The summer is upon us, campers, and to celebrate, B-Movie Enema is spending the next three weeks camping in the great outdoors.

While movies set at summer camps are largely a horror thing, there are comedies, dramas, and kids’ flicks we can pull from over the next 13 weeks. Some are pretty crappy. Some are pretty funny. One is just for me. It’s gonna be a good time. So, with that, I want to welcome all my Enemaniacs to what I’m calling:

Here at Camp Crappabuttawipe, we aren’t on stolen land. No, we paid for it, and it was surprisingly expensive too. But we’ve got lots of activities for the Enemaniac looking to get away from the hustle and bustle of everyday, modern life. We’ve got slasher killers, crazy hulking killers, and… um… legends of crazy slasher killers. But wait! There’s more! We’ll have raft races against other cabins. We’ll probably play a little grab ass here and there. We’ll even try to reconnect with our actress mother, who was known as a scream queen in her career before her tragic death. It’s gonna be fun!

And it all starts with the long-awaited return of a horror franchise to B-Movie Enema – Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers.

1983’s Sleepaway Camp was a bit of a surprise hit. And there’s really good reason for that too. Yes, the horror elements that are played pretty straight are moody and suspenseful. However, that part often gets lost under the heaps of strange stuff that is right there on the surface for all to see. Whether it is overacting or bizarre acting choices or an iconic ending that reveals the quiet little girl Angela was a boy all along, the movie gained a hell of a following throughout the 80s. So, Jerry Silva, co-producer of that original film, decided to see if there might be a market for a sequel or two.

Double Helix Films was interested in a potential franchise. The company assigned Michael Hitchcock to write a pair of sequels. At the time, Hitchcock was just working on the staff at Double Helix, but he was up to the task. He delivered two scripts, this one and the one that we’ll talk about next month. He wrote the script under a pseudonym, Fritz Gordon, and appeared uncredited as a counselor. Hitchcock would later go on to play bit parts in a lot of interesting movies like Waiting for Guffman, A Mighty Wind, Serenity, and several television shows.

Part of the reason why this movie has a distinctly different feel than the New York-based original film was that the director of the two sequels, Michael A. Simpson, was based out of Atlanta, Georgia. He cast the film from there, New York City, and Los Angeles. So some of that very New York feel of the way people talked and acted is kind of missing, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying. Felissa Rose, who played Angela in the original, was asked to return as Angela Baker, but she opted to spend more time on her studies at New York University. So, enter Pamela Springsteen, the younger sister of Bruce Springsteen.

Pamela Springsteen, 13 years younger than her big bro, the Boss, got into acting around the age of 20. She appeared as a cheerleader in both Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Reckless. The two Sleepaway Camp movies came around the end of her acting career. As she entered the 90s, she got into other work, largely as a photographer. She did serve as the cinematographer for her brother’s music video for “The Ghost of Tom Joad.” Interestingly, she was briefly engaged to Sean Penn. They met while working on Fast Times, and they were living together while Bruce was working on his Nebraska album, that period of the Boss’s life, itself, the subject of last year’s Deliver Me from Nowhere movie.

Back on topic here… Simpson shot both sequels back-to-back to save on production costs. The sequels are an interesting flavor of movie. We’ll talk about that more as we go through the film, but they are definitely not without some fun and memorable elements. So, I guess that means we better get to the beats and find out why these dang ass campers are so unhappy!

As things get started, let’s recap the gist of Sleepaway Camp. In 1975, a pair of gay lovers is vacationing on a lake with one of the guys’ two children, Peter and Angela. A reckless teenager in a motorboat accidentally kills one of the kids and their father. Eight years later, cousins Angela and Ricky are sent to Camp Arawak for summer camp. Angela is a bit quiet and strange, but generally gets along well with her protective cousin. She also finds a little bit of romance with a boy named Paul. People start dying gruesome deaths by an unknown murderer. It’s soon discovered that Angela is the killer and she’s killed Paul and revealed herself to not be a little girl, but Peter, who was raised by his aunt as a girl when she already had a son (Ricky).

So there ya go, one of the most famous endings of any 80s slasher film – a hissing and growling Felissa Rose wearing a prosthetic nude body of a boy, dingaling and all.

Five more years later, at Camp Rolling Hills, a bunch of counselors and kids are sitting around telling spooky campfire tales. A girl taking part in the fun, Phoebe, recounts the various deaths and goings on that ultimately closed Camp Arawak. One of the girls’ counselors arrives and tells Phoebe she was supposed to be in her cabin and that she needs to go back there now. The counselor looks quite displeased at the girl for 1) being with the boys and 2) telling spooky stories.

T.C., the head counselor, finishes the story saying that the little boy who was dressed as a girl spent time in a loony bin. She fully transitioned into a girl and was let out at some point. No one knows where she is. Well, this movie is not interested in keeping any kind of secrets or mysteries from the audience. No, the girls’ counselor is named “Angela,” and it isn’t long before it’s revealed she still likes killing people. She tells Phoebe she plans on sending her home from camp after she broke the rules to be with the boys after curfew. She then leaves Pheobe alone to wander through the woods in the dark before smashing her head in with a log for disobeying her counselor and cutting her tongue out for telling evil stories.

So, yeah, Angela is just already at the camp and already killing people. Do I think that hurts this movie? Eh, I don’t know. It’s going to be almost impossible to copy the twist of the original. This movie definitely is more interested in leaning into comedy and, pardon the pun, camp than horror or suspense. Is there a better way to introduce Angela than this? Probably not. This is a movie that wants to start with a cold open similar to some of the Friday the 13th sequels that opened with a campfire tale-like story recapping the past. Plus, there’s no point in burying any ledes. Just get to the killing.

Also, get to the titties too. After the credits, Angela wakes the girls at camp to get them ready for the day. One of the girls, Ally, sleeps topless and just has those girls out in the open for all to see. Thanks, movie! Also, thanks for having more grown-up campers than the previous, so we can actually do that and not make us all feel kinda gross.

We begin to meet more of the regular cast that we’ll follow for the rest of the movie. One of the things that is often pointed out as a piece of trivia is that all the characters are named after young actors from the 80s teenage flicks. We already met T.C. (Tom Cruise) and Pheobe (Cates) at the campfire. We saw Ally’s assets (named for Ally Sheedy). We also have Matt (Dillon), Sean (Penn), Mare (Winningham), Rob (Lowe), Demi (Moore), Lea (Thompson), Brooke (Shields), Jodie (Foster), Anthony (Michael Hall), Judd (Nelson), Diane (Lane), Charlie (Sheen), Emilio (Estevez), Ralph (Macchio), and Uncle John (named for John Hughes who made several of the popular teen movies starring the actors the characters take their names from).

Then, we have our leading lady, Molly (Ringwald), who, funnily enough, is played by one of the Estevezes, Renee.

I wonder what she might have said to her brothers about playing a character in a movie that had a couple of guys named after them in it. Oh, and that they will get brutally massacred. I bet Emilio thought it was kind of funny. Charlie probably thought it was dumb or something.

There are some characters that have personality here. Jodie and Brooke are sisters who constantly get stoned. Ally is the girl who has a lot of goods, and every boy at the camp fantasizes about her. Sean is the handsome fella and has a thing for Molly. Molly is well-liked, but a little shy, and definitely what would be labeled as a “good girl.” Molly is less rebellious and thinks Angela isn’t so bad. Generally, though, we get a lot of basic shenanigans. Boys peek into the windows of the girls’ cabin to take pictures of the girls, particularly Ally and Mare, who don’t have any issue showing off their chests.

Angela’s personality is… a lot. I kind of like the idea that this is how Angela came out of her time in a mental institution. In some ways, she’s like her aunt. She has this big, verbose personality like Aunt Martha. In another way, she also has this general attitude that being at a summer camp is special and there should be a particular reverence paid to the experience. So she’s always smiling and eagerly expounds the positives of the camp experience. She sings these goofy songs about being a happy camper and stuff. But she’s still Angela. T.C. wants to get closer to her and wants her to go sunbathing (probably to see what she has under her nerdy camp uniform) and wants to hang out with her to get to know her better and stuff, but she is repelled by the idea because she’s still carrying the body dysmorphia thing with her.

It’s an interesting take on this character. It’s paying homage to the original by having her still uncertain of her femininity. But it is also adding these new facets of her character that would give at least some clue as to how her brain and emotions are handling the years since Camp Arawak. Yet, it’s also played mostly over the top by Pamela Springsteen. So there’s this obvious comedy element that tells us she’s got some goofiness if she’s not necessarily actually funny.

She definitely still likes to kill, though, and that’s what she’s got her mind set to when she finds the Shote sisters, Jodie and Brooke, in the woods smoking weed and getting drunk. Maybe worse, they are making fun of her “Happy Camper” song. That just will not do. The next morning, she finds the Shote sisters with Ralph. She burns Jodi to death and pours gasoline over Brooke while she tells the girl that they should say no to drugs because they’ve ruined both of their lives. She then lights Brooke on fire.

Angela covers up her murders by saying she sends girls home for breaking the rules. However, the camp’s head honcho, Uncle John, isn’t too pleased to hear about Angela expelling the Shote sisters without talking to him or T.C. about it first. I guess he didn’t mind that she sent Phoebe home, but whatever.

Uncle John is played by long-time character actor Walter Gotell. Gotell was a German actor. He was best known as General Gogol, the head of the KGB, in the James Bond series. He appeared as Gogol in six consecutive films (from The Spy Who Loved Me to The Living Daylights) in a ten-year span. He also appeared in From Russia With Love as another character. That means he appeared in more official James Bond films than Sean Connery, which is pretty impressive. It wasn’t just James Bond, either; Gotell appeared in a lot of spy and espionage thrillers.

Angela catches the boys orchestrating a panty raid on the girls’ cabin. Not only is she determined to tell T.C. about this violation of the rules, but she also has some issues with Sean now. He didn’t leave with the rest of the boys. He wanted to stay around and talk to Molly. I’m guessing the fact that Molly is in bed, and the girls are in their pajamas, and the boys being there to do a panty raid are all things that Angela would have issues with, considering her issues with sex and whatnot.

She probably especially didn’t like Sean talking back to her, saying that they were only having some fun, then running off after kissing Molly.

The girls get the boys back by orchestrating a jock strap raid. Now… Yeah, I gotta be that guy. Girls wear panties every day. I mean… Some don’t, but those girls are special creatures. Generally, girls wear underwear every day. Boys don’t wear jock straps every day. We only wear those things when we do sport-like stuffs. The only time in my life that I wore a jock was when I needed a cup, and that was when I played baseball. Even with the activities at a summer camp going on, I would not think that having a jock strap would be a necessity. But whatever, all the boys have jocks and the girls are raiding them.

T.C. is not a stick in the mud. He just decides to stay in his room in the boys’ cabin to wait for it to be over before going back to sleep. Angela, though? She’s like the queen of sticks in the mud. She finds the girls just as Mare is flashing the boys and decides to “drive her home.” You know what that means…

Yup, Mare is about to get a drill bit to the fucking face.

After Angela consistently scolds the campers (both boys and girls), there is a plot to get back at her for being a raging bitch – their words, not mine, though, she is… you know… a lot. The girls are going to be camping out tonight. So, a couple of the boys are planning on scaring her to death. I’m sure this is going to go over exceptionally well.

Meanwhile, Molly finds Angela secluded by a boarded-up shed, humming “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore” by herself. Molly sits down with her and does some girl talk with her. Molly really likes Sean, and everyone knows it. In fact, it’s pretty obvious Sean likes her too, but Ally likes him too, and she’s a cheerleader with phenomenal tits.

Now, I’m in Angela’s camp here. She tells Molly that Sean’s a smart kid. He’ll see that Molly is just swell. I agree. Renee Estevez is just a super cutie. Oh, sure, you get an eyeful of Ally a few times in this movie, but man, you can get that just about anywhere. You aren’t gonna find a super cute good girl just anywhere. Molly wins.

Actually, now that I think of it, maybe I also want to kill a bunch of bratty campers…?

I digress. The funniest joke of the whole movie comes when blindfolded campers are forced to stick their hand in a box, and the counselors tell them that whatever they’re feeling is something gross or scary. Angela is sticking kids’ hands into her box and telling them it is “dead teenager brains.” The counselor, Diane, next to Angela, asks what she really has in her box. Angela just responds plainly as she sticks another camper’s hand into the box, “Dead teenager brains.” It’s so quick and kind of flies under the radar. In fact, I don’t know exactly what exercise they are doing or what the activity is, but I don’t care. It’s funny.

But there are more kids to kill. Charlie and Emilio, the kids who are constantly peeking into the girls’ cabin and taking polaroids of their breasts, are caught by Angela looking at their pictures. She gets especially pissed when she sees the boys took a picture of her undressing. T.C. refuses to send the kids home, but warns Agnela that a couple of boys are going to try to scare her. Sure enough, two of the guys, Anthony and Judd, are dressed as Freddy and Jason and plan to scare her. But she gets the drop on them and kills Anthony with his own Freddy glove. She then attacks Judd while dressed as Leatherface, wearing Mare’s face as a mask.

The next day, T.C. and Sean go looking for Judd and Anthony. Ally confronts Molly about them not liking each other. In fact, Ally is pissed that Sean likes her. She says that Sean sucks when he fucks, so they’ll be perfect together. Molly confides in Angela about what Ally said about her. So… Angela decides to do something about it. Angela leaves a note for her that appears to come from Sean, telling her to meet him at the abandoned shed Angela hangs out at. Angela stabs Ally in the back with a knife and then tosses her into a latrine to drown her in shit and piss.

Later that night, Demi goes to talk to Angela. She says that she once got Mare’s phone number. So she tried to call her. Mare’s parents say she was still at camp. She then called Phoebe’s house, and the same thing… Her little brother and her mom both say Phoebe was still at camp. All the while, as Demi tells her story about how she called the various girls that Angela supposedly “sent home,” Angela is looking around the cabin for something that will kill Phoebe. She settles on a string from her guitar that she uses to strangle the girl.

As Angela tries to hide Demi’s body, Lea comes back to the cabin and jimmies the lock to get in. When she finds Demi’s body, Angela stabs her to death. That leaves only Molly in the girls’ cabin.

The next morning, Uncle John and T.C. fire Angela for sending kids home without consulting with them. Angela tries to save her job by apologizing and even offering that she wouldn’t do anything without talking to them first. Uncle John does not accept this apology. Angela tells Molly that she’s been fired, and she needs some time alone, but she will come back and say goodbye to her before she leaves.

Molly goes to see Sean and tells him about how Angela sent the rest of the girls home, and that led to her being fired. She asks Rob to accompany her while she goes to the abandoned cabin to talk to Angela. They find her, and Angela laments being named Counselor of the Week just a few days ago and now Uncle John fired her. She also says that T.C. had just as much to do with her firing because he never liked her. While Molly says that isn’t true, Sean gets curious about what’s inside the abandoned cabin. When he goes inside, he finds a bunch of dead bodies.

Angela beats Sean with a branch from a tree, and she then ties both him and Molly up inside the cabin. Meanwhile, one of the other boys tells T.C. where Sean and Molly went to try to find Angela. He shows up only to get battery acid thrown in his face.

I kind of love a couple of things that are woven into this movie. The movie is so-so and can definitely be one of those “your miles will vary” types of movies, but it does a couple of things pretty intelligently. First, Sean knows a lot about what happened five years ago at Camp Arawak. He knows this for two reasons. First, his dad is a cop, and that gives him a little extra insight into some crimes that happen in the area. Second, he was supposedly going to go to Camp Arawak that summer, but his dad couldn’t afford it. So he kind of feels like he lucked out not being among the dead. Third, he knows that the killer went by a particular name, but he can’t quite remember what that name was… yet. Additionally, the battery acid she threw in T.C.’s face came from his truck’s battery, which he mentioned earlier was missing as part of some prank he assumed the campers pulled the same way the boys did the panty raid, and the girls retaliated with the jock strap raid. That’s good stuff when you can seed the movie’s details like that.

Sean remembers that the Camp Arawak killer went by the name Angela. She explains to him that she was “cured” after spending four years in a hospital. She underwent therapy, electroshock therapy, and received a sex change operation. All her doctors and even some clergymen claim she is a-okay now. She asks Sean how he knew so much about her, and he says that his dad helped arrest her. After he says if she could have only heard what he had to say when she was released from the hospital, she tells him that she wonders what he’ll say when he learns about what happened to him, just as she cuts Sean’s head off.

Angela must either be slipping or she is a little distracted by actually liking Molly, because Molly is able to free herself somewhat easily when Angela leaves the cabin. Molly hits Angela with a tree branch until she’s unconscious, allowing Molly to flee. Angela chases Molly through the woods. Molly grabbed Angela’s knife before going on the run and used it to get away from Angela a second time when she got tackled. Molly eventually slips and hits her head on a rock. It appears Molly died in the fall.

Angela kind of grieves Molly for a couple of moments before returning to Camp Rolling Hills and killing the rest of the campers and counselors. While Angela does that, Molly regains consciousness and continues to try to find help. Meanwhile, Angela has been picked up by a foul-mouthed cowgirl in a truck who smokes cigarettes nd generally annoys Angela. So Angela kills her.

As Molly gets to the road, she flags down a truck, only to be horrified that it’s driven by Angela.

Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers is not as good as the first Sleepaway Camp movie. Anyone who says otherwise is an asshole. Nah, I don’t mean that. These are two very different beasts. The original was a cheeky slasher in the vein of Friday the 13th and The Burning. Like it or not, and there are some who, in this day and age, would not care much for some of the implications of the original’s ending, the original’s memorable ending is the crescendo of an entire film’s interesting runtime, full of strange performances and interesting ways to film the killings.

Unhappy Campers, on the other hand, is out here trying to be more of a parody, of sorts. The first movie has this sort of mystery/twist ending that does make you question who, between the cousins Angela and Ricky, could be the screwed up one. Angela is quiet, and Ricky has a temper. This one forgoes all of that and actually just has Angela killing a girl before the opening credits even roll. If there is anything this movie is trying to play on, it’s a combination of how a sequel does not need to set anything up in horror and can just go for the kills with a dash of a wink and a snicker toward the morality play that often motivates the killer. Angela begins this movie by killing only the girls who are doing “bad” or “immoral” things. It’s a girl who wants to sneak off alone to be with ALL the guys. It’s the girl who flashed the boys’ cabin. It’s the girl who fucks everyone. It’s the pair of sisters who smoke pot and drink heavily.

She doesn’t begin killing the boys until she’s surpassed the point of being able to cover up what she’s been doing. So, again, there’s another parody. She’s specifically killing girls. You’d think Emilio and Charlie are doomed almost immediately for their polaroids of a topless Mare, and even more so for capturing the picture of Angela taking off her shirt. No. They don’t get it until Angela decides to completely wipe out the camp. There are other boys who have sex with some of the girls. She doesn’t kill them. It’s almost a satire on how the girls in slashers always got it worse, or how their deaths were more likely to be depicted on screen than the guys’. It could even be looked at as the old idea of “boys will be boys,” and, therefore, they shouldn’t be condemned for their thoughts and actions like the girls would be. Hell, you could even argue Demi dies because, as Angela says, she talks too much. Lea is nosy. The truck drivin’ cowgirl at the end isn’t ladylike. These would all be things that women can be called to make them seem undesirable.

So, there are interesting ideas here. They are a little too far under the surface. This is an 80-minute movie. It’s almost too long. Without the movie leaning further into those interesting ideas, or at least calling more attention to those better ideas, it is just a goofy goober Angela going from victim to victim, saying something kind of lame (lame on purpose, mind you), and killing them (mostly without seeing actual gore).

This isn’t a completely bad or “un-fun” watch. I enjoy this movie for what it is. We will look at the other two official sequels later during Camp Crappabuttawipe, but for now, I think we need to move on and let Angela have some time to consider her next killing spree. Instead, let’s do something that is an absolute tradition at summer camp.

Next time, we’re going to sit around the campfire and roast Marshmallow.

Not really. I likely won’t be roasting it. Just watching it. Just… you know, doing the review thing. I think it’s probably going to be one of the better movies covered here this summer. I just wanted to end things on a smart note by connecting the movie Marshmallow to the concept of roasting marshmallows while at camp. But now… I’ve… I’ve gone too far past the smart allusion. Sigh…