Sleepaway Camp
Recommended by: Noel
Watched by: Casey
Summary: 80's Slasher movie with a twist.... It has all the troupes from the 80s. Low budget gore, cheesy dialog, stereotypes from the 80s. The twist was offensive in fact if you took the part that is offensive out, it wouldn't be the twist. Says a lot about the time. Curious to see if someone could do a more modern one, acknowledging the twist. Something like Lovecraft Country was doing.
Rating it before current times: 4 out of 5 Younger Caseys, but given awareness it is now 0 out 5 Woke Caseys.
Hahahaha rating system gets complicated for this one...
ReplyDeleteThis movie is a fascinating look at the time period. Here's my review from 20118:
ReplyDeleteOct 20: Sleepaway Camp
Today I watched this camp classic! This fits right in the classic 80s pantheon of horror involving camps. Boys engrossed in rivalries with other boys, girls bashing and teasing other girls, counselors raping children, and under it all blossoms love and INSANITY.
I really liked the bitchy girl who always was making fun of the main character. At one point she said she was "a carpenter's dream, flat as a board, and needs a screw." Which made me laugh...but it was oddly prophetic.
Alright things are about to get real stream of consciousness. And extreme spoilers ahead.
The fact that the main character Angela was the killer was no surprise. Everyone that crossed her ended up dead. At the end of the movie she is naked on the beach holding the severed head of the boy she was having feelings for. When she stands up in front of everyone it turns out she has a penis. Her crazy aunt who takes care of her wanted a girl, so she make him dress up and present as a girl for years. (Hence she was flat a board)
This movie joins that dated and worn out horror cliche of men acting and dressing up like women being part of their insanity. Goes all the way back to the 1950s with Psycho.(The earliest possible example I can think of is Lovecraft's 1933 story Thing on the Doorstep, but in that case, a woman with the self identity of a man)
This is obviously not modern sensibilities, when Angela jumps up, she hisses at the people looking at her, her humanity is completely gone when it is revealed she is not physically female. As if that is all the explanation we need about why she was a killer However that is not the only weirdness in here.
Earlier she was kissing the boy, and we see a flash of memory from her past, of her dead father, laying naked in bed with another man. What was the deal with that? Was she bothered by her father's homosexuality, and then viewed herself as homosexual as she developed feelings for the boy at camp? And did THAT contribute to why she killed the boy? Did this movie hit a double whammy of transphobic and homophobic?
And why the hell was her aunt so crazy? What's HER story?
I liked this movie, but godDAMN is it a product of it's time.
Oh, again, your review reminded me that I never noticed the scene of the father! I need to rewatch so I can see that. So weird!
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