Sleepaway Camp

                                                               

 

                  If she were any quieter, she'd be dead!

 

The film opens in the summer of 1975, with a family consisting of John Baker and his two children Angela and Peter Baker (Frank Sorrentino) out on a lake near a summer camp. After their small boat accidentally flips, John and the children begin to head ashore, where John's lover, Lenny is calling to him. As the family swims, a pair of teenagers riding around in a speedboat fail to notice them in time and hit them, killing both John and Peter. The surviving Angela is sent to live with her eccentric aunt Dr. Martha Thomas (Desiree Gould) and Martha's son Richard.

Eight years after John and Peter's deaths, Angela and Ricky are sent to Camp Arawak by Martha. Due to her introverted nature, Angela is ridiculed and bullied, her main tormentors being fellow camper Judy and camp counselor Meg. During dinner, Angela, having not eaten for some time, is taken into the kitchen by a counselor to see if there is anything in there she would like to eat. Left with the head cook Artie, Angela is taken into a back room by Artie, who intends to molest Angela. Before any harm can come to Angela, Artie is found in the midst of unfastening his pants by Ricky, who flees from the kitchen with Angela after Artie threatens him. After the incident in the pantry, Artie is seriously injured when he is knocked off a chair by an unseen figure while tending to a large pot of boiling water which spills on his face and hands. Artie's injuries are deemed accidental by camp owner Mel Costic, who pays off the rest of his kitchen staff to keep the event quiet.

While in the recreation cabin, Angela is accosted by two boys who begin mocking her, prompting Ricky and his friend Paul to get into a fight with the boys which several others join in on. After the brawl is broken up by a counselor, Ricky and the rest of the boys involved in the fight leave while Paul stays behind and succeeds in befriending Angela by telling her about misadventures he and Ricky would get into when they were younger. Later, out on the lake, Kenny, one of the boys who had mocked Angela, is drowned, his body being found the next day and his death is also ruled accidental by Mel, despite suspicion from camp employees and police. After Billy (Loris Sallahan), another boy who had bullied Angela, is killed when he is locked in a washroom stall which has a beehive dropped in it, Mel grows suspicious of Ricky, who he believes is killing those who bully Angela.

The relationship between Angela and Paul grows strained when Paul attempts to get off with Angela on the beach, causing Angela to have a flashback to her youth when she and her brother witnessed their father in bed with Lenny. Confused and angered by Angela's rejection of his advances, Paul is easily seduced by Judy, who lures him away from a game of capture the flag and into the woods where the two are found kissing by Angela and Ricky. Guilty about what happened between him and Judy, Paul attempts to explain himself to Angela while on the beach. As Paul talks to Angela, he is shooed away by Judy and Meg, who throw Angela into the water. After being taken out of the lake and having sand flung at her by several small children, a clearly disturbed Angela is comforted by Ricky, who swears revenge on her aggressors. After the affair at the beach, Meg, while preparing for a date with Mel, is murdered with a knife while taking a shower, having her back sliced open.

Meg's disappearance goes largely unnoticed and camp activities go on as usual with a social being held. At the social, Angela is approached by Paul, who she tells to meet her at the waterfront after the social. Next, Judy, who had decided to skip the social, is killed in her cabin. After the social, the camp is thrown into a panic when several children who had gone out camping are found hacked to bits in the woods. Ricky, who had missed the social due to feeling ill, overhears this news before being attacked by Mel, who had discovered Meg's corpse and blames Ricky for her death. After beating Ricky seemingly to death, Mel stumbles into the camp archery range, where he is shot in the throat with an arrow by the real killer.

As the counselors and police scour the camp, Angela meets Paul on the beach, where she tells him to undress, which Paul enthusiastically agrees to do. After finding the dead Meg and Mel, as well as the still living Ricky, a pair of counselors find Angela nude on the beach, softly singing to herself and clutching a large knife and Paul's severed head in her hands. Angela is revealed to be both the killer and a boy - the thought-to-be-dead Peter; through flashbacks it is shown that after Martha gained custody of him, she decided to raise Peter as a girl, already having a son and coming to the conclusion that another boy "simply would not do." It's also implied that the children were mentally affected in a very negative way by seeing their father sharing a homosexual embrace with another man. The film ends with Angela, male genitalia in full view, letting out an animalistic hissing sound.

 

     

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                               Copyright(C) 2007 - 2020. All rights reserved.

 

                              

Directed by Robert Hiltzik
Produced by Robert Hiltzik
Jack Grossberg
Jerry Silva
Michele Tatosian
Written by Robert Hiltzik
Marshall Brikman
Starring Felissa Rose        Jonathan Tiersten            Christopher Collet
Music by Edward Bilous
Distributed by American Eagle Films
Release date(s) 1983
Running time 88 mins.
Language English
Budget $350,000

 

 

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