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Sleepaway Camp
Directed by	Robert Hiltzik
Produced by	Robert Hiltzik Jack Grossberg Jerry Silva Michele Tatosian
Written by	Robert Hiltzik Marshall Brikman
Starring	Mike Kellin Jonathan Tiersten Karen Fields Christopher Collet Paul De Angelo
Music by	Edward Bilous
Cinematography	Benjamin Davis David M. Walsh
Editing by	Ron Kalish Ralph Rosenblum Sharyn Ross
Distributed by	American Eagle Films United Film Distribution
Release date(s)	1983
Running time	88 min.
Country	USA
Language	English
Followed by	Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

This page is about the horror movie. For the summer activity, see Summer camp.

‎Sleepaway Camp was a 1983 horror movie written and directed by Robert Hiltzik—who also served as executive producer—about murders at a summer camp. The film came at a time when slasher films were in their heyday.

The main character, Angela Baker (Felissa Rose), and her cousin Ricky (Jonathan Tiersten), are sent to summer camp one summer. Angela had come to live with Ricky and her Aunt Martha eight years earlier, after her father and her brother Peter were killed in a boating accident. Angela, a painfully shy 14-year-old, is bullied severely by most of the other campgoers and counselors at Camp Arawak. Her main foil is Judy (Karen Fields), a vain girl once friendly with Ricky but now snubbing him in favor of the older boys.

Soon people are being killed in bizarre ways, such as a youth being stung to death by bees from a hive thrown into a bathroom. In a nod to Psycho, a female counselor is stabbed in a shower stall. The murderer turns out to be Angela; however, it is later revealed that Angela was actually her brother Peter. The real Angela had died in the boating accident eight years ago, and Peter assumed her identity afterward. This was because Aunt Martha wanted a girl and chose to raise Peter as a girl, treating him as if he were Angela. Angela-Peter is last seen standing on the beach naked with the decapitated head of Paul (Christopher Collet) in her/his one hand while holding a knife in the other with the rest of his body at his/her feet.

In the commentary on the DVD, Hiltzik and Rose tease that perhaps Angela isn't the sole killer in the movie. In fact, the only real continuity error in the film involves the killing of campers at a tent site far enough away from the main camp that they took a car to get there in the same night that four other people were murdered.

Over the years, the Sleepaway Camp films gained a loyal cult following. In the late 1980s, Michael A. Simpson directed two sequels, Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers (1988) and Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland (1989). In them, Angela (now played by Bruce Springsteen's baby sister, Pamela Springsteen) resurfaces at a nearby summer camp, but this time masquerading as a counselor after Sex reassignment surgery that made her entirely female. Much like at the previous camp, she gleefully tortures and kills everyone on whom she can get her hands. Since then, Angela has yet to make another Sleepaway Camp appearance.

Another unsanctioned sequel, Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor, directed by Jim Markovic, was partially filmed but never completed. In 2002 the unfinished footage was released and made available as an exclusive 4th disc in Anchor Bay/Starz Entertainment's Sleepaway Camp DVD boxed set.

A new film, Return to Sleepaway Camp is now in production. It is being directed by the original director, Robert Hiltzik. He has decided that this newest chapter would ignore the story lines of the other sequels, stating that he wants to pick up from where the original film had ended. The production was halted for quite some time, but according to Fangoria.com, the digital FX are being redone and the film will most likely be released in the fall of 2008.

The final film in the Hiltzik SC trilogy is also in the making. It is currently titled Sleepaway Camp Reunion.

Michael Simpson, the director of Sleepaway Camp 2: Unhappy Campers and Sleepaway Camp 3: Teenage Wasteland, recently wrote a script for his series of Sleepaway Camp movies as well, titled Sleepaway Camp: Berserk.

In the late 1990s, Jeff Hayes and Australian Web master John Klyza brought the fan base of Sleepaway Camp into the open, with the first official Sleepaway Camp Web site. Today, both Klyza and Hayes have their own SC sites, with Hayes running the official SC1 and RTSC sites and Klyza running the official sequels site. Hayes did audio commentary for the first Sleepaway Camp on DVD, while Klyza provided commentary for SC2 and SC3. Hayes is expected to do commentary for the upcoming Return to Sleepaway Camp.

• Senses Fail named a song after Angela Baker, titled "Angela Baker and My Obsession With Fire"
• Robot Chicken aired a sketch about the movie.

• Official Sleepaway Camp Site (Jeff Hayes)
• Official Sleepaway Camp Sequels Site (John Klyza)
• Sleepaway Camp at the Internet Movie Database
• The Unofficial Sleepaway Camp Site