Accidentally backing into positive messaging: Sleepaway Camp

So it was June, “pride month,” (or at least it was when I sat down to start this post weeks ago – this is certainly coming late, but things last forever on the internet, so whenever you read this, imagine it’s still June), and I always try to mark that with some LGBTQ+ related content. Frequently that means checking out some good “Queer Horror” that I’ve not yet seen, but as alluded to in my last post, life is currently more than a little difficult (an understatement) and surveying a bunch of stuff I haven’t watched before in the desperate hope that some of it will be worth writing about is honestly more work than I’m currently capable of putting in.

But you know what I can do? Re-watch a flick I’ve seen again and again a couple more times, a picture that I love, a movie that could be termed a “problematic favorite,” but which I think, while it could be read as harmful and mean spirited, comes across as almost weirdly progressive and open minded – ah yes, the eternally watchable paradox that is Sleepaway Camp.

And I think this will be short. While there is so much to vibe on in this odd, endlessly sleazy, entirely lovable little gem, and there are one or two “big ideas,” mostly I’m just going to rave about it a bit and put myself to bed.

But I must issue a big spoiler warning on this one. It is literally impossible to discuss the significance of this flick without alluding to “the twist” that comes at the end. If you haven’t seen it yet – go, go, go! Watch it first and then come back here. It is more fun than you can imagine, and it’s streaming for free on Tubi (probably other places too) and I know it’s hitting Shudder in July. I probably won’t even summarize the plot – just give it a watch and come back (please come back…).

Sleepaway Camp (1983)

How is this movie so good? It doesn’t at all seem like it should be. And I don’t even mean good in terms of representational issues for its gay and trans characters – a surprisingly positive element which I really don’t feel was intentional, but no, I mean the movie itself, as a whole works. From what I’ve seen, the writer-director, Robert Hiltzik (whose only other credit, outside of producing the 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th movies in the Sleepaway Camp series, is writing and directing the 5^th movie, Return to Sleepaway Camp from 2008), wasn’t particularly a horror guy, so much as for his first feature, he simply wanted to do something cheap that would make money. He filled his movie to the gills with elements intended to get a rise out of people, almost all of which are, to some degree, in poor taste. While some performances are solid, plenty are, let’s say, unique. There are weird continuity issues. Some dialogue stretches credulity. So many elements seem like they should only be able to be appreciated as unintentional camp, something “so bad, it’s good.” But somehow this movie is so much better than that. Is it campy? Yes. Does it have weaknesses? Yeah – but a) they’re fun and b) who cares?

So what makes it so much fun, and beyond that even, what makes it so good? On one level, the outré nature of it all, the over-the-top willingness of Hiltzik to take things to shocking extremes, is genuinely a hoot. I love that this is one of the few camp based slashers that is really about the kids at camp, where one of them is the killer, and most of the victims are kids as well. You don’t often get that and, on a horror level, it’s striking. I don’t know that it’s ever scary, but it does “go there” shamelessly, time after time, and that feels special. I also love how terrible so many of the adults are, like Mel, the camp owner (Mike Kellin, a real treat), who covers up all the murder cause he doesn’t want parents to find out, and who is at least in his 60s and is all a flutter cause he’s going to have a date with the proudly bitchy counsellor, Meg (“M.E.G., Meg”), who’s probably 16 or something. But age inappropriate discomfort doesn’t stop there – we also have the head cook, who is a legitimately predatory pedophile and doesn’t care who knows it, openly lusting after the pre-pubescent children at the camp, all of the other adults mostly ignoring him with a shrug, and laughing it off with a “man, you sure are a creep, ha ha ha.”

And the element with the truly repellent cook brings me to the other side of this movie. While it is definitely campy as all get out and has some weird turns of performance and loads of things that are so much fun because they’re kinda silly (of special note is the cop who in his first appearance has a real mustache, but in his second, it is clearly fake because the actor got another role between shooting days that required him to shave it off), it is surprisingly grounded and weirdly believable.

The kids generally know the adults are awful – they get that the cook is dangerous and should be avoided, but they don’t talk to other untrustworthy grownups about it – what would even be the point? – they just have to navigate the dangerous world in which they live. They feel like real kids (and the native Long Islander in me gets a kick out of their accents). And one of the other things that makes the film so ‘real’ is how terrible the kids can be too. They swear a blue streak with great verve and creativity – they are cruel to each other – they bully and belittle – and then they largely get their comeuppance.

And in those scenes of revenge, the movie earns its horror movie street cred – the budget was clearly not large on this one, but the kills (and/or mutilations) are really excellently staged and the practical effects read very well – and this flick has a significant body count. The movie isn’t scary per se, but its gore is solid and its suspenseful kill scenes are legitimately exciting. Scalding burns, death by bees while on the john, decapitations, water bloated bodies with snakes squirming out of their mouths, Judy’s hair curler shoved…someplace left to the imagination – the effects do not disappoint, nor their filming.

But then we get to the heart of it – the characters at the core of the story, and with them, the inclusion of this sleazy little slasher in the ‘queer horror’ canon. I said I wouldn’t really summarize, but the film centers around Angela, a young girl whom we first meet (as a young boy) in an opening scene in which her father and sister are killed in a terrible (and (unintentionally?) hilarious) boating accident. She’s taken in by her aunt Martha, a delightfully odd character (played by a woman, but who comes across as a drag queen presentation of some kind of dissociative state) who decides that though Angela is a boy at the time of adoption, she has always wanted a little girl and so that is what Angela will be (none of this is revealed until a flashback in the last couple minutes of the movie – until then, the viewer is meant to assume that Angela was the little girl at the beginning of the movie and that it had been her brother that died).

By the time we meet Angela presenting as a girl in her teen years (Felissa Rose), when it’s time to go to camp for the first time with her cousin, Ricky, she is a girl – there is no sense of a “boy” passing. But she is not well – quiet, withdrawn, and painfully shy, she is a target for the cruel bullying of the worst elements of childhood. Clearly she has been damaged by the loss of her family in such brutal fashion before her eyes, and more, which I’ll come to in a bit. But that doesn’t stop her from enacting her bloody revenge throughout the film on everyone who harms her or is even a little bit mean to her.

Of course the film doesn’t come out and show her doing it – it tries to maintain suspense until the very end as to who is doing the killing, leaving at least some breadcrumbs leading to her cousin – who has a short temper, and is touchingly protective of his vulnerable younger cousin. And I kinda love him for it. He’s been coming to this camp for years. He has friends and a sense of status in the pecking order of the Lord of the Flies dynamics of kids, supervised by slightly older kids out in the middle of nowhere. He could so easily be as terrible as so many of his cohort, abandoning his delicate cousin/adopted sister to the pack of wild dogs (meaning middle-school aged monsters), or even turn on her to gain points – but time and time again, he is willing to throw down at the drop of a hat with anyone who looks at her funny. For a mean little bastard, I find him really sweet, and good. I believe he really cares about her.

But by the end, Angela’s secrets come to light as some of the older counselors (the two who seem to care the most about their young charges) find her naked on the beach, cradling the severed head of Paul (Ricky’s best friend, who’s been courting Angela all summer and finally got her to meet him on the beach after the social – he generally seemed like a sweet kid, but could also get a bit sexually pushy). After a quick flashback of Aunt Martha informing her mutilated and emotionally scarred young adoptee that they will have to change genders because “another boy in the house simply would not do,” the counselors see Angela’s penis (a local college student stripped down and put on an Angela mask for the scene) and utter the shocked line, “how can it be? My god, she’s a boy!” We zoom in on Angela’s wild, mad, iconic face (which Felissa Rose does to pose with fans at conventions to this day), the music stingers rise, we fade to green and the credits start rolling to the tune of the super groovy “Angela’s Theme (You’re Just What I’ve Been Looking For).” It is an intense, wild, really quite surprising ending to a very weird, and utterly watchable film.

So in the end, it is clear that the movie falls in with the unfortunate trope of the ‘trans killer’ (see Dressed to Kill, Silence of the Lambs, Psycho, etc.), which can be seen as really quite dangerous and harmful in an age of moral panic fueling “bathroom bills,” demonizing particularly trans women as a threat to cis women in ‘women’s only spaces.’ And yes, the movie can fairly be accused of that. But upon first watching it, I really had a different vibe. As a cis-het guy, I can’t claim anything about how a trans person would read this film (but I know it is embraced by some), but I immediately and strongly felt it was (probably accidentally) quite progressive, and offered an argument for trans rights. Yes, Angela has been deeply broken, both by family trauma and by a forced gender swap, but that’s kinda the point, isn’t it? Being made to live as someone who she isn’t has irreparably damaged her. Forcing someone to present as other than themselves is deeply psychologically harmful – and it’s something that as a society, we should not do.

And at the same time, when we meet Angela as a teenager, I feel she is a girl; I don’t feel there is coercion at the moment, and then, as a trans character (and not simply someone forced to transition), she is such a sympathetic figure. Beyond gender issues, it’s hard not to side with her, though by the end, we understand she has killed or at least mutilated a lot of people, some just for the infraction of being irritating little kids. In her weird, socially awkward way, she serves as an identifiable stand in for every young person who feels on the outside, who feels uncomfortable with the other kids, who feels “queer” in any sense of the word (having to do with sexual identity or otherwise). I never went to a sleepaway camp and I can’t imagine having done so (quoting another camp movie, Wet Hot American Summer, I was one of “the indoor kids”) – but I can only think that I would have felt as awkward and uncomfortable as she seems to. In the end, we understand that she is the killer, but she has always been the protagonist, and I feel the film is rather on her side (even if it also feels like every choice was made simply for shock value – and in a weird way, that makes its progressive messaging feel more pure and affectingly effective than something that actually set out to make a ‘positive statement’ and that therefore comes across as lame and pedantic).

Furthermore, in looking at this as a movie for ‘Pride Month,’ I feel there are so many other elements that speak for its inclusion. First of all, there is the much above-referenced ‘camp’ quality of the whole film. It navigates the outrageous and the absurd and the taboo in a way that I most associate with artists who identify as queer, ala the John Waters voiced character on an episode of The Simpsons defining camp as “the tragically ludicrous, the ludicrously tragic” – this movie does that (e.g., Aunt Martha the female drag queen, the extreme, and often fun and funny murders of small children and predatory adults, fake mustache cop, the teen girl on water skis, screaming, for what feels like forever, for the other teens to turn the boat before they run over Angela’s family, the over-the-top, nigh glorious, bitchiness of Meg and Judy, the artsy quality of Angela’s character explaining flashbacks). But past that, it almost seems that there is a kind of ‘gay male gaze’ in terms of the camera. I find it striking that in a movie that goes so far out of its way to be taboo and controversial, there is absolutely no female nudity, but you get a bunch of boys going skinny dipping together (and when they’re not naked, they are all wearing the shortest shorts and crop tops). And finally, there is Angela’s father. We learn over the course of the movie that he was gay and we see him with his lover in one flashback that I suppose is intended to show Angela and her sister being psychologically scarred by seeing their dad in such a sexual situation, but which really comes across as tender and loving and entirely positive. He is no ugly stereotype – in what little we see of him, he seems like a good dad who loves his kids and who is in a healthy, loving relationship. I think maybe this is supposed to shock, but mainly I’m just shocked that it all seems so warm and affirming.

And somehow this whole ridiculous, sordid, disreputable film feels just that way throughout – warm and affirming, while being filled with a superabundance of gory little kid murders, pedophilia, cruelty, and child abuse. It’s great. From the very first scene, seemingly after the events of the film had concluded, showing a broken down, abandoned summer camp where something terrible must have happened, overlaid with the sounds of children playing, I feel that pretty much everything just works – a creepy atmosphere is laid down, and I am ready for it – we are then treated to a cavalcade of laugh out loud moments of violence and pain, and ultimately, it all culminates in an (apparently) inadvertently positive message about allowing children to live as they are (specifically, expressing the gender they themselves feel to be accurate) – it’s better for them (and safer for us).

This really has become one of those warm blanket movies for me over the years and it has been a pleasure to spend a little time revisiting it right now. Sometimes life can really get difficult (see the fact that it’s been more than 5 weeks since my last post), and it might be hard to think you can handle it all, but if Angela can persevere and thrive (she goes on to do quite well for herself in the rest of the movies – all of which are more intentionally campy than this, but aren’t nearly as satisfying for me), so can we all.

Happy summer everybody – if you go to summer camp, don’t be mean to anyone (for that matter, if you don’t go to summer camp, don’t be mean to anyone either) – or else…