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. (read the rest of this shit…)
Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman (Felicity) play a young couple who have come to town for a wedding and are staying at an isolated house Scott’s family owns. It’s a house with a long driveway and a lot of trees around, a place where people can get lost, he mentions. They’ve had a bad night and might be calling it quits with each other and then all the sudden, around 4 am, some girl knocks on the door asking for somebody they never heard of.
I can’t remember if I’ve brought this up before or not, but I fuckin hate Bush. Worst thing to happen to this country including our version of Godzilla looking like an iguana. I don’t think I’m the only one who’d rather not think about him unnecessarily. So when I heard Oliver Stone was already doing an all-star George W. Bush movie it seemed like a joke. It honestly sounded to me like a fictional movie they would refer to in some TV show like STUDIO 60 or one of those. A character would mention that they’re trying out for the part of so-and-so in Oliver Stone’s George Bush biography. And I would think come on, Oliver Stone would never make a movie like that.
Everybody loves dog movies if the dog is named Air Bud or is a descentdant of Air Bud, and he plays basketball or football, or rides a skateboard or wears sunglasses. But what if the dog’s sport was hunting, and furthermore what if his prey was THE ULTIMATE PREY – MAN. Same prey that Predator chose, in other words. Not so adorable now, is it?
I know we got some home theater buffs out there, right? Let’s say you have an HDTV, a Blu-Ray player, 5.1 surround (or whatever the best is these days), the whole setup. How do you feel about using all that to watch a guy eat monkey brains?
To be honest I had written off the possibility of good Stephen King-based movies a while back. It seemed like that whole thing had run its course, but then I saw THE MIST and that was an enjoyable one. So I gave 1408 a shot, what the hell.
I’d been meaning to see REEKER since it was mentioned in the Fangoria magazine, then I was reminded by some list of recommended slasher movies. I seem to have pretty much squeezed the juice out of this genre but every year around Halloween I start scouring again just in case there’s a couple drops I missed. And there probaly are still some good ones out there that I haven’t seen.
This year they came out with a Clive Barker movie called MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN. Didn’t play anywhere near here so I haven’t seen it yet, but I did see the trailer and when they said the title at the end everybody laughed. Real mature, fellas, real mature. Well, this is an older Clive Barker picture and luckily nobody would ever be able to imagine a dirty interpretation of this particular title. I mean how would you even have a gay porno called that, unless you had a guy in it named Rex. But how many guys are named Rex in this day and age, I doubt something like that would happen.
If you ask me, AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON is the best werewolf picture mankind has developed so far. But watching THE HOWLING again reminded me there’s at least one giving a little friendly competition, keeping AMERICAN WEREWOLF honest. Even if it’s not as good.
So here we are. The VERY LAST time we will ever see Freddy Krueger. Dead forever. Never, ever again will he appear in a movie of any kind, because this at last is the end of him. It says it right there in the title, twice. He is dead, and this is the final one. And what a journey it’s been. But thank God we have this precious last 89 minutes to spend with him.
