Sleepaway Camp (1983)

A nice place for summer vacation - a perfect place to die!

I am quite intrigued with this movie, since I have read that, and I quote, "The film is considered by some to have one of the most shocking endings among horror films," that is quite a big statement to hold on a movie.  Lets see how it holds up!

We open with a man, John, and his 2 children, Angela and Peter, out in a boat on a lake near Camp Arawak.  Also on the lake is a counselor with 2 of his campers, out on a motorboat, one of the campers, the one not water skiing, asks if she can drive the boat, after a lot of persuasion the counselor lets her.   Back with John, Angela, and Peter, the kids make the boat tip over for laughs, Lenny, a friend of John's, calls out that John's sister will be arriving soon and they need to get out of the water.  On the boat, the camper and counselor aren't paying attention and end up running John and Peter over, killing them. Can we talk about how horrible of an actress the one water skiing was, cause it was pretty bad.

"Isn't that nice of me?"

We then go 8 years later, where Angela is living with her aunt, Martha, and her cousin, Ricky, the 2 of them are heading off to camp, Camp Arawak.  Martha is a nut job, and if you thought the water skier was a horrible actress, whoever plays Martha is 500% worse.  At the camp, we meet Ricky's friend, Paul, and learn that Angela doesn't talk much due to the trauma of her childhood.  There's also Ben and Artie, the camp cooks, Ben is a nice old man, but Artie is a creep who talks about the kids like he's going to do something bad to them.  Ricky shows Angela to her cabin and we meet Judy, who was Ricky's girlfriend last summer, but has grown into herself this year and has become a bit of a bitch.  Angela ends up in the same cabin as Judy, the cabin counselors, Meg and Susie, welcomes everyone to camp, and everyone starts unpacking. 

A few days later at lunch Meg goes to get Ronnie, who is one of the head counselors, because Angela hasn't eaten since she's arrived at camp, Ronnie takes her to the kitchen so she can find something she likes.   Ronnie gets called out and Angela is left alone with Artie who takes her into the pantry and tries to have sex with her, luckily Ricky enters and drags her out.  Later that night Ben and Artie are working on dinner, Ben leaves to go grab something leaving Artie in the kitchen by himself.  We see someone walk in, but we don't see who it is, the person ends up pulling a chair out from underneath Artie making him pull a pot of boiling water all over him.  Good, I'm glad he got burned, he wasn't a nice guy.  Artie gets stretchered out and Mel, another head counselor, tries to get everyone to be quiet on the situation so the camp doesn't get anymore bad publicity.

"I'll make you a sundae"

Mel gives Ben the head chef job, which was formerly Artie's position, mostly to bribe him into not saying anything to the campers.  That night at the camp dance a group of guys start messing with Angela, asking her to go skinny dipping in the lake, and then picking fun at her, Ricky arrives and starts fighting one of the guys.  These counselors are horrible, none of them are breaking up the fight, there as bad as the counselors at Camp Crystal Lake.  Paul, who arrived with Ricky, goes over and talks to Angela, and actually manages to get her to talk, but then his cabin counselor, Gene, calls for his bunk to leave.  We then go to the guys that wanted to go skinny dipping, but the girls that came with don't want to, except one of the girls, Leslie.  Leslie goes out on a boat with one of the guys, and the guy tips the boat over, Leslie gets pissed and swims to shore, the guys stays under the boat.

We see someone pop up under the boat in front of the guy, the guy seems to know the person, but the person kills him.  The next morning they find him and he gets stretchered out of the camp, Mel keeps trying to deny that there is a killer on the loose.  Over at the lake, everyone is swimming, except Angela whose sitting on a bench away from everyone else, Paul comes over and they talk for awhile before he decides to go back to swimming.  Back at the cabin, Judy starts messing with Angela and Susie breaks it up, Angela leaves the cabin to go see Ricky and gets hit with water balloons.  Ricky comes to her defense and starts yelling at the guys that hit her with the water balloons, Mel then comes to break it up. 

"Sorry"

One of the guys that threw the water balloon at Angela heads to his cabin and is killed by someone shaking a beehive over top of him and he gets stung to death.  I hate bugs, so this scene was horrifying.  Mel arrives at the scene and starts going off on how he knew who did this and is going to get him.  Paul sneaks up on Angela, and they head to the lake and goof off, leading to them making out, Paul starts unbuttoning her shirt and we get a flashback.  The flashback is her and Peter watching her dad and Lenny, who we find out were lovers, and we see Peter trying to touch Angela, weird.  Angela then runs away from Paul, and we head to the next day where everyone is playing some type of flag football but without the football.  Paul tries to talk to Angela, but she runs off from him, and runs into Ricky who asks for her help in getting the flags from the other team.  Ricky and Angela head into the woods to sneak attack the other team and find Paul and Judy making out, Angela sees and runs off. 

Back at the lake Angela is sitting again, and Paul comes over to talk to her, but Judy comes and runs Paul off, Meg arrives and picks Angela up taking her towards the water.  Ricky arrives, but gets stopped by Mel, Ricky sees Meg carrying Angela to the water, but Mel wont let him go, and starts blaming him for the deaths of everyone.  Meg throws Angela into the water, Ricky breaks free and goes to save Angela, they then head back over to the bench.  We see all the counselors having a meeting and we find out Eddie is taking his campers on a camping trip, and that Meg has the night off.  Meg approaches Mel and they schedule a date for later that night, she then heads off to take a shower, but her cabin is full and she heads to the cabin next door to shower, in the cabin Meg ends up getting killed. 

"Gotta stop him!"

Eddie and his campers arrive at the campsite and settle in for the night, one of his campers gets cold and he takes a few of them to the car, leaving a few at the campsite, the ones at the campsite end up getting killed.  Back at the camp, Angela and Paul agree to meet up at the waterfront after the social, inside the social Mel starts looking for Meg, but he can't find her and heads to her cabin.  At the cabin Judy is there with some guy, she manages to hide him before Mel gets in, and she tells him that she was next door last time she saw her.  The guy leaves and Judy is left alone in the cabin, next door Mel finds Meg's dead body, and tells her dead body that he will get Ricky for this.  In Judy's cabin, we see someone come in and we can actually see who it is, but we don't know who it is, it looks like a Ricky/Angela hybrid to be honest.  The person comes into the cabin, punches Judy and puts a pillow over her face before impaling her with her hot hair curler, ouch. 

We see Ricky leaving the social and heading for his cabin when he is grabbed by Mel who starts hitting him, and presumably killing him.  Ronnie gets the phone call from Eddie about the dead kids and starts telling all the counselors to make sure all their kids are accounted for and then head to the office.  Mel leaves the scene of the crime and sees someone who then shoots him through the neck with an arrow.  The police arrive and Susie comes back to tell them that Judy and Angela are missing, they all start splitting up and looking for the missing campers.  The police officer finds Ricky, who is still alive and they take him back to the camp, when they hear screaming coming from one of the counselors who has found Meg.  Angela and Paul meet up at the waterfront and Angela tells Paul they are going to go swimming and for him to take his clothes off.

"I've always dreamed of a little girl just like you"

We see Susie and Ronnie approach the waterfront and see Angela, who has Paul in her lap and is petting his hair.  Susie and Ronnie start calling out to her, and we head to a flashback, where we see Martha talking to Angela right after the boat accident, the only problem is that it's not Angela it's Peter.  What?  Turns out Angela died in the boat accident and Peter survived, but Martha, the nut bag she is, decided she didn't want another boy she wanted a girl, and so she made Peter live as a girl.  Back in present day we see Angela/Peter, who is naked, stand up and see that she has a penis, and that she has killed Paul.  The move then ends in that picture you see above this paragraph, which is creepy as hell.

The End.

 

First off, this movie has horrible acting, especially Martha and Judy, but the ending is enough to make you fall absolutely in love with this movie, and scare/scar you for life.  Seriously though, when I first started watching this I thought everyone was crazy, because everyone raved about this movie and the acting was just awful, but that last 30 seconds made up for the entire hour and a half of crap acting!  I definitely agree with this having the best twist ending in all films.  Tell me what you think of the movie in the comments, on Twitter (@SilentToHughes) or on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/SilentToHughes).

Hope you all have a great night!