Return to Sleepaway Camp is the worst movie of all time

Return to Sleepaway Camp. Jesus Christ. I was excited to see this after the pieces of shit that were Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers and Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland. Thought this one had potential as it was handed back to original Sleepaway Camp writer/director Robert Hiltzik since that first one, though completely bonkers and over-the-top, was actually pretty enjoyable. This film was not in any way whatsoever and managed to offend and annoy me on multiple occasions which isn't all that easy of a thing to do (don't fucking have violence towards animals, that is all I fucking ask). Return to Sleepaway Camp is unwatchable trash. In fact, this is the worst movie of all time. 

Pros: Much of the original cast returns. Ret-cons the second, third, and I guess fourth movies that were just completely terrible. 

Cons: Might be legitimately the worst of the series. Animal cruelty. Nearly every character is loathsome. Fat shame the shit out of the dip shit protagonist (who is pretty terrible). Kills are borophyll. This shit ain't funny. The twist at the end is fucking terrible. 

Getting gisty with it here... A truly insane amount of bullying is slowed down temporarily after the body count at Camp Manabe escalates to alarming proportions. But camp counselor Ronnie, played by Paul DeAngelo who reprises his role from the original, is on the case... He totally suspects Angela who committed a similar series of murders at the same camp when under a different name/ownership and enlists the help of Angela's cousin, Ricky Thomas (played by Jonathan Tiersten). Only problem is, Angela is in prison (or mental institution or whatever). Ricky assures us he just visited her a few days ago. Must be one of the kids at the camp. Spoiler. It's not.  Mixed in with the cast of mostly unknowns are Scientologist Isaac Hayes (released after his death) whom you know as Chef from South Park, Vincent Pastore aka Big Pussy in The Sopranos (at one point an out of control kid he grabs yells "let me go you big pussy", and Lenny Venito who is one of those "oh, that guy" guys.

Most of the film follows the goings on of this tubby kid named Alan who is obviously much older than the others who is stinky, dirty, dumb, and kind of an aggressive prick. He tools on the littler kids and talks about a girl at the camp in a total stalker way like she is his girl friend. She is not and wants nothing to do with him and even does some super fucked shit to him that would probably get her and others arrested and called out on the local electric TV news machines these days. A lot of the horrific taunting or bullying or whatever included his brother who is fucking loathsome and skins frogs, the fat kid's only friends, for fun. I fucking hate that dude and was pretty alright when Angela skinned him at the end of the movie. Like, the dude is pretty terrible, but his life here looks rough as hell. The skinning his frogs thing made me nearly puke. So there is that. Then there is this scene where his bro and his bro's paintball bros stalk him through the woods and light his ass up. Who enjoys this shit?

Yeah, well, hard as shit to watch... But at least the movie is consistent, unlike with II and III which has Angela just killing people willy-nilly. In this one they at least have to break the rules of camp to get the wrath. When the stoner dude, a real prick, rolls up a turd in a joint and the fat kid smoke smokes it, he gets gas poured on him and his ass gets torched. And the bro getting skinned. I historically have had a thing for ironic punishment, Dante calls it contrapasso, I wrote numerous papers in college on this and think it is really cool, so this isn't too much of a surprise.

MVP is Paul DeAngelo. It was sort of nice seeing him, the sort of hero in the first one (he plays Ronnie, the head counselor), agian. He is a pretty absurd character and pretty much is Ken Marino from Wet Hot American Summer. He clearly loves being in this flick and really swings for the fences. He does a good job in an otherwise unwatchable flick. I'd say the same for Jonathan Tiersten who plays Angela's cousin, Ricky Thomas, in the first one and reprises the role in this one. Both of them were good shit and I wanted more of that. Also, one of the reasons the movie really sucked is that they didn't really utilize Felissa Rose as Angela as she only appears as herself in the last scene of the movie which makes no fucking sense. The rest of the time she is dressed up as this male cop with a voice box, that is obviously Angela from the moment we see him, preaching an anti-smoking message to the kiddos. But in the final scene, just like the first one, we see only Angela and it is pretty terrifying. Here she cackles like a mad woman after having killed more or less everyone, again, and sort of snaps at the camera with a dead-eyed stare. Those were about the only things in the movie I liked and that last bit was still pretty dumb and incoherent although it does send shivers down the old spine. 

These Sleepaway Camp movies, especially this one, are not worth your time. The first one is okay but they just keep going down hill from there. It's crazy that I was looking forward to this one. Had a lot of hope but Jesus fuck, man. This whole experience was unpleasant.

Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland is the worst movie of all time

Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland. Somewhat more enjoyable than Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers because of how ridiculous it is but probably a worse overall movie. Since this is worse than that second installment and that is the movie that broke the whole every movie is the great of all time run, gonna have to call it. Sleepaway Camp III is the worst movie of all time.

Racist ger

Pros: Lots of kills (but none of them are really very good). Some pretty ladies. The ending isn't too bad. A few decent moments of dark comedy.

Cons: Makes no sense. Has a bunch of characters that are completely out of place. Everyone is insanely stupid. Hot chick drops an N-bomb for no reason.

Here's the gist. Angela, played by Pamela Springsteen, goes back to the camp where she killed people the year before (might be the camp from the first Sleepaway Camp though), now called Camp New Horizons under new ownership after having killed everyone the previous summer, where she immediately starts killing off other counselors. Same shit, different assumed identity. In this one she mows down this chick Maria (who has the hilarious tattoo "Milk Shake" on her tits) with a dump truck and then steals her name, clothes, and job as a counselor. She even has the same hair as this Maria chick which is unnecessary since no one has ever seen anyone before and no one knows what Angela looks like as she killed everyone in the previous movie. Doesn't get the tattoo though, thank fuck. The film also stars Haynes Brooke as the idiot rapey one, Tracy Griffith as the pelo rojo survivor girl, Mark Oliver as beefcake Tony, and Michael J. Pollard whom I distinctly remember as one of the homeless guys in Scrooged (the one that freezes to death in the sewer [if you remember that]), are all in... irrelevant.

These three...

Black guy being angry. Did I mention the movie's racist?

Favorite scene is indeed the most absurd. This comes early in the movie when a newscaster shows up to the camp and interviews all the new counselors, just saying their names and where they are from and what archetype they are and so forth. Well, the newscaster, having just met Angela but being able to tell she knows how to party, I guess, asks her if she can get her coke. She is going back to the city or whatever but needs coke now, apparently. She obviously has a huge problem. Angela ends up selling her Comet which kills her. Having had shit up my nose that shouldn't have been, there is no way that she doesn't get extreme pain in her nostril the second that shit goes up her nose. But this chick keeps doing it and she dead.

A lot of nonsense in this flick. A memorably absurd scene comes in the middle of the flick when it suddenly gets all meta. Here Angela finds a hockey mask in the woods like Jason wears. She then asks what day it is and someone says it's "Saturday the 14th." Wacka wacka. Probably the most unbelievable shit in the movie is that the male owner, played by Pollard, who is a gross old man married to this gross old lady ends up doing a very attractive counselor with fake breasts even though he is like a 1/10. This gets them both killed, by the by. The wife, meanwhile, gets buried up to her neck in trash and then Angela mows over her head with a lawnmower. More insanity is this black gang member guy that "works" as a counselor at the camp. This guy is crazy aggressive and refuses to do shit. The owner of the camp asks him to do shit and he is all like, "fuck you, bitch, suck my dick." Not really the way you keep a job. Plus that shit is racist as fuck.

Skipping IV! Yay!

Speaking of racism and attractive females, this one chick out of nowhere drops the N-word in reference to that aggressive prick. For this Angela strings the girl up on the flagpole during the trust walk and drops her on her head from the top, killing her. It's pretty lame. Despite this, the racist chick, played by one Kim Wall, is indeed a pretty lady. As is Jill Terashita, the Asian one, whom you may remember as the attractive Asian chick in Night of the Demons. She dies, too.

MVP for this one is more or less no one because everyone phoned it in. I guess maybe the aggressive black guy or the red head survivor girl who seemingly kills Angela. She beats down Angela like a wild woman and ends up stabbing her in self-defense. When it is going down you think this is it for Angela, sort of, but you are wrong as we see in the last scene that she is in an ambulance coming t, killing the EMT and making her escape.

And that is Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland, a real piece of work. So, uh, you know. Don't cry. Don't raise your eye. Only one more of these movie left to go as I can't find Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor anywhere. This seems just as well since it was released in 2012 after mostly being shot in 1992 as test footage with spliced archival footage from films I-III. Not going to count this garbage, whatever it is, as a real movie. Am looking forward to Return to Sleepaway Camp which ret-cons the other sequels. It is also the only one with involvement from original director Robert Hiltzik. So, yeah, should be fun(ish).

Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers is the worst movie of all time

Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers. What does everyone remember about Sleepaway Camp? Tiny penis. Take away the penis, Angela's motivation to kill, the main actress, and a plot that sort of makes sense, and then bate and switch the cover with the film and you have Sleepaway Camp II. This is the movie that did it. I can't ignore the shit. No more every movie is the greatest of all time. I genuinely believe that I could do a better job. The crap a buddy and I did in college was better than this and it was like really, really bad. Like worst movie anyone had ever seen at a film festival bad. And this is maybe worse. It's Rotten Tomato score of 38% is shockingly high. It was maybe the worst movie I've ever finished... yet there are more of them to come. Yeah, you fucked it Sleepaway Camp II. You are the worst movie of all time.

Pros: Hotter chicks than the original. Decent amount of nudity. That's about it.

Cons: The actress that plays Angela. There is barely a plot. Nothing makes sense. Shits on the previous movie. Some disgusting kills. The ending made me angry it was so dumb.

Gist of this movie is that half a dozen years or so after the event of the first movie, Angela, the trans character from the original, had a sex change and is reformed whilst living under a new identity, we hear at the beginning. She has become a literal campfire tale meant to scare bad counselors. But that shit don't matter as even slightly irritating Angela, who unbeknownst to anyone is working at the camp, results in a creatively gruesome death. Angela is now played by Pamela Springsteen, who is indeed sister of "The Boss", for the next few movies who is not so great. Along side Springsteen are Renée Estevez of the Sheen/Estevez clan whom you may recall from Intruder, Tony Higgins from nothing, and hotty Valerie Hartman who was in an episode of Cheers and what appears to be a soft-core porno called Intimate Obsessions. Hartman also got work in Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland as the assistant the director/raccoon wrangler which sounds like a hell of a gig.

Some quick takeaways. The chicks are pretty decent looking and are not children in this movie. The one that Angela really fucking hates, played by Hartman, named Ally, who refuses to wear clothes and shit--which, you know, okay with--looks like Alicia Silverstone. Angela is completely in love with camp now since it went so well the first time around. Her winning councelor of the week or whatever is like the peak experience of her life, we eventually see. Weird since here everyone calls her a "dyke" a lot and what not which aged extremely well and all. Also great for the old self-esteem, I'm sure. This is probably why she is just a straight up psychopath whereas in the previous one she needed a reason to kill people. They sort of address how she kills anyone whether they follow the rules or not when she kills one chick because she talks to much and a chick that witnesses it because she is "going to tell" and she's "whiny". Lastly, so many mullets. It's insane. Even by 80s standards.

Gotta say something about the cover of this flick. I remember seeing this at the video store as a child and being super into it. Basically thinking it was going to be the greatest/scariest movie of all time. On it, there is an actress that isn't in the movie, prettier than Angela, carrying a backpack with Freddy's glove, Jason's mask, and Leatherface's chainsaw. I sort of imagined this to be like Freddy vs. Jason with Leatherface thrown in and this pretty lady that was like hunting them or something. This was obviously not the case. It was basically kids playing around and putting that stuff on to scare people which got them on Angela's radar and ultimately killed. That's some bull shit.

Favorite scene is sort of dumb but whatever. It is at the end when Estevez's crush gets his head chopped off and Angela sticks it in a smashed TV at the cabin she is storing everyone at. When she gets Estevez subdued or whatever in the cabin and is like, "let's see what's on TV" or what have you. It was dumb but got a little bit of a chuckle out of me.

As far as an MVP goes... Jesus. IDK. I guess the hot chick that refuses to wear clothes. But she gets drowned in an outhouse. What you would call a "bad death". Thought about going with Estevez since she survives to the end although that's about the only reason she would attain such honors... Nope, still going with the one topless chick that gets leached/drowned to death in shit.

Ger

Sleepaway Camp is the greatest movie of all time

Sleepaway Camp. Another franchise. This one goes fantastically off the rails. This first one. Wow. The ending is fucking insanely shocking and comes out of nowhere. The second and third installments, at least, ignore that ending and basically everything that goes down in this first flick except that someone named Angela who looks vaguely like Sarah Silverman kills kids at camp. But yeah. This movie is insane and shocking and in fact is the greatest of all time. There is a fucking crazy spoiler here but basically everyone fucking knows it by now. The movie is almost as old as I am after all.


Rotten Tomato Consensus: Sleepaway Camp is a standard teen slasher elevated by occasional moments of John Waters-esque weirdness and a twisted ending.

Pros: One of the most memorable movies I've seen. Smart and well set up. One of the best reveals in all of horror. Great setup for that shit too. Campy as fuck and completely unique. The Angela actress is super solid.

Cons: Pretty fucking transphobic. Pretty low budget. Definitely not the most taut movie I've ever seen.

Here we go. The movie is about a young girl, one Angela Baker, played by one Felissa Rose who looks like a young Sarah Silverman, apprehensive and disturbed, who goes to Camp Arawak with her cousin Ricky, Jonathan Tierston who looks a lot like a child Tony Danza, where people with dubious intentions start dying in gruesome but often times explainable ways--scalding by boiling water, drowning, bees ("not the bees!"), so forth--before things really escalate as the movie eventually ends with insanity. Angela is all disturbed and what not after her family is killed in the opening scene in a boating accident which is why she lives as a second class citizen with her insane fucking aunt who is way over-the-top and cousin, who seems nice, actually. If it weren't for the outrageously shocking ending, it is unlikely the movie would be remembered at all. But that sure as shit was one hell of an ending. Besides Rose it is unlikely you are going to recognize anyone in this movie though there is an actor of note in Robert Earl Jones, who isn't so much known for his work but for his progeny James Earl Jones. Yep, Darth Vader himself.

The weirdness begins at ground zero of this flick, starting out with a strange dedication at the beginning before the opening credits. It reads In fond memory of mom. A doer." Uh, what the hell does that mean in this context? Could you imagine dedicating this POS to your dead mom who was apparently a real go-getter. That's how we enter this strange world.

This lady. Fucking crazy

One thing you will notice right away here is the insane, over-the-top aunt who is fucking nuts and talks like a crazy person. She orates like Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club when he is mocking Anthony Michael Hall's perfect family but also in a horrible community theater sort of way. This bitch is a little much. But this performance is totally intentional as we see later that she is fucking disturbed. A little important nugget we are supposed to retain is that she is a doctor and has faked Angela's physical.

Flick features one of the biggest pieces of shit I've seen in a while that says something made me nearly retch. So this guy, the head cook at the camp who is 40 years old, stands out in the parking lot as the kids get dropped off by their parents and take their shit to their bunks. This guy openly checks out these kids who are like 12 and comments on them to his all male coworkers while practically stroking himself. The thing he says that was fucking disgusting was something like "look at all that fresh chicken." Fucking gross. Fuck this guy. And his coworkers are like cool with this and shit. Fuck them too. He immediately then tries to sexually assault Angela, again, like 12, by taking her into the storage room and forcing himself on her. He is undoing his belt when the cousin comes in and goes ape shit. He claims he's not doing anything while zipping up his fly and flying into a rage... and everyone believes him! Since trying to rape a child is totally fine in 1983, the guy is just making soup in the next scene in a like 10 foot tall pot that I'm pretty sure wouldn't cook shit. But the water boils and what not and we get a POV of the killer pulling the chair the guy is standing on out from under him and he ends up sort of hanging over the pot, eventually, and unnecessarily, falling on top of it and pulling it down all over him. He screams hysterically for the rest of the time he is in the movie.

The infamous jorts game

What I considered to be the most absurd (and probably my favorite) scene in a movie that is just god damned full of them is the baseball scene where the 30-year-old actors playing 18-year-old counselors play against the legitimately 12-year-old campers. They show pretty much this whole game in real time. It is fucking insane and super polarizing. The jorts game and shit talking is on point. At one point one of the adult dudes is like "eat shit and die, Ricky" and Ricky retorts, "eat shit and live," which is nonsense but awesome. Eventually it breaks out into a fight with the adults basically assaulting the children as the head of the camp watches on, not giving a shit.

Sexy

The camp owner or whatever is a real piece of work as well. Played by 60-something-year-old actor Mike Kellin who was literally days away from death and totally looks it, the guy is boning one of the counselors. She is supposed to be 18ish as she is a legit camp worker. I mean she is fucking terrible and all and takes every opportunity to tool on Angela for whatever reason. What is crazy is that she is super into it. Brags about having a date and what not with this gross old man. Fucking wild, this movie.

The murders are all pretty cray. My personal fave is also, not coincidentally, the most homoerotic. There we get this rapey asshole on a boat that has previously tooled on Angela for being weird, basically. Well, he ends up taking this chick out and purposefully overturns the boat. She swims back pissed while the dude sort of chills under the capsized boat. Meanwhile, his dude friends skinny dip and play grab-ass for no reason. That's when the killer shows up and says something like, "the rest of the boys will be glad to see you." Again, rape vibe. But the killer, Angela, spoiler, has none of that and drowns him. The next day when they find his body with snakes coming out of it and shit, that idiot camp owner dude is all about explaining away all the suspicious deaths which is most of what these movies are, the owner coming up with weak excuses before eventually getting killed himself. In this one, the EMT or whatever is like, "we'll have to wait for the medical examiner to check him over before we can know what happened." The owner just starts acting like a dick and comes up with his own theory of how he hit his head. EMT says, verbatim, "I don't think so. Weren't any bumps or bruises when I checked. Though again, I'm no expert on this matter." So this old guy just bullies him, yelling something like "the boy scared and panicked. Right?" And the EMT says "that could be a logical explanation." And that is fucking that. Case closed.

Ger

And then there is the last scene. Spoiler. It's fucking cray. The surviving councilors have figured out who the killer is and are going to stop her. That is when we see Angela making out with her shitty little rapey boyfriend. The councilors are like, "oh god, no!" and the camera pans out. And that is when we get the shocking reveal. Hissing, mouth agape, severed head of BF in hand, tiny penis dangling there--Angela is a dude. The boy at the beginning of the movie whom Ricky's mom has turned into a chick. And this forced sex change and confused sexual identity, which her dad is also revealed to have struggled with, as well as an incestuous encounter with the sister has led to Angela being a murderous wild woman.

One thing though... So... this ending is pretty problematic. Nor does it what you would call age well. Angela is basically portrayed as nonhuman with her insane hiss and face fixed in a permascream which is supposed to be even more terrifying when it pans out and we see the penis. More than anything, now, it comes as an out of nowhere shock for being transphobic. Basically, this movie equates Angela's psychopathy with her quote unquote confused gender role. It's not Ace Venturabad but basically the reveal was meant to be shocking in and of itself is the one of many movies that portray the trans character as a psycho that just loves killing. Most trans people, as it turns out, aren't this way, but you would never know it from movies from the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

Nonetheless, MVP has to be Rose who does one hell of a job with what is not an easy performance. Shows a lot of range as we see her as both a vulnerable kid and a terrifying psychopath. Plus it can't be easy to take on a role like that as a teenager in the 80s. And she grew up to be a beautiful woman who seems more or less pretty well adjusted. Ricky also does a hell of a job for a kid and the jacked camp councilor was over-the-top but cool. Overall, a dope fucking movie.