Director Michael Simpson followed Robert Hiltzik’s surprisingly well-made Sleepaway Camp with a return to camp and the character of Angela. However, Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers is the polar opposite of its predecessor in most every respect as screenwriter Fritz Gordon issues most every cliché in a trite, insulting manner devoid of value or even entertainment. Only the finale is of interest but arriving at that point is hardly justifiable.
At Camp Rolling Hills, a puritanical camp counselor by the name of Angela Baker (Pamela Springsteen) spends the summer killing anyone who is less than saintly.
Having recovered from the mind-numbing horror marathon of the original, I was expecting a highly creative horror spoof if, for no other reason, due to the box cover. A female, we assume to be Angela Baker, is carrying a hiking bag with Freddy’s glove and Jason’s mask teeming out of the top of it. However, the film, much like Silent Night, Deadly Night, comes of, not even half-cocked, as most every aspect of the film, barring one, is clichéd and uninspired, and serves as a free pass to anyone who wants to be eighty minutes closer to death without anything to show for it.
Robert Hiltzik’s original is a taunt mystery which, not only reveals the murder’s identity as the end, but sucker punches the viewer with the killer’s motivations. Not that I am expecting a sequel to necessarily mimic its predecessor, but the mystery is removed during the first scene as we complacently lapse into a, well, the term’s “guilty pleasure” but I find the latter half of the phrase stunningly inappropriate for this movie. What ensues is a slaughter fest which, not only is without purpose, but is uninspired in its half-hearted attempts at wry humor.
It isn’t as if screenwriter Fritz Gordon didn’t have plenty of material to work with, especially in regard to the source material. We are presented with a multitude of characters, a time lapse between the events at Arawak and present day Rolling Hills (thus permitting him to create any incantation he wishes with Angela), and a slew of horror clichés in which to parody. Yet, he issues a rote, insipid killer in the form of Angela Baker, a hem, Angela “Johnson,” that is, Angela after a stint at a mental hospital and a sex change operation. I would like to think her new surname is a witty wink and a nod to the fact that Angela’s given name is “Peter” and that screenwriter is steeping the work in black humor by having the character’s “peter” removed to be replaced with “Johnson” but I can’t give him benefit of the doubt because, as much fun as this would be to believe, the rest of the film’s in-jokes are dead on arrival. Thus, I’m writing off her punning name as merely coincidence or one of the few successful attempts as clever scripting. By comparison, Angela posits the ol’ “blindfold-the-kids-and-have-them-reach-into-a-bowel-of-something-or-other-and-tell-’em-it’s-teenager’s-brains.” And that is exactly what she does and says. Yet Springsteen doesn’t deliver her lines in a wryly malevolent, ironic style, à la Patrick Bateman, but in a rote manner symbolic of the production as a whole.
Most every portion of the film is what horror cliché is founded. Not only is the film a marathon of murder using a tissue-thin excuse that Angela has a Puritanical artery (not vein, mind you) but Gordon uses his murder’s modus operandi as a pretext to fill the screen with scene after scene of gratuitous breast shots in order to give Angela a motive. His main venue for nudity is in the form of the formula horny female counselor (Valerie Hartman) as she is surrounded by equally typecast characters.
Many aspects of the film are approached lackadaisically. The original was set in present time, that is, 1983. Even though the events in the sequel take place years after the events at Camp Arawak, thus putting us in preset day, that is circa 1988 (when the film was made), we are still host to a slew of early 1980’s camp clichés, such as short, shorts (even on the males at a time when “jams” were coming into style) and mullets. A sex scene between the camp whore, Ally, and another counselor, Rob (Terry Hobbs), seems as if no one on set knew what sex consists of. Rob places Alley atop a toilet and, we assume, begins to engage in cunnilingus. However, unless her clitoris is around her navel, we have a problem as she, for whatever reason, seems to lapse into an epileptic fit in place of the scene direction of “thriving and undulating via sexual titillation.” Yes, I considered the notion that this might be a satirical presentation of teens which haven’t the slightest clue of what’s going on in relation to sex, but the scene comes off distracting and ineffective. We also have the main characters named after members of the Brat Pack. However, to what ends? The only credit that may be granted to the filmmakers for so doing is that they are implying that, hold on, the campers were brats because there are no other references or allusions to the era actors. This, atop the fact that a character’s melted corpse is seen prior to his death, doesn’t give any incentive to issue the production benefit of the doubt.
However, in lieu of the fact that the entire film is a waste of time, it does something that few horror films want to do but are afraid to (mostly due to financiers fear of audience backlash). By the end of the film, the killer does manage to kill off every single person within the picture. Thus, what many horror directors would like to achieve, complete and utter nihilism, Simpson delivers. Dauntingly, we watch as the one pure female soul is slaughtered as Angela brings down a knife down upon Molly (Renée Estevez, Lethal Weapon, Heathers, Single White Female), who inadvertently discovered the former’s crimes, while condemning her, “You’d tell!”
Overall, I’ve spent way too long on a film which doesn’t merit a review. Instead, it should be politely overlooked in the hopes that it will be forgotten, which would, in turn, benefit Michael Simpson’s name as a director, as well as save many, many a viewer eighty minutes of precious life.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
