Sleepaway Camp
As the slasher movie sweepstakes heated up during the early 80s, several would be auteur filmmakers were desperately trying to find ways to stay ahead of the game and come up with something that would not only be successful, but also REMEMBERED by horror movie fans for years to come. This 1983 release by Robert Hiltzik (in real life a full time lawyer) threw its hat into the ring and wound up becoming a lasting horror cult classic by virtue of a plot twist that had freaked people out at that time and still continues to do so to this day. The title and basic premise (summer camp slasher) makes it appear that the film is taking its cue from Friday The 13th and other straight up horrors where a psycho killer is taking out camp counselors before being taken down themselves. But Hiltzik would reach back even further and also take a cue from perhaps the godfather of all slasher movies in Alfred Hitchcockās Psycho. THAT film depicted (for all intensive purposes) a transvestite killer who had become that way due to massive sexual confusion brought on by the treatment from his mother. THIS film depicts a killer who appears to be an innocent female whom in reality is actually a male who was raised to believe that he is SUPPOSED to be a girl instead, messing up his / her own sexual identity so badly that the fact that his / her parents were actually two gay men (making him / her feel that in his / her female identity that a relationship with another male was out of the question) not to mention that the aunt that he / she moves in with early on (who appears to be a transvestite as well even though the role was played by a real woman) only reinforces the notion that he / she is to identify themselves as a female (i.e. the reversed gender identity was forced onto him / her) before sending him / her and his / her male cousin (who apparently knows the secret and is very protective of him / her) to summer camp, a place where the two cousins find themselves surrounded by normal kids and a lot of bullying which is enough to trigger our transgender main character into a murderous rampage. Now while all this might sound interesting in theory, what takes this whole entire film over the line into creepy / discomforting material is in the fact that nearly the entire main cast of campers are actually underage actors and also that many of the murder victims are as well, a conceit that even Friday The 13th would usually be prudent enough to avoid (only Part 6 literally depicted a working summer camp while the other films usually had the killer / Jason striking during a time when the counselors were either in training or otherwise when younger kids were not around). The themes of (forced) transgender issues also smartly kept the film relevant long after other slashers faded away and were forgotten, but here those highly uncomfortable overtones are only amplified by having its sexually confused main character (Angela) being played by a 13 year old girl in Felissa Rose, whom as an adult would parlay herself into having a long career on both the horror convention and the low budget B movie circuits complete with a fan following (even as she was left out of the sequels in being replaced by a jovial Pamela Springsteen as Angela). Newly arrived at the camp with her protective cousin Ricky (Jonathan Tiersten), we are immediately put off as viewers by the sight of the obese, shamelessly pedophile head cook openly leering at the kids and bragging to his co workers about what heād like to do to them, so when he gets the almost unnaturally shy Angela alone and tries to make a move on her, he winds up getting a large pot of boiling water dumped on him and even worse, he SURVIVES, getting hauled off in an ambulance screaming in agonizing pain all the way. Thereās also the camp owner (top billed character acting stalwart Mike Kellin, acting in his last ever role before dying from lung cancer), basically an old, perverted scumbag in his own right who carries on relationships with his much younger female employees, haphazardly covers up any accidents and murders in order to avoid any bad publicity and pathetically plays favorites whenever there are any conflicts involving bullying including having it in for Angelaās anger prone, foul mouthed cousin (whom the film lamely tries to portray as being a possible red herring, alternate choice for being the killer) including blaming him outright for the deaths to the point that we get the sight of this old man planning his revenge on a young boy. The fact that Angela is the killer (not revealed until the end) is a mitigated spoiler due to the fact that the character as played later on by Springsteen would become a āhorror franchise villainā for whom the sequels were literally promoted around with Springsteenās version of Angela being portrayed as a (post transexual operation) puritan type complete with wisecracks as her usual methods of killing (as they are in this movie) usually being comprised of sneak attacks (due most likely to her female stature) as opposed to Jason who had no fear of his potential victims with it being that he was both invulnerable and unkillable. But here Angela comes across as being both a sweet and very shy little girl who barely talks but who one would never think of as being a mass killer, even setting off on a cute little romance with her cousinās best friend (Christopher Collet, who went on to have quite a prolific career himself) and engaging in rivalries with both the camp slut (Karen Fields, whose stuck up character managed to gain quite a following of her own) and the mega bitch main female counselor (Katherine Kamhi) who is carrying on her own relationship with the crusty old fuck owner (and apparently does so because she is legitimately attracted to him) who as a result are both just added to the legion of bullies who then become targets for the homicidal young girl and her deadly wrath. Through all this the film continues to take on a highly uncomfortable and unsettling tone due not only to the sight of several underage actors possibly being exploited while having their characters killed, but also with the overtly sexual dialogue and situations including the sight of a young boy (unknowingly) embarking on a homosexual relationship, the pedo cook cornering a 13 year old actress all while unbuckling his pants onscreen and the camp slut fooling around with several boys before being murdered onscreen. Some of the sports scenes (particularly the baseball sequences) seem to be shot almost lovingly in how it portrays the boys and girls engaging in their athletic activity, but in the end what sets this movie apart from the others is in the ending, the big reveal that would set up the Angela character for the sequels (in essence āfranchisingā her) but also in just the sheer horrifying nature of the viewer realizing that this seemingly sweet, unassuming little girl is in reality a hideous monster who due mostly to the anger and confusion of having her own sexual identity being forced upon her at a young age has engaged in such behavior that has actually resulted in young lives being ended or (in the case of the scalded pedo cook) disfigured for life with some of the aftermath gore effects being truly disgusting to see. That the ending would even be considered LEGAL in the case of being presentable (supposedly an adult male actor wore a latex mask of the young actressā face so as not to be considered kiddie porn) is part of what makes it just so damn shocking even as the film leaves just a slight bit of doubt as to whether Angelaās foul mouthed cousin (who is at least more socially normal than she is) might also have been an accomplice in her rampage or at the very least aware of what she was capable of and yet was indifferent when it came to the ramifications of what she was doing (one offhand dialogue exchange between them that many viewers might miss almost makes it obvious that he possibly knew). Much of the sleaze and squeamish content is at least offset by Felissa Rose as Angela, acting zombielike early on before finally opening up to the few people who are nice to her before going mute whenever she is confronted by a bully, generating a strong amount of empathy from the viewer prior to committing the unspeakable acts that would make her a horror movie legendā¦
7/10