Sleepaway Camp

The Hotel California of summer camps...


"Dear Mom and Dad, I've been at Sleepaway Camp for three weeks... and I'm getting very scared."
—Opening line of the trailer.

Sleepaway Camp is a slasher Film Series that started out in The Eighties.

The original Sleepaway Camp was directed by Robert Hiltzik and it was released in 1983 during the heyday of Slasher Movies.

The plot follows two cousins, Angela and Ricky, who are attending a summer camp. Shortly after their arrival, people start to die. Especially those who pick on Angela...

The film is notorious for its Twist Ending and it has amassed a cult following over the years.

Scroll down the page if you want to find about the sequels. But be warned, unmarked spoilers for the first film are abound!

Tropes used in Sleepaway Camp include:

Warning: Unmarked Spoilers!

First patch of sequels follow Angela, who is now fully grown up and is completely nuts. Unlike the first film, the sequels venture into more comedic side of things and have more winking approach on their subject.

First sequel, titled Sleepaway Camp 2: Unhappy Campers, was released in 1988. Angela has been recently released from the mental institute and is working as a camp counselor. Unfortunately for the campers, she has high moral standards and kills anyone who she deems "a naughty camper".

Sleepaway Camp 3: Teenage Wasteland was released in 1989. Shot back-to-back with its predecessor, it follows Angela infiltrating a group of campers to exact her brand of "niceness".

Another sequel was in works in the early nineties with Jim Markovic as the director, but the company producing it, Double Helix, went bankrupt and the project was scrapped. The existing footage was put together for a short half-hour film Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor and was released as a bonus on the Sleepaway Camp Survival Kit DVD box set in 2002. Ten years later a more cohesive cut was put together, which was then released on DVD. It follows Angela, who has lost her memories and goes to the original camping grounds to find answers to her past.

The series got sudden revival between 2005 and 2009, as the original director, Robert Hiltzik, started to make more sequels, which ignore the three previous films.

Return to Sleepaway Camp, which was released in 2008, follows yet another summer camp where people mysteriously start to turn up dead. Identity of the killer is kept as a mystery just as in the original film, but it still retains some comedic elements from previous films.

The next sequel, Sleepaway Camp Reunion, is waiting for release. Michael A. Simpson, director and producer of the second and third films, intended to create his own sequel, Sleepaway Camp: Berserk, but it appears to have fallen to the wayside. The film would have apparently tied up some loose ends, and, controversially, introduce supernatural elements to the series.

The sequels provide the examples of:

Diane: "Angela, what's really in there?"
Angela: "Dead teenager's brains."

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