If you were alive in the late ’70s or early ’80s; or were simply the kind of child raised on VHS tapes and questionable parental supervision; you might recall a strange and gory rite of passage: the summer camp horror film. It was a time when America’s preoccupation with free love and disco had curdled into paranoia, moral panic, and an overwhelming cinematic desire to see teenagers punished for their libidos. The horror genre, always a mirror held up to the culture’s most embarrassing anxieties, took the most innocent setting imaginable; a kids’ summer camp; and filled it with enough machetes, perverts, and unresolved trauma to send Freud back to Vienna.
Among the deluge of slasher films that defined the era; your Friday the 13th clones, your Sleepover Massacres, your The Burning (which, incidentally, includes a young George Costanza with hair); there stands one glorious, baffling, utterly unhinged gem that continues to confound, amuse, and astonish audiences to this day: Robert Hiltzik’s Sleepaway Camp.
Released in 1983, Sleepaway Camp is the kind of film that defies explanation and dares you to take it seriously; before punishing you for doing so. It is, at face value, a deeply weird slasher flick. But peel back the layers of sweaty polyester, the homoerotic subtext so aggressive it becomes text, and the twist ending that has entered the annals of horror history with the gravitas of a Greek tragedy, and you’ll find something much richer. Or, at the very least, something much stranger.
The premise is familiar enough. Angela (Felissa Rose), a painfully shy teenage girl with the expression of someone who just wandered out of a Bergman film and into a Hormel chili commercial, is sent to summer camp with her cousin Ricky (Jonathan Tiersten), a pint-sized rage machine in tube socks, and equal parts profane and loyal; defends her honor with the linguistic firepower of a foul-mouthed sailor in puberty. (“Eat shit and live, Bill” should be stitched into the American flag.). Angela, who barely speaks and mostly stares in horror at the world around her, becomes the target of relentless bullying by campers and counselors alike.
There’s Judy, played with the subtlety of a molotov cocktail by Karen Fields, who seems to have been cast straight from a middle school production of Mean Girls. Judy wears her side ponytail like it’s a weapon and taunts Angela with the glee of someone who peaked at 13 and knew it. There’s also Mel, the camp owner, played by Mike Kellin as a sort of sweaty, nicotine-addled cruise director from Hell. Mel spends most of the film either lighting a cigarette, yelling “I’ve got my eye on you, Ricky!”, or inexplicably romancing Judy like it’s not completely inappropriate and legally actionable.
Things begin going awry early. A cook; a grown man whose primary qualifications seem to be his ability to sweat profusely, leer at children, and drinks beer in the walk-in freezer. He is, in short, the most convincing sweaty child predator ever committed to celluloid; until karma, in the form of a boiling pot of water, rearranges his facial skin like a microwave burrito. It is a scene that is simultaneously satisfying, disturbing, and vaguely surreal. From there, it’s death after death: drownings, stabbings, bees (yes, bees), and one particularly unforgettable curling iron incident that manages to be both shocking and anatomically implausible, allegedly.
Let’s address the spandex-clad elephant in the room. Sleepaway Camp is the most homo-erotic horror film to date. Not in a wink-wink, subtextual way, but in the way that makes you wonder if the wardrobe department was staffed entirely by Tom of Finland. Yes, even gayer than A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge.
Nearly every male counselor looks like a failed audition for The Village People. There are crop tops. There are shorts so tight they seem to defy the laws of circulation. There are group wrestling scenes with the kind of intimacy usually reserved for honeymoon suites. At one point, when the boys ask the girls to skinny dip and the girls refuse, the boys simply go naked anyway; because male bonding apparently required testicular visibility in the ’80s.
Even the camp sports feel like thinly veiled courtship rituals. Softball games are played with the intensity of a Calvin Klein photoshoot. At one point, a counselor yells, “Eat shit and die, Ricky,” to which Ricky famously replies, “Eat shit and live, Bill.” It’s one of the most beautiful pieces of dialogue ever written. Tennessee Williams, eat your heart out.
The acting in Sleepaway Camp is a buffet of melodrama, over-enunciation, and the kind of theatrical choices that make you question if these people had ever interacted with other humans before. And yet; here’s the strange part; it works. Felissa Rose, as Angela, is genuinely haunting. Her silent stare is both tragic and terrifying. Tiersten, as Ricky, plays his role like a kid who’s just discovered swearing and intends to use every single one in his scenes. And Desiree Gould, as the infamously bizarre Aunt Martha, delivers what may be one of the most off-the-rails performances in film history; a bizarre mix of Stepford Wife, avant-garde drag queen, and Lovecraftian horror.
As for Robert Hiltzik, the director, one wonders what possessed him. The man made Sleepaway Camp and then, as if realizing the enormity of what he had unleashed, vanished into the world of law, becoming a New York attorney. It wasn’t until decades later that he reemerged to make a direct-to-video sequel (Return To Sleepaway Camp in 2008), and he’s reportedly trying to mount yet another sequel. And frankly, I hope he succeeds. The world is a darker place without his peculiar vision.
Of course, we must speak, carefully, of that ending. No spoilers here, because the ending of Sleepaway Camp is one of the few truly unspoilable things in life. It’s an image that lives in your head forever, whether you want it to or not. It’s not just shocking; it’s existentially unsettling. It’s the kind of ending that makes you question your reality, your morality, and the last five minutes of your life. It’s David Lynch meets John Waters meets Faces of Death.
And yet, somehow, it elevates the movie. Without the twist, Sleepaway Camp is a delightfully campy slasher. With the twist, it becomes something else entirely: a conversation piece, a meme before memes existed, a midnight movie staple that inspires howls of laughter and gasps of horror in equal measure.
Why does Sleepaway Camp endure? It’s not just the kills, or the twist, or the queer-coded universe it resides in. It’s because the film, for all its absurdity, has a weirdly beating heart. It is not cynical. It is not polished. It is gloriously sincere in its desire to scare, titillate, and entertain. And in that sincerity, it becomes something rare: a bad movie that is also, undeniably, good.
Like summer camp itself, Sleepaway Camp is messy, uncomfortable, a little traumatic, and filled with people you’re not sure are going to survive the week. But it’s also unforgettable. Today, the film endures as a cult classic, its twist still whispered about at horror conventions, its wardrobe studied by ironic fashionistas, and its legacy solidified as one of the most gloriously offensive, campy, and accidentally progressive horror films ever made. If you haven’t seen it, go now. Turn down the lights. Invite a few friends. And remember: when someone says, “Eat shit and die,” the only proper response is, “Eat shit and live.” So pull up your tube socks, grab your bug spray, and cue up the VHS. The water’s warm. The counselors are shirtless. And someone’s about to get stabbed with a curling iron. Happy camping.
