Sleep Away Camp

Sleep Away Camp

Sleepaway Camp is a 1983 American slasher film written and directed by Robert Hiltzik, and starring Felissa Rose, Katherine Kamhi, Paul DeAngelo, Mike Kellin (in his last screen appearance), and Christopher Collet (in his first). It is the first film in the Sleepaway Camp film series, and focuses on a series of murders occurring in a youth summer camp. Filmed in upstate New York in the fall of 1982, Sleepaway Camp was released the following year by United Film Distributors. It earned approximately $11 million at the box office, but was met by largely unfavorable reviews from critics, many of whom deemed it exploitative and derivative of such films as Friday the 13th (1980). In the years since its release, Sleepaway Camp has gone on to develop a cult following, as well as garnering notoriety for its twist ending, which is contemporarily considered one of the most shocking in the horror genre and in film history at large. The film has also been subject to diverging criticism from modern reviewers regarding its themes of gender identity. It was followed by four sequels: Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers (1988), Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland (1989), Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor (2012), and Return to Sleepaway Camp (2008).

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