“It certainly will be a nice little surprise when Richard comes home to find a little girl in the house.
Yes, I’ve always dreamed of a little girl just like you.”
More people know about the final reveal in Sleepaway Camp then have actually seen the entire film. I thought I had seen it because that ending is one of the great twist reveals of all time and the rest of the film seems like typical dead teenagers at summer camp. Not only was this my first viewing, knowing the ending ahead of time makes watching the film a more interesting experience. However, even if I didn’t know, there are so many unusual choices, Sleepaway Camp would probably be a cult film anyways. The finale is just the knockout punch, but throughout there are interesting – sometimes subtle, sometimes unintentional – talking points for our modern climate of gender fluidity.
As a summer camp slasher, the film stands apart by not showing many of the kills. It’s still a violent movie, sometimes probably more so than the filmmakers intended. Rather than show us the knives, axes and bees actually going into people, the effects budget is spent on the dead bodies, the aftermath. These corpse shots are often extreme for what was done to the characters, which I guess is a way of making up for not having the money or skill to actually film the murders themselves. I’m not looking to sound morbid, but when you watch a lot of horror you notice what this particular film chooses to show and not show.
The look of the film is very early 80s, which along with a dock on the lake, reminded me of Wet Hot American Summer. The clothing has a heavy homoerotic vibe, something absent from Everybody Wants Some!! This only heightens when the characters and dialogue get into specific gender norms. It’s not just typical horny teenager talk, but exaggerated. That can be dismissed as terrible acting, though I find it more accidentally camp. Maybe deliberate, I don’t know, writer/director Robert Hiltzik never made another feature. My take is that Sleepaway Camp isn’t an 80s teen slasher with some unusual moments, but an amateur filmmaker who wanted to say something personal and disguised it as an 80s teen slasher.
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