A summer camp filled with teens in the eighties, can you think of a more generic setting for a horror film?! Well that’s what I was thinking on my way to the screening of Sleepaway Camp. The event was hosted by the sisters at The Blood Donor Film Club in Dublin’s City Centre, or The Church Bar to be exact.
The first thing you notice about Sleepaway is that were not looking at kids in their late teens but actually in their early teens, which was a nice change of events! The start we see a family on a boat, the father, daughter and son. The boat tips and the family gets run over by a speed boat and we see the body of the father floating in the water, accompanied by a life jacket!
That’s the basic premise of the story and we skip to 8 years in the future, where a boy, Ricki and a girl, Angela, are sent to camp for the summer. Angela is a very shy and quiet girl. We find out later that she was a part of the family that got run over by the boat at the start and she has been traumatized ever since.
The female and male campmates start bullying Angela because she doesn’t want to take part in the activities and this is where the film truly begins. One by one certain teens get picked off by a mysterious killer. The great thing I liked about the film was that not only are the killings affecting the campers but it starts affecting the staff too, driving them mad and almost turning into something worse than the killer itself.
There is quite a variety of kills in Sleepaway Camp, one of the most notable in the hair curler scene. On IMDB it is classed as one of the most disturbing scenes in the entire film, but I disagree. For today’s standards the scene is very tame, showing no violence or gore whatsoever. It all happens off screen and with the aid of shadows to force the viewer to picture what is happening to the poor girl. Which, in my opinion, can be far more terrifying than anything a director could come up with.
But if we were to talk about scary and disturbing scenes in Sleepaway Camp than I have two that truly made me feel uneasy whilst watching. One being the boiling water scene, after trying to sexually assault Angela in the storeroom of the kitchen the killer sets it’s sights on the chef and pulls the chair that the chef was standing on from under his feet. He ends up tipping a vat of boiling water over himself and the result is a truly horrifying moment for both the eyes and the ears!
Not only is it the screams of the chef that disturbed me, but the make up, after seeing the film in HD you can actually see some of the welts and boils on his skin throb and pulsate, it’s quite a terrifying sight!
The second scene that really stuck with me and actually kept me awake a bit at night was the very final scene, I will not spoil anything for you but all I really have to say is that the face will haunt you for the rest of the night. Probably one of the creepiest things I have seen in a while.
This is definitely a film I wouldn’t have normally watched but it was being shown by The Blood Donor Film Club and I just had to attend! Drinks, films and all for charity, what more could you ask for!
If you want a very cheesey eighties slasher that slightly breaks away from the norm than you should check this film out, it can be slow at times but it leaves you guessing right until that very end scene that will haunt you!
Akroview 