Beukey on Pop Culture

This blog will focus on pop culture, with an emphasis on views outside, overlooked, or ignored by the mainstream. I may veer off-topic. We are all grown-ups, so don't act shocked at occasional bad language. This blog is not the place for those of you who stood in line to see "The Lake House".

Sunday, June 29, 2008

Is Sleepaway Camp The Gayest Horror Movie Ever? Not That There's Anything Wrong With That

The cable movie channel IFC does some strange things. They decreed June "Grindhouse" month, and ran triple features on Thursday nights, but did not screen one true grindhouse movie. We've been all through grindhouse and Grindhouse on this blog, but if IFC needs me to tell them that Scream 3 is not a true grindhouse flick, then the state of independent cinema is in worse shape than I thought.

As a tangent to the Thursday movies, they ran a different horror movie midnights on Friday. The strange thing is that the choice for Friday movies, while also not true grindhouse, were at least horror movies that never get any screenings on cable (as opposed to Scream 3, which hardly needs the exposure). Why they buried their offbeat choices on Fridays at midnight is a mystery to me, and seems to run counter to a grindhouse promotion.

I didn't know about this promotion until I got home at midnight on a Friday and came across a screening of Sleepaway Camp. I remembered this as an 1980's slasher flick, but had never seen it. As an 1980's slasher flick set in a summer camp, I expected it to follow a certain pattern: whiny campers; obnoxious, horny counselors; teens that have sex get killed; some hot chick that takes a shower gets killed; some hot chick that skinny-dips gets killed; etc., etc., etc.

But Sleepaway Camp wasn't going to blindly follow this formula. It doesn't make homosexuality and sexual identity its central themes. But it does subvert the traditional heterosexual slasher genre by introducing such themes.

My first inkling that Sleepaway Camp was going to be different was when the (going through a divorce) father has his two kids out on a lake in a tiny boat, and the camera kept cutting back to the father looking at another man on shore. Then tragedy ensues, and in reasons too random and various to encapsulate, the father and one of the kids gets run over by a speed boat.

My second inkling that we were in uncharted territory was when the surviving child, Angela, is raised by a crazy, overly dramatic "Aunt Martha" who comes across as drag queen. "Aunt Martha" was played by a female, but with the overly exaggerated acting and fashion choices, it is clear that there is supposed to be some confusion about the gender of the character. It also shows that the "Camp" portion of the title works on more than one level.

From this point forward, I couldn't help but notice the other unconventional choices this movie makes. The main character, Angela, is a sullen, uncommunicative teen that is having a miserable summer at the camp. She spends most over her time not interacting with the other characters. The male counselors mostly look like body-builders from the pre-steroids era, and wear shorts so tiny and colorful that the look like panties. The camera spends a lot of time on these counselors.

For the traditional nude swimming scene, the male counselors ask the female counselors to go skinny-dipping. The girls refuse, so the guys strip down and swim by themselves, and probably have a great time. (Aside: I understand that most video and DVD versions of the film don't have this scene, but it was included on the version I watched on IFC.) There is no female nudity in this film at all, which is almost unheard of in early 1980's slasher flicks. But we get plenty of gratuitous shots of men's asses.

At a seemingly random point in the film a flashback occurs, and hints that Angela and the dead sibling at some point watched her father have sex with the guy he kept looking at on the shore.

As far as plot development goes, people who treat Angela poorly are getting bumped off. Who's doing it? Angela? Her overprotective cousin who is also at the camp? The boy that went out of his way to befriend Angela? Cropsy? (Sorry, that's from another killer-in-the-woods movie.)

This movie has a "surprise" ending, although how much something can be kept a secret after 25 years and the last 2 1/2 minutes have been posted on youtube is an open question. But, after much meandering, the film comes back to the question of sexual identity. Also, there was a film in the 1990's that had a "twist", and we were all encouraged not to reveal the "twist" to anyone that hadn't seen it. This "twist" was blatantly stolen from Sleepaway Camp.

So anyone going to see Sleepaway Camp for tits and gore is going to be confronted by a off-kilter flick that is more concerned with subverting the genre than following it. And by creating a horror movie that runs counter to the heterosexual slasher formula, the movie gets creativity points. There are plenty of examples of comedies, dramas, musicals, etc that have gay/transgender themes. But Sleepaway Camp is the only horror movie I can think of that veers into that territory.

If you click on the link to this title, it will take you to the review of the movie posted on the website 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting which is an outstanding resource for horror movies. The summaries give detailed plot descriptions, and they are rounded out with insightful criticism.