Sleep Away Those Sunday Blues

Hello Friends! Remember when you were a teenager and you would go to the video store (yes, an actual VHS video store) and rent old, cheesy horror films with your friends? The kind of horror film where the plot was so off the wall, and the effects looked like they were made straight from an Easy Bake Oven? Well I was getting my hair cut tonight (nice segueway, eh?) and the gal "stylizing" my hair, Dana, was harping on me to see Hostel (her and I chat about such things as transgenders, catpeople and gypsies so this wasn't too far off a normal conversation for us). She proceeds to tell me how Hostel is a pyschological thriller and it's off the hook crazy, blah blah blah... If you've seen Hostel you already know all about it. If you haven't you're thinking to yourself right now "Maybe I should check it out, this hair stylist seems to know her shit." I finally cave and tell her that the next time I come back (three weeks) I will have seen Hostel, but under one stipulation. She must see Sleepaway Camp. Hell yes, Sleepaway Camp. She's intruiged. "Sleepaway Camp?" she says? "Sleepaway Camp," I reply.



Without giving away too much, Sleepaway Camp is a pretty standard run-of-the-mill horror films from the early to mid' 1980s. Angela, a pretty awkward teen is sent to a summer camp where she promptly met by a slew of asshole kids and counselors. One by one she starts picking them off using various methods throughout the movie. Pretty boring and done a million times before? Right? Wrong! Sleepaway Camp has one of the ultimate twist endings in horror history. It takes the "Holy Shit, he's a ghost!" right out of Bruce Willis really being a god damn ghost in The Sixth Sense.



This ending traumatizes me to this day. Ofcourse the setting that I watched it in was pretty intense too. Back in the summer of 1997 my friends and I rented this movie from the local Video King. We brought it back to my house to enjoy and get a few laughs out of (we got more than a few, by the way). It was late when it started, probably around midnight or so. By the time it was over we weren't laughing and if I recall correctly we all had the look as if we just saw old people having sex for the first time. The mouth dangling, and the eyes bulged. After sobering up from the film I have to take my buddies, Clint and Jared home. Where I lived at the time backed up to a very deep unmowed field which was then followed by woods. The fog had settled in and sat comfortably and eerily on top of the long weeds by my home. That's seriously creepy to begin with, but to finish watching this film and then see that? Aw hell no! We ran to my car and pulled away like we had just seen a homeless bum asking to wash our windshield. It was seriously not cool, but in the end we now looked at ourselved as men, not boys. That movie made us grow up overnight and look life in it's eyes. It's cold, lifeless eyes.



If you've seen it Kudos to you. You are an awesome reader, and an even awesomer movie fan. If you haven't, do it, and do it now! Be like Dana, my hair stylist, and go out and hunt it down. It exists on DVD so there are no excuses like: "my VCR totally blows, it eats tapes." Go see it, enjoy it, be scarred like the rest of us, and then come back here and tell me "Oh my god! You were so right about that ending! Crazy shit! How can I ever repay you?" This is how you can repay me: Tell others of this movie and spread the word of it's campy goodness. You and your friends will be better people for it. And you will receive true enlightenment. Well that's not really true, but you're friends will appreciate you more.



Enjoy the flick!