Screenplay: Fritz Gordon
Starring: Pamela Springsteen, Renee Estevez, Tony Higgins, Valerie Hartman
Release Date: November 16th, 1988 (home video premiere)
I have never gotten around to seeing the original SLEEPAWAY CAMP due to the fact that, aside from it’s infamous ending, it is by all accounts a terrible film. Now, I’m certainly the kind of guy who is willing to overlook some pretty heinous flaws in a movie in order to have a good time, but I never willingly go into a flick if I know I’m going to hate it. I’m sure I’ll get around to seeing SLEEPAWAY CAMP one of these days, and when I do you faithful two or three readers will be the first to know about it. Until that day you’ll have to make do with my views on SLEEPAWAY CAMP II, which has a far better reputation, better poster art, AND both of its stars are the sisters of famous people, so ya know it’s gotta be good!
SLEEPAWAY CAMP II picks up several years after the events of the first film, during which time that film’s transvestite psychopath Angela has done her time in a state mental institution and even managed to get a sex change on the government’s dime. Now she’s managed to finagle her way into a counselor position at the remote Camp Rolling Hills, whose campers are some of the horniest, pot smoking-est, panty raiding-est group of oversexed degenerates this side of a MEATBALLS sequel. Angela may be a psychopath, but she is still built of a strong moral fiber, and as the film progresses each of the campers gives her a sinful reason to “send them home”…in some of the most gruesome, gore, giggle-inducing ways imaginable.
SLEEPAWAY CAMP II: UNHAPPY CAMPERS is a double dollop of dumb-assery, a pitch-perfect spoof of the slasher genre made when it was at it’s zenith, that knows how to make fun of itself and wink at the audience without ever looking down it’s nose at them. From top to bottom this flick just looks like the cheapest piece of shit, but director Michael A. Simpson and screenwriter Fritz Gordon inject just the right amount of pathos into their stable of cardboard stock characters to make them stand slightly above the rest in the slasher canon. The casting is rather jarring, as maybe two of or three of the kids attending this camp are actually kids, while the rest are obviously played by 25 year old, which is fine by me because the older cast members manage to turn in far better performance, considering the material, than the filmmakers would have been able to get out of actual children on such a low budget production. Also, these 25 year old girls have giant racks. Giant racks that they show off in, oh, EVERY SINGLE SCENE. So the movie’s got that going for it, which is nice.
You're welcome.
While the performances are nothing to write home about, none of them are terrible, and it seems every member of the cast seemed to get the tone the filmmakers were aiming for. Pamela Springsteen (yes, she is The Boss’ sister) is adorably evil as Angela, and while she never quite achieves the level of likeability her cuteness adds a much-appreciated dose of levity to the kill scenes, which are already pretty damned silly to begin with. Angela cuts out the tongue of a girl who talks too much, roasts two stoner chicks over a pit, casually dispatches one girl with a drill. The flick’s cleverest scene involves two young boys who dress up as Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees in an attempt to scare Angela, only for her to emerge dressed as a facsimile of Leatherface and dispatch the two of them with a chainsaw. The gore effects, while not very elaborate, are still decent enough to get the job done. By the film’s end Angela has amassed quite an impressive cache of corpses stashed away in an abandoned cabin in the woods.
I was honestly surprised by how much I liked these characters, given how thin they all are. There isn’t even really a main protagonist, though I suppose Molly (Estevez) comes the closest seeing as how she winds up as “The Final Girl”. At a certain point it seemed like Ally (Hartman), the film’s requisite slut and direct competition for Molly over one of the boys, would wind up as the heroine. They even spend a fair amount of time subtly hinting at how her bad-girl behavior might be the result of some type of trauma or need relate, but then Angela stabs the hell out of her and jams her into a leech-filled shitter, so that all goes out the window.
SLEEPAWAY CAMP II is cheesy and awful, and it knows it, yet somehow the filmmakers were able to craft a good-natured satire of the slasher genre that fully exploits every facet that it’s fans have come to love, without ever making the joke at their expense. That sort of balance is extremely difficult to find in the horror comedy genre, especially in this instance, where the comedy is so broad. But rather than stoop to embarrassing levels of childishness ala RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD PART II, which shits all over the legacy of it’s predecessor, SLEEPAWAY CAMP II acknowledges it’s progenitor’s shortcomings and celebrates them, to delightfully campy effect. I had a blast with this dumb-ass movie.
My Rating: 7/10
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