Coroner’s Report: Return to Sleepaway Camp

Posted by Robert Fure (robert@filmschoolrejects.com) on January 8, 2009

If you’ll remember way back to our 31 Days of Horror feature, you’ll know that the Sleepaway Camp series has a very warm spot in my heart – I consider it a hidden gem of slasher horror.  If you haven’t seen it yet, go ahead and just buy the collector’s set.  It is awesome.  So when I heard that they were making a new installment, I was psyched, right?  Wrong.  I was afraid.  It looked as though things had changed too much.  And this was being called the 5th movie, even though the 4th never even came close to being finished.

That being said, Return to Sleepaway Camp ignores the previous two sequels and picks up at Camp Manabe where Ronnie, a survivor of the Camp Arawak Massacre, is now a Junior Partner helping run a new summer camp.  At Manabe, fat bastard Alan is (rightly) tormented for being overweight and dirty, which of course makes him the prime suspect when kids start turning up dead.

Kills

In keeping with Sleepaway Camp tradition, there is a decent body count that starts slow but really ratchets up at the end.  All in all, about eight or nine campers and counselors won’t be returning next summer.

Ills

There are some pretty decent kills in this one, including an homage to the original movie where a chef meats his end via boiling oil.  Later some starved rats eat a guy, a wiener gets ripped off, some barbed wire gets applied to a face, someone gets whacked with a mallet, nails are smashed through someone, there is some skinning, and most viciously – a gigantic atomic wedgie.

Lust

If you love dirty fat naked boy ass, you’re in luck.  If you like a cute girl or two, they’ve got that as well.  If you want nudity, you’ve come to the wrong show.

Learning

Don’t be mean to your fellow campers!  In fact, you should probably never, ever go to summer camp.  And if you do, obey the rules.

Review

Right away the title song on the DVD kicks ass, so I’m starting to get psyched immediately.  Soon, fat Alan says to Randy he says “Randy, your ass stinks.”  Little did I know then that Alan would turn “your ass stinks” into the catchphrase of a generation.  Or maybe not, but still it was funny.  Return to Sleepawy Camp has been long delayed and they blamed it on “CGI issues,” though the film features little CGI.  Either way, the movie is entertaining, but it starts to feel rushed at the end.  Or sloppy.  One kill scene goes on far, far too long.  The set-up takes forever and the payoff is only “okay” rather than “awesome!”  The editing sticks out like a sore thumb, with about a dozen fade to black moments rather than smart or planned transitions.  Whatever slowed down the movie definitely played havoc in the editing bay.

That being said, this was definitely a movie for the fans of the first one.  There are lots of nods to the original film and even a few of the main characters from the first return, including the still-ripped Ronnie and the worse-for-wear Ricky, who seemingly had a rough transition to adulthood.  The movie captures the same feel of the first in terms of how the kids behaved, though Alan is completely unsympathetic.  They make fun of him for being fat.  Well, the kid is definitely obese.  The make fun of him for being dirty.  He is.  He doesn’t change his shirt or pants once through the movie and he gets dirtier and dirtier.  They make fun of him for being weird.  And he is.  He talks to frogs and serves warm cola out of old, dirty, used cups.  The kid is messed up.  Does he have a great personality to make up for it?  Nope.  The kid is an asshole, who picks on the smaller kids, has a foul mouth, and tries to blame it all on a medical condition he once had.  I would have wedgied that kid hard and kicked him into a swamp, but then again I’m Alpha.  Haha!

This movie probably won’t win over your average view, but die hard horror fans should get enough out of it to make it worth a rental.  If you’re a fan of Sleepaway Camp, then this is a must own as it definitely fits in with the original movie and, as a super fan myself, I ended up loving it.  Sort of in a “so bad it’s good” way, but I don’t feel the slightest bit wrong tossing this in my “Guilty Pleasures” pile.

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