So, a couple of weeks ago, I invited my friends over and we decided to watch a movie. I popped in one of my favorite slasher films, Sleepaway Camp (1983). The movie came out a few years after Friday the 13th, during the heyday of 80's slasher films, and was overlooked during its small theatrical run, but has since gained a strong cult following on vhs and dvd. I have shown this movie to countless people over the years, and it has always been greeted with much enthusiasm... except during this screening. My friends seemed to wonder what I saw in this crappy little film. They were mad that I made them sit through the whole thing, telling them over and over again "just wait for the ending, it gets so much better." (for those of you who have seen this movie, you know what i'm talking about. for those of you who haven't seen this movie, i'm going to go out of my way not to give anything away).
i became a little more offended than i should have been when the film conjured up these reactions in my friends. this led me to go into a bit of analysis as to why the film strikes such a chord with me, and with many others who have seen it.
i'll give a brief synopsis before i go on. so, angela lives with her cousin ricky and her crazy aunt martha because her brother and her father were killed in a terrible boating accident years earlier. angela and ricky go to camp arawak one summer. angela has trouble being accepted by the other campers (still traumatized years later by the boating accident) and is continually made fun of and tormented (especially by the girls in her bunk, who doubt if she's ever gotten period and describing her as "a real carpenter's dream. flat as a board and in need of a screw!"). that's when people start to get murdered. but only people who piss off angela.
no doubt this movie is completely over the top and ridiculous, but the film is called sleepaway CAMP, and i really don't think it's unintentional. the dialogue is cheesy, the murders are fairly tame, the acting is pretty awful, and the 80's costumes are embarrassing, but something about this movie has staying power. underneath all of that campiness, there lies certain truths about adolescence and fears of growing into one's sexuality. and the sexual politics are not merely byproducts of having a movie about teenagers, the themes are incredibly important to the film. these themes are also aided highly by the fact that the actors in the movie actually ARE teenagers, and not 25 year olds playing 16 year olds.
in the movie, there are a couple of scenes that seem to break through the campiness - scenes that elevate the film to another level, almost by suggesting the creators of the film KNOW they're making a shallow horror film with ALMOST subliminal commentary on a teenager's fear of accepting their sexuality. but these scenes are very brief before the movie resumes at its regular pace. when the film reaches it's shocking twist ending, it's only about two or three minutes of the movie, but something feels amiss. like the film has decided to drop completely it's veneer of shitty, exploitative slasher film and take on a whole new life of its own. i've had the discussion with a friend of mine who agrees that in the last few minutes of the picture, we're taken out of this safe campy world we'd been following for the past 80 minutes and are introduced to adolescent hell. the revelation of the killer and the killer's motivations are kind of devastating if you look at it a certain way. it's so easy to look back on adolescence and treat that time as a campy nostalgic fun time, but in this movie, the characters can't sustain that kind of happy go lucky charm and the film seems to break apart and say, "look! teenage life was confusing and fucking scary as hell! it shouldn't be so easily dismissed!"
seriously, see this movie.
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