‘It seems every year I’m at camp someone loses their head...’
The Sleepaway Camp franchise is a curious one. The first one is a cult classic beloved of the horror community. The second one, released towards the end of the slasher boom, goes meta and turns the subgenre on its head (or at least attempts to). This second sequel, however, doesn’t really know what it wants to do. As is often the case in these types of franchises, they tend to slip into comedy (both intentional and unintentional) as the sequels keep piling up and Sleepaway Camp III is no exception…
Subtitled Teenage Wasteland and filmed back to back with the film that preceded it, Sleepaway Camp III offers more of the same but without anything new to keep things interesting. Once again, Angela (a returning Pamela Springsteen) is killing off her fellow camp counsellors. Once again, the deaths come thick and fast, the practical effects are decidedly janky, and the characters are even less memorable and likeable than they were in the previous films. Despite being filmed immediately after the first sequel, there is a noticeable dip in quality between the two films, as if the filmmakers had lost faith in the whole endeavour by the time it came to knock this piece of shit up. Springsteen (sister of Bruce) does a decent job here; having grown into the role somewhat, she’s certainly committed at least, but nobody else matches that level of commitment – neither in front the camera nor behind it.
The sad truth here is that if the film didn’t have the words ‘Sleepaway Camp‘ in the title, this film would either never have been made or would have been made and viewed by about eight people. Perhaps the most damning criticism I can level at Sleepaway Camp III is that even at a skinny 81 minutes, it still drags. The first two films in the franchise are a lot of things but they’re never boring. I can’t say the same here.
