Written and directed by Robert Hiltzik, 1983's Sleepaway Camp could have very easily been lost in the crowd of eighties slasher films had it not been for the film's infamous shock ending, one that's gone down in history, and rightly so. We won't spoil it here but this is really one of those movies where you're not going to see it coming and a picture which proves that, when handled right, a little shock value can go a long way.

The movie is set at Camp Arawak where a two camps, Angela (Felissa Rose) and her cousin Ricky (Jonathan Tiersten), have been sent by Angela's Aunt Martha (Desiree Gould). Ricky's a tough talking socialite; Angela is introverted, shy and doesn't really want to participate in any of the activities at the camp. Her introversion likely stems back to death of her father which she witnessed some years ago during a boating accident. At any rate, Ricky heads off to bunk with the boys and play baseball, Angela bunks with some girls and has trouble making any friends. In fact, soon enough the requisite mean girl at camp, Judy (Karen Fields), has set her sights on poor Angela, teasing the girl and trying to make her life Hell.

If that weren't bad enough, the creepy cook (Owen Hughes) gets Angela alone in the kitchen and tries to get his greasy paws on her. Ricky shows up and gets her out of there just in time, but shortly after the cook is found on the floor, a huge pot of boiling water having fallen on him and scalded him, his screams continuing as he's carried off on a stretcher. The man in charge of the camp, Mel (Mike Kellin), keeps this hush-hush so as not to worry the campers, his source of income. From there, a few of the campers who have been picking on Angela start getting knocked off in increasingly gruesome ways: a drowning, a swarm of bees, a grisly knife attack. The counsellors can't figure out who's behind it all while Mel figures it's got to be Ricky. Meanwhile, Angela befriends a kindly teenage boy named Paul (Christopher Collet) but when Angela spies him in the woods with Judy, well… none of this is going to end well for anybody.

While this is, until the final twenty-minutes or so, a fairly by the numbers slasher the movie does a pretty good job of establishing Angela as a genuinely sympathetic character. Most of the credit for this has to go to Rose. The story gives us reason to feel for her, with the opening scene in which she loses her father, but it's Rose's doe eyed, reserved take on the character that gives Angela the appropriate amount of sympathy required to make this work. The rest of the cast also turn in pretty enjoyable performances. Karen Fields is perfect as the ‘mean girl' out to make Angela's time at camp as miserable as possible. She's got that snarling, snotty holier-than-thou attitude about her but when the lights go out and no one's around, she's the first to make the moves on the closest available cute guy. Tiersten is solid as the noble Ricky. He knows his cousin needs to be protected and isn't afraid to stand up to bigger, tougher, older kids if the need arises. Mike Kellin sometimes steals the show as Mel, the money hungry owner of the camp ground with an eye for teenage girls. He's pretty funny to watch strutting about the camp in gaudy outfits with a smoke hanging out of his mouth and his socks pulled up to his knees.

At just short of an hour and a half the movie doesn't overstay it's welcome. The location photography helps to give the movie an air of authenticity and the score suits the action and tensions quite well. The effects, all done long before CGI was even an option, hold up well and are fairly grisly at times. Some of the kill scenes are pretty creative as well. So yeah, again, it's the ending that really sets this one apart from the rest of the pack but everything leading up to it is, if clichéd, at least a whole lot of good, gory fun.

Note: The previous Anchor Bay DVD release was slightly cut. There were trims made to a scene where the snake comes out of Kenny's mouth and to a skinny dipping scene. This new release from Shout! Factory restores those minor trims.

Video:

Sleepaway Camp debuts on Blu-ray from Shout! Factory framed at 1.78.1 widescreen in a ‘new 2k scan of the original camera negative.' Presented in AVC encoded 1080p high definition, and aside from some minor compression artifacts that pop up in the backgrounds from time to time, this is a solid transfer. Detail and color reproduction are vastly improved over the previous DVD release and skin tones look more natural as well. Black levels are good and the picture is quite clean, showing as much grain as you'd expect but free of any serious print damage. Sure, some minor specks do show up here and there but for the most part if you're not looking for them you probably won't even notice them. There's no evidence of noise reduction or heavy edge enhancement to note either. Does this look like the latest and greatest big budgeted Hollywood production? No. But it shouldn't. This looks like the low budget eighties slasher that it is, albeit with some definite and obvious improvements over past issues of the film.