Sleepaway Camp belonged to the throng of slasher generics where kids go to camp then die. One can't really blame the movie. It was from the 80's, and slasher movies back then are like zombie movies of our current times. Put short, they were everywhere. But it's unique thematic turn in the end made it not only one of the few firsts but also the few "legitimately good" slasher films. Late at night when I am reminded of those last frames of the movie, I would feel strange, astounded, my mind boggled. How did that even happen? Where did that came from? I would ask myself, drop a giggle, feeling dumbfounded.
In the center of this clear classic, is Angela (Felissa Rose) an orphan who has subsequently taken care of her eccentric, if not crazy, aunt (Desiree Gould) after when she had witnessed the tragic motor boat incident that took the lives of her father and her sibling. Her introvert nature gave some sort of a "pass" to fellow campers to constantly bully her. Luckily, she is accompanied by her cousin Ricky (Jonathan Tiersten), a swearing-mouth baseball-hotshot of a camper who despite this, always take time to protect his cousin.
The things you would expect on a movie entitled Sleepaway Camp is everywhere to be found. A mixture of tweenteens and twenty-something seniors who all like to camp, the ample supply of awful fashion sense - especially to the males, who sport weird tops to tight super-shorts - and a troubled preteen who is at work, killing one camper at a time. Nudity, however, is the only exception (I know, you were kind of expecting some, weren't you?). Albeit by turns conventional, the movie is still finely made (by director Robert Hiltzik) that after a battalion of awful sequels have been released, you remain loving the first. Hiltzik's kill scenes are deliciously inventive, but what makes them very efficient is that the characters are given time to be established before their demise so their murder isn't just plain decrease of bodies.
Sleepaway Camp's final act is stupendous that it's only fitting that it may be regarded as one of the best endings in horror history. There's little wonder in my mind on how this became a classic. More than the point a 1980's slasher needs to show, there's profundities and depths in its narrative that were fresh and alive. It's the kind of movie you ought to share with friends in a movie night: it's fun, by turns frightening and it's end is so shocking your jaws would drop. B+
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