Sleepaway Camp Part II: Unhappy Campers Movie Review (1988)

Today, let’s take a STAB at one of my favorite sequels in the Slasher genre. Sleepaway Camp II – Unhappy Campers! Before we dig in too deep, allow me to say this - if you don’t like this movie, I seriously don’t trust your thoughts on Horror, music or movies and more than likely you belong in a Convent where they punish you for impure thoughts! By far this is one of the best sequels in the Horror genre to me. I mean seriously, how can you not enjoy a movie that’s big on laughs, campiness, gratuitous nudity and violence?! Face it if you watched the first movie in the Sleepaway series you know that nothing is off limits and the more fuckered things are, the better it’s going to be. The first movie is OK, sure there are some great moments, one liners galore and the KILL scenes absolutely rule, but the movie doesn’t deliver in the “fun” department to me as much as Part II does. Aside from the kill scenes and a few of the characters my favorite thing about the first movie is the scenery and the name of the camp – Camp Arawak!

Speaking of the scenery in these Camp Horror movies, it reminds me of the times I went to camp in our area. Let me talk about that for a moment, I’m curious if anyone else experienced anything like we did. I won’t reveal the name of the Camp because it sucked, the counselors were shit and it wasn’t a great experience overall. (My dumbass went 3 years in a row!) I don’t want to glorify these pricks in any manner. The camp did try to create tales of Monsters & mayhem and towards the end of the week we would meet those monsters when they burst into our cabins wielding chainsaws in the middle of the night. I was frightened a bit, but it was the other children that went into screaming fits of maniacal sorrow and tears. They also didn’t take the masks off and say HA, we’re just having fun, they never let us kids know it was them! This never sat right with me, and it still doesn’t. I’ve always loved Horror; I was exposed at a very young age by my mom. And by the time I went to camp I’d already watched the Texas Chainsaw Massacre! However, most of those kids weren’t prepared for that kind of terror, nor did they come to camp looking for it – it wasn’t a camp for Horror nerds, it was normal summer camp – we finger painted, made crafts, went swimming, played ball, listened to Billy Idol’s Rebel Yell cassette on a boom box and shit like that. I’ve always thought it was a shitty thing to do. I’m sure it scarred a bunch of those children – my wife being one of them as she went to the same camp. I believe it has a great deal to do with her not being able to let go and enjoy Horror as much as I do. It’s one thing to go looking for a fright but to have it forced on you when you’re away from home at the age of 7 or 8 is a stretch, but it was the 80’s and people thought shit like this was funny. If I sent my kid to camp and they came back telling me they’d been attacked by a chainsaw wielding maniac, someone would’ve gotten their ass kicked in a hurry!

Back to Unhappy Campers! In this sequel the new camp is called Camp Rolling Hills, the name doesn’t have the same flair as Camp Arawak, but it’s still fun, nonetheless. This time our dearest Angela Baker is now going by Angela Johnson and wouldn’t you know she’s a counselor at Camp Rolling Hills! For those not in the know, the actress that portrays Angela in this installment is Bruce Springsteen’s younger sister, Pamela Springsteen. I’ve always thought that was neat, but I’m a serious music junkie… Springsteen owns this role, she commands the screen in every scene she’s in, she’s cute as hell, a bit off-beat and goody goody which pushes the cuteness into overdrive for me. This movie wastes no time going in for the kill, I think 5 minutes into the film Angela has already claimed her first victim – she ain’t putting up with no lip from her campers, no sir! She continues to find the need to murder her campers as they’re not worthy of being there because they’re bad campers for various reasons – fornicating with the boys, lying, talking too much and of course tattling. The kill scenes while kind of schlocky and amateurish are hilarious a great deal of the time! There’s a beautiful kill where a camper gets stuffed in an old abandon outhouse shitter, she’s fighting for air and trying to get out, when she pops up, she’s covered in feces and leeches! It’s fucking spectacular, I’m telling ya! There’s another scene where a camper gets it in the head with a power drill and then later, the campers are playing a game with the counselors where the kids are blindfolded and they’re trying to guess what their hands are being put in – Angela says, “Dead Teenager’s Brains”. HA! There’s another gruesome scene where one of the other counselors gets battery acid in the face – YES! One of my favorite kills is when Angela strangles a camper with her guitar string. Angela is looking all over the cabin for something to murder the girl with, but she doesn’t realize it because she can’t stop talking. Angela comes up from behind her and says, “you know what, you talk too much” and strangles her to death. Another celebrity sibling in the film is Renee Estevez, the sister of Emilio and Charlie Sheen of course. Estevez plays the role of Molly, Angela’s favorite camper, she’s kind, quiet and reserved just as Angela pictures herself. Will Molly be the final girl, could she possibly be? You’ll have to watch the movie and see!

Being from Georgia, it tickles me knowing this movie was shot in my home state, as a matter of fact it was shot a few hours away from me in Waco at a YMCA camp. I’ve always wanted to go and visit the camp; I might have to investigate that here soon. Unhappy Campers was released in 1988 and much like the first installment of the series, it’s a B movie with a flair for C tendencies here and there depending on who you ask. I’ve heard some say the film tried to capitalize on the popularity of Friday the 13^th & Nightmare on Elm Street but that’s cheap, there are some scenes where some of the campers have dressed up as those characters, but it’s brief and that’s not a rip off, that’s an homage to those films. Unhappy Campers fills us in on where Angela Baker has got off to and what she’s doing now. And it pleases me deep in my soul to see her return to camp and keep on fucking up those bad campers! No doubt this is one of my most beloved movies of all time, I feel the same about the franchise all together – there’s a part III – Teenage Wasteland! I have the First Aid Kit DVD Box Set edition of the films as well as the Blu-rays and yes, I even have the “Return to Sleepaway Camp” DVD that was shot years later. All relative, all good any time of the year... Oh, I’m a happy camper, I love to drink and fuck!!!!!!!!!