Sleepaway Camp (1983)

Sleepaway Camp begins with a horrible boat accident that leaves a man and his son dead and the man's young daughter, Angela, in the care of her freaky Aunt Martha. Eight years later, Angela has recovered enough from her traumatic experience that she can join her cousin Ricky on a summer trip to Camp Arawak.

Camp Arawak is full of the pranksters, no-goodniks, vindicitve teenagers, and lecherous staff that are typical of a camp slasher flick. They play softball and Capture the Flag, they throw water balloons, they do shaving cream-based trickery, they curse a blue streak... Typical real-life camp behavior, and played very authentically.

Of course, when the mean boys and girls get a load of super-shy Angela, they lock their radars on her and pick on her relentlessly. Ricky furiously stands up for her, but it's not enough to stop the hazing and bullying. Eventually, campers and staff start turning up dead or severely wounded, and suspicion abounds.

When the cook gets a giant pot of boiling water poured on him, and when a boy drowns, the deaths are written off as accidents. But soon the deaths become more and more gruesome and it is apparent that a murderer is on the loose at Camp Arawak. No one - and I mean, no one - is safe.

Boiling Sleepaway Camp down to its component parts without spoiling anything really does a disservice to the movie itself. There is so, so much going on here in terms of subtext and implication, otherworldly weirdness, and the sheer audacity of the movie, that goes beyond any plot synopsis. The vast majority of 80s slasher movies never approached the levels of depravity in Sleepaway Camp, nor were they so layered and diabolically interesting.

When I first saw this movie, I literally called up all of my close friends and made them come around and watch it with me before I returned it to Blockbuster. I had to share it with them so we would always be able to talk about Sleepaway Camp with nobody left out of the experience. It left an indelible mark on me as a horror fan, and is sure to do the same for you. Even if you don't get much out of the twisted material throughout the movie, I guarantee the final shot will haunt you forever. Highly recommended.