Sleepaway Camp (1983 film)

***Sleepaway Camp*** (released as ***Nightmare Vacation*** in the United Kingdom) is a 1983 American slasher film written and directed by Robert Hiltzik, who also served as executive producer. It is the first film in the *Sleepaway Camp* film series, and tells the story of a young girl sent to a summer camp that becomes the site of a series of murders shortly after her arrival. It stars Felissa Rose, Katherine Kamhi, Paul DeAngelo, Mike Kellin (in his last screen appearance), and Christopher Collet (in his first).

Released during the heyday of slasher movies, the film is known for its infamous twist ending, considered to be one of the genre's most shocking. Since its release, the film received a positive critical response and a cult following. It was followed by *IV* sequels, *Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers* (1988), *Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland* (1989), *Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor (1992),* and *Return to Sleepaway Camp* (1997).

## Plot

In 1975, John Baker and his partner Lenny take John's children Angela and Peter on a boating trip near Camp Arawak. Angela and Peter prank their father by capsizing their boat. They attempt to swim ashore where Lenny is waiting for them, but camp counselor Mary Anna recklessly strikes John and Peter with her speedboat, leaving just Angela alive.

Eight years later, in 1983, Angela now lives with her eccentric aunt, Dr. Martha Thomas, and Martha's son Ricky. Aunt Martha sends Angela to Camp Arawak for the first time, along with Ricky, who had attended the camp before. Angela's introverted nature makes her a target for ridicule and bullying, mostly from her bunkmate Judy and their counselor Meg. Angela's other counselor Susie and the camp's head counselor Ronnie do what they can to help.

Head cook Artie attempts to molest Angela, but Ricky catches him, and Ricky and Angela run out. Later, an unseen figure causes Artie to knock over a pot of boiling water and severely scald himself. Camp owner Mel Costic calls it an accident.

When campers Kenny and Mike mock Angela, Ricky and his friend Paul fight them. After the brawl, Paul befriends Angela and gets her to speak for the first time. That night, someone drowns Kenny. When lifeguard Hal finds his corpse the following morning, his death is ruled accidental at Mel's insistence, although Ronnie and police officer Frank express doubt. Paul asks Angela to attend a film with him. After campers Billy and Mike throw water balloons at Angela, Billy is stung to death when a mysterious figure traps him in a bathroom stall and drops a hive of bees in it. Mel suspects a killer is in the camp.

Angela and Paul's relationship is strained when Paul kisses her. Angela has a flashback to when she and her sibling witnessed their father in bed with Lenny. The flashback goes further showing both of the siblings pointing to another whilst in bed. At this point, Angela wakes up from the flashback, recoils from Paul's advances and runs away. The following day, during a flag game, Judy seduces Paul and Angela finds them kissing. Paul attempts to explain himself to Angela at the lake, but Judy and Meg shoo him away and throw Angela into the water. After Ricky rescues Angela, children fling sand at them. Ricky comforts Angela and swears revenge on her aggressors.

Meg is stabbed to death in the shower while getting ready to meet Mel. At that night’s social, Paul apologizes to Angela and she asks him to meet her at the waterfront later. Mel finds Meg's body and is convinced that Ricky is the killer. The children who threw sand at Angela and Ricky are camping in the woods with their counselor Eddie when two of them ask him to take them back to the main camp. He returns to find the four remaining children hacked to death with his hatchet. Back at the camp, the killer enters Judy's cabin and murders her, raping her with a hot curling iron while smothering her with a pillow. The camp is thrown into a panic. Thinking Ricky is the killer, Mel beats him mercilessly, then escapes into the woods, where he encounters the real killer, and is apparently shocked as to who the killer is, before being shot in the throat with an arrow.

Frank is called and searches with the counselors for the missing campers and for the slayer. In the meantime, Paul is at the waterfront with Angela, who suggests they go skinny dipping. Frank discovers Ricky unconscious but alive. Ronnie and Susie find Angela sitting on the beach with Paul, who appears to be resting in her lap as she tenderly strokes his hair while humming.

A flashback shows Aunt Martha welcoming the survivor of the boat accident into her home. It is revealed that Angela died in the accident, Aunt Martha took custody of Peter, whom she raised as a girl. Back in the present, Angela leaps to her feet holding a hunting knife, allowing Paul's severed head to fall on the ground, and stands nude, blood-covered, and with a penis in plain view before the horrified Susie and Ronnie, growling like an animal. The movie ends with the image of Angela's frozen, deranged expression, which fades into an ominous green tint as the credits scroll over it and the two counselor's fate is left unknown.

## Cast

Further information on individual characters: List of *Sleepaway Camp* (film series) characters

Further information on cast members: List of *Sleepaway Camp* (film series) cast members

Felissa Rose as Angela / Peter Baker

Frank Sorrentino as young Peter

Colette Lee Corcoran as young Angela

Jonathan Tiersten as Ricky Thomas

Karen Fields as Judy

Christopher Collet as Paul

Mike Kellin as Mel Costic

Katherine Kamhi as Meg

Paul DeAngelo as Ronnie Angelo

Susan Glaze as Susie

Amy Baio as Brooke Warner

Tom Van Dell as Mike

Loris Sallahain as Billy

John E. Dunn as Kenny

Ethan Larosa as Jimmy

Willy Kuskin as Mozart

Desiree Gould as Aunt Martha Thomas

Owen Hughes as Artie

Robert Earl Jones as Ben

Frank Trent Saladino as Gene

Rick Edrich as Jeff

Fred Greene as Eddie

Allen Breton as Frank the Cop

Michael C. Mahon as Hal

Dan Tursi as John Baker

James Paradise as Lenny

Paul Poland as Craig

Alyson Mord as Mary Ann

Carol Robinson as Dolores

## Analysis

Film critic and transgender woman Willow Maclay, in an essay about *Sleepaway Camp* for the magazine *Cléo*, characterizes the film's ending, in which Angela is revealed to have a penis, as both a unique element that sets it apart from other slasher films of the era and "deeply transmisogynistic". Maclay criticized the film for its "equation of mental instability with having grown up in a gender role not concurrent with your identity. Nearly every single transgender person grows up being raised in a gender role that does not fit, and that doesn't mean that they are mentally ill or seriously violent."

BJ Colangelo, in an editorial for *Dread Central*, wrote that, "The ending of *Sleepaway Camp* offers two reveals that are wildly offensive to the LGBTQ+ community," referring to the reveal of Angela's penis as transphobic, and the reveal that their deceased father was homosexual as homophobic. However, Colangelo adds that the film "is terrible transgender representation, yes, but it's an incredible metaphor about how forcing gender roles onto someone that doesn't align with who they are is fucking dangerous. If Peter had not been forced to live his life as 'Angela,' the events of *Sleepaway Camp* would have been avoided." Colangelo clarifies that she is not arguing that gender dysphoria causes those experiencing it to become murderers, but rather that "children experiencing gender dysphoria and living in non-affirming homes are prone to depression, thoughts of suicide, and yes, sometimes violent outbursts."

Transgender writer Alice Collins of *Bloody Disgusting* stated that *Sleepaway Camp* "is steeped in queerness, especially when compared to its contemporaries. In its day it took a deeper look into the subject matter than that of other films. Angela and Peter's dad is a closeted gay man, there's forced gender bending (which is abuse rather than queer but people will see it as such), and the majority of the scantily clad people in the film are men with all those very short shorts that leave little to the imagination while there is little skin shown of the feminine variety." Collins argues that Angela is a transgender girl, noting that, in the film's sequels, Angela is presented as a woman who uses feminine pronouns: "So despite Aunt Martha being insane, she just happened to stumble upon a person who was already a girl; and it was an accident that her brainwashing worked."

## Production

The filming of *Sleepaway Camp* took place in Argyle, New York near Summit Lake at a camp formerly known as Camp Algonquin. In interviews, screenwriter and director, Robert Hiltzik, has said that he attended that camp as a child. The movie was filmed in five weeks starting in September 1982 and ending in October of that year on a budget of $350,000. The film had been storyboarded but after the first day of filming, the movie was already behind schedule. So, the storyboards could not be used and were thrown out. The trees, with their leaves turning, belie the summer setting of the movie.

Unlike many of its contemporaries, which had adults portraying youth, the cast of *Sleepaway Camp* was primarily made up of adolescent actors.

## Release

*Sleepaway Camp* opened in 85 theatres in New York City on November 18, 1983. According to the American Film Institute, it had its premiere in Los Angeles the following spring on May 25, 1984. The August 1984 Box review reported that the first week box-office gross at fifteen Los Angeles, California theaters was $90,000.

### Home media

Anchor Bay Entertainment released *Sleepaway Camp* on DVD on August 8, 2000. Anchor Bay reissued this disc as part of a four-disc set titled the *Sleepaway Camp Survival Kit* on August 20, 2002, which also contained the film's two sequels, as well as a bonus disc featuring footage from the unfinished third sequel. This boxed set, which featured a medical red cross on the front cover, was discontinued in late 2002 after the Red Cross filed a complaint against Anchor Bay, which subsequently redesigned the box art to remove the cross logo. In 2005, the Canadian-based Legacy Entertainment released a region-free budget DVD release of the film. However, unlike the original VHS release, this release contains numerous edits to the film to either shorten violence or certain moments like dialogue.

Scream Factory released the film in a collector's edition Blu-ray set on May 27, 2014. This release contains a 2K scan of the original camera negative, and this release also has the film in its original uncut version, unlike the DVD released by Anchor Bay.

## Reception

### Critical response

#### Contemporary

On release, the film was frequently compared to *Friday the 13th* due to their shared settings and whodunit plot structure.

A review in *The Courier-Journal* characterized the film as a "Low-budget slasher in the *Friday the 13th* mold, with teen-age mayhem at a summer camp." In the *Chula Vista Star-News*, the film was deemed "a tasteless picture about mysterious murders at a summer youth camp that obscenely blends beheadings, stabbings, pubescent impulses, homosexuality, and transvestism with a cast of junior-high-school actors." *The News-Press* called it "A shockingly good slasher film, if you use the relatively fine, first *Friday the 13th* as a measuring stick... it's just another crazed killer stalking nubile summer campers. But, this time, there are some truly creative killings and interesting plot twists."

#### Modern

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, *Sleepaway Camp* holds a 78% approval rating based on 23 reviews, with an average rating of 6.4/10. The consensus reads: "*Sleepaway Camp* is a standard teen slasher elevated by occasional moments of John Waters-esque weirdness and a twisted ending." On Metacritic, the film was reviewed by 4 critics and got a rank of 58 out of a 100, which indicates "mixed or average reviews".

The website *Bloody Disgusting* gave the film a positive review, praising Felissa Rose's performance and the film's twist ending calling it "one of the most shocking seen since, possibly, Hitchcock's *Psycho*". AllMovie wrote in its review on the film, "While most of the gender-bending story's sexual confusion is ultimately half-baked...*Sleepaway Camp* is distinctive enough to warrant required viewing for genre enthusiasts."

Over the years, the film has gained a cult following from fans of the slasher genre and garnered critical reappraisal. Film scholar Bartłomiej Paszylk called the film "an exceptionally bad movie but a very good slasher." Commenting on the performances in the film, film scholar Thomas Sipos wrote: "[the film] feels odd due to its contrasting acting styles. Most of the cast performs in a naturalistic manner, whereas Desiree Gould's performance as Aunt Martha is strikingly stylistic: broadly overplayed to the point of caricature."

In his book *The Pleasure and Pain of Cult Horror Films: A Historical Survey* (2009), Paszylk characterized *Sleepaway Camp* as "elevat[ing] the kids to the position of the movie's mass protagonist and becomes a tricky metaphor of the unspeakable pains and anxieties of growing up." He further commented on the film's conclusion: "The epiphanous ending brings *Sleepaway Camp* further away from the likes of *Friday the 13th* and closer to such 1980s 'slashers with a twist' as *Happy Birthday to Me* (1981) and *April Fool's Day* (1986); but Hiltzik's movie goes even further than that: in this case the denouement doesn't just add a new dimension to everything we saw up to this point, but it pushes its way deep into our minds and stays with us forever."

The film was featured on episode 48 of the podcast *How Did This Get Made?* where hosts Paul Scheer, Jason Mantzoukas, June Diane Raphael, and guest host Zack Pearlman struggled to decipher the film's opening moments, due to the ambiguous relationships established at the beginning of the film. Scheer later recalled that it had been the most fan-requested film "by a landslide."

## Other media

### Sequels

In the late 1980s, Hiltzik sold the rights to the successive *Sleepaway Camp* films, after which Michael A. Simpson directed two sequels, *Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers* (1988) and *Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland* (1989). In them, Angela (now played by Bruce Springsteen's younger sister, Pamela Springsteen) resurfaces at a nearby summer camp, but this time masquerading as a counselor after a sex reassignment surgery. Much like at the previous camp, she gleefully tortures and kills anyone who misbehaves or annoys her. These films had more of a satirical comic tone than the original.

Another sequel, *Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor*, directed by Robert Hiltzik,

A fifth film, *Return to Sleepaway Camp*, was completed in 2003 and initially struggled to have its visual effects completed. It was directed by Robert Hiltzik, the director of the original 1983 film. According to *Fangoria*, the digital effects were redone from 2006 to 2008. The film was released in 2008.

The purportedly final film in the *Sleepaway Camp* series, titled *Sleepaway Camp Reunion*, was also announced to be in the works. Distribution had been arranged via Magnolia Pictures. Creator Robert Hiltzik, who recovered the rights to the franchise, has stated that he would make the film if his budget was met. However, Hiltzik and *Return To Sleepaway Camp* producer Jeff Hayes later announced themselves as having started work on a reboot that would retain the key characters and elements of the original film with additional storyline elements and a dose of modernizing. As of Summer 2014, Hiltzik was reportedly tweaking the script. In addition, Michael Simpson, the director of *Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers* and *Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland*, wrote a script for an additional film called *Sleepaway Camp: Berserk*.

Karen Fields reprised her role from *Sleepaway Camp* in the 2014 short film *Judy*, although it wasn't technically a sequel. The Jeff Hayes-directed film was included in the collector's edition Blu-ray release of the original *Sleepaway Camp*.

According to horror-movie fansite Bloody Disgusting, a reboot of *Sleepaway Camp* is in the works. It will star Felissa Rose.

### Documentaries

A documentary film on the series, titled *Angela: The Official Sleepaway Camp Documentary*, is currently in pre-production, with Felissa Rose as executive producer.