enrolled in summer camp.

But please note, this is Camp Arawak, New York, not the much more polite Camp Crystal Lake in Connecticut. These little bastards swear like a sailor who just dropped an anchor on his toe after listening to Redd Foxx records all day. And they’re mean. Because Angela is a girl, and because she’s new, and because she’s weird, the kids swarm in on her. A stuck up girl says Angela has small boobs, makes fun of her for being shy. In a classic bit of kid logic the bully girl argues that Angela must be a lesbian because she doesn’t take a shower with the other girls. (more…)

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