SLEEPAWAY CAMP 2 - UNHAPPY CAMPERS (1988)

 

Directed by - Michael A Simpson

Screenplay by - Fritz Gordon & Robert Hiltzik

Starring  - Pamela Springsteen as Angela, Renee Estevez as Molly

PLOT - Angela - the Transgender serial killer from the original Sleepaway Camp (1983) has been released from her high security hospital, apparently now a "functional" member of society. 

She becomes a Camp Councillor at a nearby Summer Camp but soon starts getting annoyed at the antics of the kids that are under her care; i.e. having sex, smoking pot and generally arseing about. Unlike her fellow councillors who turn a blind eye to these shenanigans, Angela becomes moraly outraged and decides to "clear out the trash".

Very soon the killings start again and a certain abandoned cabin at the far reaches of the camp starts pileing high with the bodies of dead teenagers....

CLASSIC DIALOUGE - Angela (Two seconds before burning a dope smoker alive) - "Let this be a lesson to you - say no to drugs !!!"

PERFORMANCES Most of the acting in this film is of the standard teen slasher movie variety - that is too say functional but it's not going to win any Oscars. That's fair enough as this soap opera style acting is par for the course with this sub genre of horror. 

Pamela Springsteen (sister of 80's rocker Bruce Springsteen) does a brilliant job in the role of Angela. She simultaneously manages to be cute, annoying, utterly psychotic and funny as hell. Angela is a self appointed moral guardian - any kid on her patch who steps out of line gets to die horribly in a variety of increasingly inventive ways. Considering the aforementioned stepping out of line involves relatively minor offences this makes Angela quite possibly the most hypocritical mass murderer in the history of horror cinema. Yet she absolutely believes 100 percent that what she is doing is right. 

You can tell Springsteen is having a whale of a time as she casually murders her co-stars, with a mischievous glint in her eyes and a big goofy smile on her face, all the while delivering cheesy one liners. This sense of fun is transmitted to the audience and makes this film a very fun viewing experience. 

SFX - Lots of gory blood spatters and good old fashioned practical FX. The blood in this movie is that very, very red and runny kind, nothing at all like real blood, which adds a lot to this movies camp, comic book style charm.

SEX AND VIOLENCE  - Its a teen slasher movie so expect lashings and lashings of boobs, bums and blood. There are two young lads who go round spying on the girls dorm who refer to themselves as the "tit patrol", and one female character who spends more time topless than she does clothed.

The kills in this film are great O.T.T. fun - Teens get stabbed, strangled, beheaded and chainsawed to death. One girl gets her head bashed in with a lump of wood and her tongue cut out, another gets drowned in a septic tank full of turds and leaches, another guy gets his face melted with battery acid.

Perhaps the most self aware moment of the film comes when two blokes, in an attempt to scare Angela, dress up as Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees. Angela goes one better though and dresses up as Leatherface to take them both down. 'Freddy' gets his throat cut with his own glove - the message is clear - Angela is queen of the killers. Accept no substitutes !!!!!

RATING - This film is the blackest of black comedies, its a send up of the whole slasher movie genre and it did it pretty much a whole decade before the more famous Scream took a similar approach. I think it does it better. Where Scream is a bit too arch and go's out of its way to say "ohhh look how clever I've just been there", this movie, instead, is more fun - its violent but most of the blood is so unrealistic that you just can't take it seriously and a delerious sense of fun shines through the whole enterprise. 

It's nicely shot and directed too and makes you think of Summer when you watch it. That's what it is really, a little slice of mischief in the Sun. I'm giving it 4 self righteous serial killers out of 5.