Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland (1989)
Directed by: Michael A. Simpson
When you infant daughter wakes you up at 3am and refuses to go back to sleep, you turn on Amazon Prime and look for a movie. I was kind of excited when I saw that Sleepaway Camp III was on there. I attempted to watch this back in college but the people I was with complained because it was “old”. Good thing my baby can’t talk or complain so she had no choice.
The plot of this movie is basically the exact same as the second one. Angela comes back to camp and starts killing teens. It is cliche, but that is kind of the charm of these movies. Basically there is a group of people that bought the old camp and they reopened it with a mixture of spoiled rich kids and underprivileged teens from around the country. Apparently it is supposed to be some kind of experiment, what they’re trying to learn, I have no idea.
There are quite a few kills in this movie and they’re all fairly creative for the most part even if they are somewhat eye rolling at times. We get death by being beaten with a big stick, a girl gets ran up a flagpole, a guy gets tied to a tree then his arms ripped off by a rope attached to a Jeep, and someone gets lit on fire in a tent. Oh and who can forget how Angela gets to the camp? Yeah she hits a girl with a garbage truck in New York City, then throws her in the truck and hitches a ride to camp, yeah it is as dumb as it sounds, but man I love it. There is a fair amount of gore in this, which is what you watch these for honestly.
Nobody is a good actor in this film, but did you expect Tom Hanks level of work? Angela is played again by Pamela Springsteen, Bruce Springsteen’s sister. She is laughably bad but man she’s charming in the role with her odd one liners and goofy smile. We get a wide variety of cliche characters, the hot chick with rockin tits, the horndog old dude counselor, the tough mexican guy, the rap loving black dude from Detroit, and the snobby cheerleader to name a few. Angela basically kills each off for different things, she’s an over the top fighter for purity. If you drink, have sex, or do drugs…she’s gonna kill you haha. There is also a policeman as a counselor that has dealt with Angela in the past and she actually killed his son before. How he doesn’t recognize her right off the bat is a mystery to me, but man I guess I shouldn’t question stuff with this series.
The cinematography is fairly decent in this for how low the budget is. There is a funny cutaway where the pervy counselor is unzipping his pants in front of the hot chick with rockin tits and it cuts away to Angela unzipping their tent. That one made me laugh out loud. The only thing I’m disappointed in is that there isn’t much POV stalker cam that is so common in other movies in this genre. I’m assuming this is because we know right from the first five minutes that Angela is the killer so there is no real reason to hide her identity or have us guessing.
I really think this series is underrated. Yeah its shlocky and campy but that really is the point after the first entry. The crazy ending of the first film gets it a fair amount of recognition from the horror community, but the sequels not so much. Only the diehard slasher movie fans hold this series in high regard. You just have to love Pamela Springsteen as Angela, she’s awkward, goofy and somehow kinda cute all at the same time. The death scenes are always great and the dialogue is that perfect level of goofy. I think this is better than the second one actually, but not as memorable as the first movie. I would give this a solid B. I can’t go much higher because it is a bad movie, it is bad but great bad.
