Oh yeah that movie with the penis

During the 80's with the boom in slasher flicks, you had to do something different to get noticed. Most of the material in the sub-genre were perfectly happy to stick with the status quo, but Sleepaway Camp had a trick up its sleeve. Or should I say, up its shorts, that set it apart from the rest.
 
Summer camps were a popular setting for Horror and Comedies, most notably with the Friday the 13th series. I have to admit that I never went to camp, so everything I know about it comes from shit like this and Gorp.

We open on a serene lake where a perfectly hairy man-dad has brought his children for an enjoyable afternoon. Unbeknownst to him are the rowdy teenagers riding around in a boat, forcibly pulling their friend on water skis whose cries for help fall on deaf ears. When the guy driving makes the mistake of letting a girl take the wheel, all hell breaks loose when she accidentally runs over the dad and son. Women drivers, am I right?

Years later we meet the girl who survived the death of her family as she and her cousin get sent off by a creepy woman in a beret. The girl is Angela--played by actress Felissa Rose--who does all the heavy lifting by either sitting or standing with a blank expression on her face.

The camp is filled with many colorful characters. Such as the bodybuilder stuffed into inexcusably tiny shorts, and the elderly owner clad in polyester pants with a stogie always in hand. But my favorite is the cook Artie. Artie is an unabashed pedophile who practically licks his chops at the new arrivals as they walk off the bus. So do the other employees report him? Nah, James Earl Jones' dad just laughs him off. Oh that Artie, always talking about fucking kids.

I'm not sure how product placement worked back when this came out, but something tells me Miller probably wasn't head-over-heels with his constant partaking of High Life. Not that people who drink beer from companies like Miller aren't child molesters.

Unfortunately Artie isn't long for this world as someone "mysterious" pulls a chair out from under him, causing Artie to dangle perilously two feet off the floor. His only other choice to brutally falling the height of Vern Troyer is to dunk himself into a giant pot of boiling soup and scream about it for at least 45 minutes. Unlike most of the Slasher fare, Sleepaway Camp is more interested in showing the aftermath instead of the actual kill. There aren't many deaths, so some fans might be disappointed with the low body count. Life is full of these little disappointments.

The Sleepaway Camp experience is more about allowing the look of the times to wash over you. There are so many men in ill-fitting shorts that some may find it too sexy for comfort. One of my favorite looks is the kid wearing a shirt that says "Jogging Shirt." Back then people didn't really know what one was up to unless they had their activity of choice emblazoned across their chest.

Another curiosity is the scene where the men of the camp try to get the women to go skinny dipping with them. The women want no part of it, so all the guys gleefully tear off their clothes and hop in together in a shockingly moving display of masculinity.

What most of the plot is concerned about revolves around a girl named Judy. Judy's budding B-cups are the delight of the camp, and she can't have someone like Angela sitting around not bothering anyone. So she and a grown counselor who is cool with tormenting children constantly harass her. Judy also wears a shirt with her own name on it.

So the big finish. When it is finally revealed that Angela has been the one going around killing people we discover that she isn't a girl at all. Turns out the young girl was killed in the beginning and when the aunt took in the orphaned boy, she turned him into a girl. What disturbs me more than Angela having a penis is how she stands perfectly still with her mouth agape for about a minute straight. If I saw this going on it would be like, "What the hell are you doing?" Why the hell are you just standing there with your mouth open and your penis hanging loose? People are weird.

Something else I want to discuss before checking out. There's a cop who shows up at the start. Well apparently he shaved his mustache before having to come back at the end because from what I can tell he's wearing pieces of electrical tape on his face. If Hollywood ever gets around to remaking this I hope they honor its legacy by throwing a CGI mustache on somebody.

"Looks great. Alright, let's start rolling"