Sleepaway Camp 2: Unhappy Campers

Everybody’s favorite transvestite serial killer is back, with her tongue firmly placed in her cheek...and a little something missing from between her legs. 

 

Oh, wait. Wrong transvestite serial killer.

That's better!

Since the beginning of the slasher craze, the message being conveyed to teenagers wasn't exactly what you'd consider subtle. Getting involved with drugs, alcohol and premarital sex wasn’t just a sin in the slasher world, it was a first class ticket straight to hell by means of brutal slaughter. And yet, even so, this type of behavior has always managed to somehow come across as hip and funny instead of shunned. But Unhappy Campers thankfully went with a much more obvious approach, finally serving teen stupidity it's just desserts.

This time around, psychopath Angela Baker (now being played by Pamela Springsteen) daringly returns to camp once again with a completely different persona; that of an overly chirpy and surprisingly wholesome camp counselor with nothing but good intentions for her campers...at first.

As all the kiddies run amok with their sex/drug fueled mischief, Angela tries to instill values in their feeble little minds and fails miserably, thus being left with no other choice but to "weed out the bad."

After disposing each victim, she smoothly covers up her tracks by disguising the disappearances as nothing more than kids who were sent home for unacceptable behavior. But as her cheerfulness begins to wear off and the disappearances pile up to the point of the cabins being almost completely empty, good girl Molly (Renée Estevez) can't help but be a little suspicious.

Of course Molly fits the bill of the virginal sweetheart heroine that no horror movie can be without. But in a movie filled with really annoying, dumb-as-rocks, mullet-wearing teens named after members of the Brat Prack, I think we can all agree that the psychopathic killer is the true heroine in this particular case.

I mean, these kids were really asking for it, especially when they're flashing their wobbly bits all over the place for no apparent reason whatsoever, or applying "shoot first, ask questions later" to the act of unprotected sex. Spouting silly one-liners before offing her victims in humorously cruel ways, Angela makes it clear that she's just trying to make the world a better place. And how can you blame her when the world is filled with douchers like that?

Being a big fan of the original Sleepaway Camp, I have to be honest and admit that Unhappy Campers is a pretty awful, unnecessary sequel. It has the appearance of a shoe-string budget and comes chock-full of cheesy dialogue and wooden acting that result in big unintentional laughs. But for that, I'm actually grateful.
 

Seeing as how most sequels tend to be nothing more than boring retreads, it was nice to see something a bit different, and very refreshing to see a parody that makes fun of the teens in horror movies, rather than the horror movies themselves. Of course most of the time you'll be laughing at it, rather than with it, but as long as you're laughing, who really cares, right?

Sleepaway Camp 2: Unhappy Campers may be a crappy movie, but as a die hard slasher fan, I thought it was totally entertaining crap from start to finish. And you'll probably like it too, as long as you're willing to lower your standards for about an hour and a half.

Oh, who am I kidding? Slasher fans don't have standards. Just watch the damn movie already.

 RATING: