SHOCKtober! Sleepaway Camp 3: Teenage Wasteland
Ok, this rounds out the original batch of Sleepaway Camp movies, and unfortunately, this is the worst of the bunch. The first one had that unbelievable ending, the second one had great – and funny – kills, and now part three…well…it doesn’t have much, to be honest. The kills mostly happen off screen, and you never really get much of a sense of suspense. You just know that Pamela Springsteen is back and chipper as ever as she kills teen after teen, camper after camper.
Sleepaway Camp 3 takes place exactly a year after part 2. The camp is under new ownership who have concocted a scheme in order to get government funding, since nobody in their right mind locally will pay to go to this place. So they start a project where they mix inner-city and underprivileged kids with wealthy, well-educated kids as some sort of social experiment. Of course, Angela quickly figures out a way to impersonate one of the kids and the killing spree begins.
As I mentioned, though, what could be the best, most gruesome kills usually wind up taking place off screen. For example, there’s a great lawnmower scene that cuts away just as the audience would have let out a collective gasp. Instead, we get to see blood splatter on Angela’s face.
It seems that rather than focusing on horror and kills, the filmmakers decided to take the cheesy humor of the second movie and run with it. In one scene, Angela and a couple of kids are fishing and they pull a hockey mask out of the water. Angela asks, “What day is it today?” and the kids respond, “Saturday the 14th.” Yeah…that’s gold…
Aside from that, there’s a healthy dose of T&A and The Boss’s sister is joined by Michelle Pfeifer’s sister. So unless the first two movies hooked you so much that you just have to see the third, I’d say avoid this particular entry in the series. Later in the month, perhaps we’ll talk about Return to Sleepaway Camp, the movie that came out just a couple years ago.
Related Posts
Tags: horror, shocktober, slasher films, sleepaway camp
