Tag: slasher flick

And so we have arrived at the end of B-Movie Enema’s Camp Crappabuttawipe…

2015’s The Final Girls comes to us from director Todd Strauss-Schulson, making his second big-screen feature film. Strauss-Schulson comes from a comedy background, having previously made A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas. In the four years between those two films, he largely worked on sitcoms. The Final Girls most definitely is something of a love letter to 80s slasher films that took place at a summer camp, but it’s also a comedy and has something a little more going for it than the typical slasher genre film. So it makes sense that he’s helming this film.

I think the horror element definitely comes from the writers, M.A. Fortin and Joshua John Miller. While these two are partners in real life, they are also writing and producing partners. They also created the TV Series Queen of the South, which ran for 62 episodes over the course of five years. Miller, though, is the one who is clearly bringing the heart to the film’s concept.

We’ve only got a couple more weeks of Camp Crappabuttawipe here at B-Movie Enema. But, you know what? It’s been a hell of a summer, hasn’t it?

Yeah, we’ve had franchises, comedies, a star-making laugh riot, and an incredibly endearing coming-of-age movie at a girls’ camp. But we’ve most definitely had a lot of slashers. I mean, that’s what you expect whenever you see a movie that is going to take place at a summer camp, right? Some guy going around and hacking and slashing frisky counselors.

Well, very clearly that’s what Billy Bryk and Finn Wolfhard expect because these two young actors got together to make a film in 2022 that we’re going to cover this week – Hell of a Summer. The origin of this movie actually began after the two Canadians met on the set of Ghostbusters: Afterlife. At the time, Wolfhard was roughly 16, and Bryk was around 20. After hanging out and chatting about the movies they like, they realized, fairly quickly, they had similar senses of humor. They decided to make a slasher with some humorous nods to Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead.

Welcome back to B-Movie Enema’s summer-long exploration of camp movies (movies that actually take place at a camp, not campy horror movies), Camp Crappabuttawipe!

Oof magoof, we are really in the dregs of this theme series now. Okay, we’ve had some real bangers here this summer, but the last couple of weeks have been pretty shaky. But now, it’s time to completely pull the rug out from under all of us because this week, we have a movie that is truly, outrageously awful. It’s one of those situations in which I hate putting myself into – the commitment to an entire franchise. For every Sleepaway Camp in a series, there is also a Return to Sleepaway Camp.

Alright, so a quick catch-up here, once again. 1983’s Sleepaway Camp from writer/director Robert Hiltzik became a surprise hit and a bit of an instant cult classic among horror and slasher fans. Its blend of over-the-top performances, repetitive slashings seen by an off-screen murderer (a la the original Friday the 13th), and a truly unforgettable climax instantly made this the classic it is largely regarded in the genre today. Five years later, director Michael A. Simpson and writer Fritz Gordon revived the series with two hit-or-miss sequels, thanks to original producer Jerry Silva still owning the rights to the franchise. The most memorable thing about either movie was the performances by a new woman being cast as killer Angela Baker, Pamela Springsteen. Sleepaway Camp II and Sleepaway Camp III mostly focused more on the lighthearted touches and comedic use of slasher tropes in a time when serious slashers were largely dying out. While being far more goofy and less interested in true horror, viewers’ mileage may vary on those first two sequels.

TEENAGE WASTELAND, oh, yeah… TEENAGE WASTELAND!

Oh, hi, Enemaniacs. You’ve caught me singing along to one of my favorite songs from The Who, “Baba O’Riley.” And that brings us to week #6 here at B-Movie Enema’s summer-long theme of Camp Crappa Buttawipe! This week, we bounce back into the Sleepaway Camp franchise with Sleepaway Camp III: Baba O’Riley… er… I mean Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland!

There’s not much more to say about the behind-the-scenes business that wasn’t covered last month when I talked about the first sequel. Both sequels were made back-to-back to save on overall production costs. The first of the two movies was the more expensive of the two, coming in at about a million and a half bucks. This movie used the rest of the $2 million that was granted to make the two movies. Both films were written by Fritz Gordon, and his appreciation for playing around with character names is still on display here. The last film used the first names of the Brat Pack and other young stars of the era. This film uses character names from sources like West Side Story, The Munsters, and The Brady Bunch.