Review #299: Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland (1989)
October 2024 Horror Origins Review #16- Sleepaway Camp 3: Teenage Wasteland (1989)
I know I already made a joke about Sleepaway Camp 2 being made without knowing what made Sleepaway Camp 1 good; the problem here is that Sleepaway Camp 3 makes Sleepaway Camp 2 look like Sleepaway Camp 1 by comparison. SC2 was horrible but at least there was ostensibly "a camp" and "a plot"- this time around, we don't even have those.
Sleepaway Camp 3 begins with an inner-city girl named Maria getting dressed to go to summer camp, but as she walks down the street to wait for the bus, a garbage truck runs her over. Out steps Angela (with her hair made up to look like Maria's and somehow even wearing the exact same outfit) who hides the body and then takes her place. We are then introduced to the "summer camp"- a government-sponsored program has been set up for twelve kids (did I say kids? I meant grown adults) from across the country to get together at the location of the previous movie so they can... you know, I'm not really sure what the purpose was. So the movie can be made. Then the two people in charge of this "summer camp" take the "kids" out into the woods to go camping for a few days. All of the people are terrible and so Angela kills them all, I forgot to mention there's one more guy in charge who is the father of a character from the second movie but it doesn't really matter because he gets killed too and then you think Angela has been killed but not really because they still wanted to churn out more of these.
I'm going to get it right out there: this is literally one of the worst movies I've ever seen, and that's saying something. I have a lot of complaints, I'll try to itemize them.
1. The plot makes ZERO sense. Why would the government sponsor a program to fly kids from across the country to go to a summer camp? Are there not twelve kids in literally any state or even city that could have satisfied whatever the camp's goal was?
2. It's not a summer camp- yes there's a couple scenes that take place in the same location as the previous movie (the two films were either filmed simultaneously or at least back-to-back) but immediately upon the arrival of the campers, the plan is to go out into the woods and go camping. "Summer camp" and "camping" are two different things that can overlap, but in this case, nothing any of the characters do could be considered "summer camp".
3. These "kids" are not kids. In Sleepaway Camp 2 the actors were all in their mid 20s but the characters at least were stated to be ~16 (which made it real weird considering how much nudity there was) but in Sleepaway Camp 3, one of the characters references an event from his senior year of high school, so since it's (supposed to be) summer, that means he's already graduated. (And again, we see several boobs in this film and one of the counselors is actively trying to screw one of the campers, so I certainly hope the rest of the characters are supposed to be of legal age.) So, adding in those previous points, why would the government sponsor a program where legal adults are flown across the country to go camping?
4. NOBODY wants to be here. None of the "kids" want to be camping, nor do any of them know how to camp. None of the counselors want to be camping, nor do any of them know how to camp. The plan literally was "get a bunch of people together, tell them to catch fish for dinner, and sit around reading magazines or try to have sex". That's what "summer camp" is in this film. (I remember in yesterday's review complaining that Sleepaway Camp 2 didn't feel like a summer camp. Boy am I eating those words.)
5. This movie has apparently decided that Angela has some sort of obsession or need to "be at camp". The first movie logically took place at summer camp because it was the first time she was away from the protective aunt that manipulated her into being who she was; the murders happening at camp was more or less random chance, or at least a byproduct of the events in her life that had led her to that point. In this movie, she murders someone just for the chance to weasel her way into enrolling in summer camp, and once she's there, there's a scene where she poignantly wanders the mess hall reminiscing about the last time she was at camp (even though SC2 made it clear she was new there, and as such would have had very few memories and experiences). I get that they wanted an excuse to bring Angela to another camp because the series is called "Sleepaway Camp" but this is the laziest, dumbest way to do it.
6. The kills in this movie, suck. THREE PEOPLE are killed by having Angela hit them with a stick a bunch of times until they die (and a fourth one is hit with a stick a bunch of times, and then hit with a tent stake until he dies). Clearly the creative juices simply weren't flowing in the writer's room, but I need to stress this because this movie also has, in my opinion, the lamest and most poorly-thought-out kill I have ever seen in any movie, ever. I'll describe it at the end.
Simply put, the second movie was a cheap, lazy imitation, and the third is a cheap, lazy imitation of a cheap, lazy imitation. Do not watch this movie.
Overall Rating: 1/10 Playboy Belt Buckles
Nostalgic Rating: 3/10 Saturday the 14ths
The Lamest Kill Ever: One scene has Angela leading one of the counselors around the camp with a blindfold on, as part of a trust exercise. Angela leads her to the edge of a trash pile, pushes her in, covers her in dirt, and then runs a lawnmower over her head. That's the kill.
"But Gabe," I hear you saying. "Running a lawnmower over someone's head is pretty clever, I don't think I've seen that before. What's lame about that?"
The reason it's lame, is because IT COULD NOT WORK. The woman who gets pushed into this trash pile could have just taken her blindfold off (her hands were free the whole time), stood up (her legs were free the whole time), and gotten out of the trash pile. Instead, she just laid there, squirming and screaming, while Angela threw dirt on her. But that's not the worst part- covering this trash pile with dirt would have taken HOURS. LITERAL HOURS. So this woman had to lie in one place, voluntarily, for HOURS until she was covered. It simply could not have happened without her full cooperation and patience, but this series really doesn't seem to think its kills through.
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