| Sleepaway Camp | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Robert Hiltzik |
| Produced by | Robert Hiltzik Jack Grossberg Jerry Silva Michele Tatosian |
| Written by | Robert Hiltzik Marshall Brikman |
| Starring | Mike Kellin Katherine Kamhi Paul DeAngelo Jonathan Tiersten Felissa Rose Karen Fields Christopher Collet |
| Cinematography | Benjamin Davis David M. Walsh |
| Editing by | Ron Kalish Ralph Rosenblum Sharyn Ross |
| Distributed by | American Eagle Films United Film Distribution |
| Release date(s) | November 18, 1983 |
| Running time | 88 min. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $350,000 |
| Box office | $11,000,000 |
Sleepaway Camp (UK title Nightmare Vacation) is a 1983 cult classic slasher film written and directed by Robert Hiltzik—who also served as executive producer. The film is about teen campers getting killed at a summer camp. The film came at a time when slasher films were in their heyday, and is frequently listed as having one of the most shocking endings among horror films.[1]
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The film opens in the summer of 1975, with a family consisting of divorcee John Baker and his two children, Angela and Peter, on a lake at an upstate New York summer camp. After their small boat accidentally flips, John and the children begin to head ashore, where John's gay lover, Lenny, is calling to him. As the family swims, a pair of teenagers, named Marianne and Craig, are pulling a water skier, named Dolores, in a motorboat. Craig and Marianne switch places to that the girl can drive the boat, but they fail to notice the family in the water in time and hit them, killing both John and Peter. The survivor, Angela, is sent to live with her eccentric aunt, Dr. Martha Thomas, and Martha's son Richard "Ricky" Thomas.
Eight years after John and Peter's deaths, Angela (now age 14) and Ricky (age 15) are sent to Camp Arawak by Martha, who reminds them not to tell anyone how they got the signatures for their physical exams. The buses arrive at the camp, and Artie, the creepy-looking camp cook, admires the children in a very menacing way. Ricky introduces Angela to his best friend Paul, and shows Angela around the camp as Ricky attended the previous summer. Angela does not respond when Paul talks to her, and backs away after Ricky and Paul finish the tour. Ricky tries to talk to Judy, his former girlfriend from last summer, but she hardly acknowledges him as she appears more interested in the older boys.
Due to her introverted nature and her shyness, Angela is ridiculed and bullied; her main tormentors being Judy and camp counselor Meg. During lunchtime, Angela, having not eaten for some time, is taken into the kitchen by the sympathetic head counselor Ronnie to see if there is anything she would like to eat. Left alone with the greasy head cook Artie, Angela is taken into a back pantry by Artie, who intends to molest Angela. Before any harm can come to Angela, Ricky walks in while Artie is unfastening his pants. Angela and Rick flee the kitchen after Artie threatens Ricky. After the incident in the pantry, Artie is seriously injured when he is knocked off a chair by an unseen figure while tending to a large pot of boiling water which spills on his face and hands. Artie's injuries are deemed accidental by camp owner Mel Costic, who pays off the rest of his kitchen staff, including the assistant cook Ben to keep the event quiet, and instructs the replacement cooks to tell the campers that Artie quit for another job.
The next day, Ricky, Paul and the rest of the boys in their cabin, including nerdy Mozart, are playing baseball with Kenny, Mike, Billy and the rest of the boys from another cabin. After Ricky wins the game to the older guys, Kenny talks to Mike about how to get back at Ricky.
Later that night during the dance in the recreation cabin, Angela is accosted by Kenny and Mike who begin mocking her for not speaking, prompting Ricky and his friend Paul to get into a fight with the boys. Several others join in, fulfilling the plan of getting back at Ricky. After the brawl is broken up by counselor Gene, Ricky and the rest of the boys involved in the fight leave while Paul stays behind and succeeds in befriending Angela by telling her of the misadventures he and Ricky would get into when they were younger. The shy Angela still does not respond, but when Paul begins to leave, she speaks for the first time telling him "good night".
Later that night, Kenny is rowing a boat with Leslie in which he rocks and overturns the boat. Leslie angrily swims away as Kenny, underneath the overturned boat, is attacked and pushed underwater by an unseen person. In the morning, Kenny's dead and decomposing body is found and his death is also ruled accidental by Mel, despite suspicion from Ronnie and the police.
Later that day, Angela walks up to Paul and begins to talk to him as he watches the girls play volleyball, much to the irritation of Judy. Meg tells Angela that she either must participate or do nothing (which includes talking with boys).
That evening, Paul and Angela go to the rec room to watch a movie, and they later leave when the movie is over hand in hand as Angela slowly starts to become more friendly with him. When they are alone, Paul attempts to kiss Angela, but her reaction is stiff and she walks back to her cabin.
The next day at the lake, Paul sits beside Angela who tells him that she cannot go in the water. Paul gets up and leaves when Meg arrives. Meg then asks Angela if she is going to swim, but Angela stops talking. Meg angrily shakes the silent girl until Ronnie pulls her away and tells her to leave Angela alone.
In the girls cabin, Judy approaches Angela and is angry thinking that she got Meg in trouble. Judy begins mocking Angela and asks her why she will not shower, swim, or change clothes with the other girls. Judy continues her verbal torments as Angela stares at her in silence until friendly counselor Susie intervenes.
Later that day, Angela is hit in the face with a water balloon by Billy and his friends who are standing on a cabin roof and throwing water balloons at passersby. Ricky comes to the aid of Angela, and begins shouting an angry, profanity-laced tirade at the boys on the roof. Mel reprimands the boys on the roof for throwing the balloons as well as Ricky for his language.
While his friends go off to play basketball, Billy stays behind in the cabin and goes into the restroom to take "a wicked dump". An unseen person locks him in the toilet stall using a broom handle. The unseen person then cuts the screen behind Billy and lowers in a hive full of live bees into the stall. Billy eventually breaks out of the stall, but is stung to death, with bees covering his face.
When Mel learns about Billy's death, he becomes unsettled because he thinks the camp may be shut down. Mel also grows suspicious of Ricky, who he believes is killing those who bully Angela.
The relationship between Angela and Paul grows strained when that evening Paul attempts to make out with Angela on the beach, causing Angela to have a flashback from her youth when she and her brother, Peter, witnessed their father in bed with his male lover, Lenny. Angela throws Paul off of her, and runs away.
The next day, Paul, confused and angered by Angela's rejection, is easily seduced by Judy, who lures him away from a game of capture the flag. Ricky and Angela discover Paul and Judy kissing. Hurt by what she has witnessed, Angela runs away. Guilty about what happened between him and Judy, Paul attempts to explain himself to Angela, but this time, she does not want to talk to him.
Later that day, as Paul tries again to talk to Angela, he is shooed away by Judy and Meg, who pick up Angela and throw her into the water. While being helped out of the lake by lifeguard Hal, several small children fling sand at Angela. A clearly disturbed Angela is comforted by Ricky, who swears revenge on her aggressors.
That evening, Meg, while preparing for a date with Mel, is murdered; stabbed with a knife while taking a shower, slicing her back open.
Meg's disappearance goes largely unnoticed and camp activities go on as usual with a social being held. At the social, Angela is approached by Paul who again tries to apologize over the Judy incident. Angela, for some strange reason, tells Paul to meet her at the waterfront after the social.
Next, six young children, are taken tent camping with counselor Eddie. When two of them ask to go back because they are cold, Eddie takes them to his car and drives back to the camp. When Eddie returns to the camp site, he finds the other four children in their sleeping bags, hacked to death with his axe.
Meanwhile, Mike and Judy are kissing in Judy's darkened cabin. Mike hides when Mel unexpectedly stops by to ask where Meg is. After Mel leaves, Mike decides that he'd better leave. Mel finds Meg's dead body in the shower stall and assumes Ricky killed her to get revenge on Mel for reprimanding Ricky earlier over the profanity shouted at the boys who threw a water balloon at Angela.
Judy, still in her darkened cabin, is knocked unconscious by an unseen person. The murderer shoves a pillow on her face and Judy's muffled screams can be heard as a hot curling iron is forced into her vagina. After the social, the camp is thrown into a panic when Eddie arrives and tells the other counselors about the deaths of the four children. Ricky, who did not attend the social stating he was ill, overhears this news before being attacked by Mel, accusing Ricky of killing Meg and all the others. After beating Ricky seemingly to death, Mel stumbles into the camp archery range, where he is shot in the throat with an arrow by the real killer. Ronnie calls the police and then tells Marie to gather the other counselors and round up the surviving campers; putting them into one cabin until the killer can be found. As the counselors and the police scour the camp, Angela meets Paul on the beach, where she tells him to undress, which Paul enthusiastically agrees to do. Ronnie and Marie find the dead Meg and Mel, while Frank the cop and Gene find Ricky who is still alive. Gene carries the badly beaten Ricky to a waiting ambulance as Frank calls for backup.
Ronnie and Susie find Angela, nude on the beach, softly singing to herself and clutching a large knife and Paul's severed head in her hands. Angela is revealed to be both the killer and a boy, the thought-to-be-dead Peter.
Through flashbacks it is shown that after Martha gained custody of him, she decided to raise Peter as a girl, already having a son and coming to the conclusion that another boy "simply would not do." It's also implied that Peter/Angela was mentally effected by seeing his father sharing a homosexual embrace. The film suddenly ends with the nude and blood-covered "Angela", male genitalia in full view, standing before Susie and Ronnie, letting out an animalistic hissing sound.
The film was given a limited release theatrically in the United States by United Film Distribution Company in November 1983.[2] On its opening weekend it had grossed a total of $430,000 in the US. When it opened, it was the top grossing film in New York, beating out its horror competition by taking in almost double the gross of Amityville 3-D. Sleepaway Camp attained a modest success in its theatrical run.
Over the years, the Sleepaway Camp films gained a loyal cult following. In the late 1980s, 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 change that made her entirely female. Much like at the previous camp, she gleefully tortures and kills anyone who misbehaves or annoys her. These films had more of a comic tone than the original.
Another rogue sequel, Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor, directed by Jim Markovic, was partially filmed but never completed. In 2002 the unfinished footage was released and made available as an exclusive fourth disc in Anchor Bay/Starz Entertainment's Sleepaway Camp DVD boxed set.
A new film, Return to Sleepaway Camp, was completed in 2003 and initially struggled to find distribution. It was directed by Robert Hiltzik, the director of the original 1983 film. He decided that this chapter will ignore the story lines of the previous sequels, stating that he wanted to pick up from where the original film ended. According to Fangoria.com the digital effects were redone from 2006 to 2008. The film finally found distribution, and was released November 4, 2008, by Magnolia/Magnet Pictures. Review copies of the film had been sent out, and the movie's screener had already been leaked prior to the release.
The purportedly final film in Hiltzik's Sleepaway Camp trilogy is also in the making. Its working title is Sleepaway Camp Reunion. Distribution has already been arranged via Magnolia Pictures for DVD with a limited theatrical release planned in 3D.
Michael Simpson, the director of Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers and Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland, recently wrote a script for his series of Sleepaway Camp movies as well, titled Sleepaway Camp: Berserk, which is now in its second draft. The other film in this continuity, Sleepaway Camp IV: Survivor, will finally be released in a final cut originally intended by the filmmakers.
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