IMDB lists this as a horror/comedy, but the poster makes it look scarier than it is and I chuckled more than laughed while watching it. Don’t let that description scare you off though, it’s not a bad movie. I actually wound up really liking it. The film starts off slow, but really kicks into high gear in the second half.
It’s a vampire movie made at a time when vampires had fallen out of public favour. Roddy McDowall’s character even says they’re less popular than “demented madmen running around in ski masks hacking up young virgins”, and this movie feels a lot like a love letter to the older vampire movies. McDowall’s character (and can I just say how fantastic he is in this movie?) is even named Peter Vincent, which I assume is an homage to actors Peter Cushing and Vincent Price.
I said in the intro post to this series that I wondered if older movies would hold up today. In this case, I would say yes, absolutely. Only the hair and clothing really date it, the special effects and make up hold up really well, there’s a wolf-to-man transformation scene that was clearly inspired by An American Werewolf in London (should I watch that one this month? I feel like I should) that looks better than a lot of today’s CGI.
Kind of a short review, I know, but I don’t have a lot of nitpicks for this movie, and I don’t want to spoil anything. I enjoyed it. I couldn’t find anywhere you could stream this one for free (in Canada at least) but most every online service seems to have it for rent. If you remember this hidden gem or are suddenly inspired to give it a watch, let me know what you think
Messy. While watching this movie, my first reaction was ‘disappointing’, but after thinking on it for some time, I think messy is a better description.
This article was difficult to start, my thoughts are kind of all over the place, but so is this movie. I think it lacked focus, it COULD have gone in a bunch of different directions, but didn’t. As a horror movie, it wasn’t very scary, there was no suspense, no shock, as a slasher movie, there was very little blood or gore and the kills were mostly unimaginative. There were times when I thought it was going to be a parody of ’80s horror movies, but it never quite seemed to lean fully in that direction either, and it wasn’t funny. I would have said it felt rushed or underfunded, if there hadn’t been a 5 year gap between the original film and this one and the budget weren’t almost double.
The absolute biggest problem, in my opinion, is on the audio side. I forget if it was in an interview, an article or director’s commentary, but I remember learning that the original Halloween movie by John Carpenter tested very poorly with audiences until he went back and added that now iconic musical score. Sleepaway Camp II proves just how important the soundscape is to the feel of a movie, because it doesn’t have one. There are a few rock songs peppered around the place, but the majority of the 80 minute runtime is devoid of atmosphere, except for one solitary chase scene towards the end that has a low key, almost too quiet background track that doesn’t add much to the suspense. Remember how I liked the first movie because it felt like a real living camp? That’s gone. This one has a good number of extras and background people (though not as many as the first) but you don’t hear them. In crowd scenes, you don’t have that hum of human activity that would naturally be present. You hear bugs though. All of the forest and nighttime scenes had normal, natural environmental noise, but anything with people didn’t.
Fixing all that would have helped with the feel of the movie, but that probably would have only elevated it to mediocre. To be at least a more memorable experience, all they needed to do was pick a lane and stick to it. Since they weren’t going for mystery (they show who the killer is within the first five minutes) they could have focused on Angela’s backstory, shown her experiences after the first film, why she was obsessed enough with camp to murder anyone she thought didn’t belong. They could have made one of the campers or other counsellors the lead and done a Columbo style story where the audiences know who the perp is, but the protagonist slowly pieces the clues together, or they could have really set themselves apart from the other movies of the time by doing a full send-up of the kings of this genre. When Angela is walking around the cabin trying to figure out the best thing to murder Demi with, I thought that’s where they were going, but as a comedy, the jokes just didn’t land.
I paid attention to the credits. There was a stunt coordinator, but no stunt performers. They took mostly inexperienced actors and had them do their own stunts and it shows. The action is boring, the single chase scene of the film is at low speed and you even have a fall that literally just cuts from the actress stepping off a rock to her lying on the ground.
This part may just be me nitpicking, but the ages of the “campers” skewed way too high. In the first movie a lot of the cast were believable as teen summer camp attendees. If you need adult actors because you’ve decided to crank the nudity dial up to eleven, then at least make them counsellors. Sorry, I’m not buying these 18-20 somethings as kids spending their holidays there because their parents made them.
Do I need to talk about the ending? There wasn’t one, the movie just… ends. Was that a cliffhanger? Are they forcing me to watch the third movie? No, I’m not going to and they can’t make me. If you want to, then be my guest, this movie, the first and the third are all available to stream for free with ads on Tubi, or without if you have an Amazon Prime sub.
I did this about 6 years ago, watching and reviewing a different movie each night in October. It was fun, but tiring. Writing an article every night was a lot tougher than I thought it would be and if you look back at my site, you can see I pretty much stopped posting after that.
I want to try again though. I’m on an anti-anxiety medication now and am hopeful it will make a difference.
The last time I did this, the theme was movies I had never seen before. This time, there will be some of that, but mostly my aim is to watch older movies (at least twenty years old, many much older) to see if they still hold up.
Get ready, the first Night of Horror is right around the corner…
For the final night of out 31 nights of horror, on Halloween I watched Halloween! Not not that Halloween, I already saw that one. No, not that one either, this is the new, new Halloween, which is a sqeuel to Halloween and should really be called Halloween 2… are you confused yet?
On the 30th night of my 31 nights of horror marathon, I picked a film with an appropriate name. Bonus, it’s a vampire movie, so I think I’ve covered pretty much all of the horror sub-genres.
On night 28, of 31 nights of horror, I watched the movie that scared me more than any other so far, and it wasn’t the monsters or the thousand and one jump scares that did it.
So far, during our 31 nights of horror, we’ve watched stories about ghosts, aliens, demons, psychos, killer fish, ancient gods and mutant monsters. On night 27 it’s werewolves!
Only a few nights left in our marathon. On night twenty six we have a fun movie, but only as scary as your average episode of Buffy or Angel.
I feel kind of mixed about this movie. It was fun, it was funny, but it didn’t blow me away, so I’m surprised by how well reviewed the film was. It was very well done, don’t get me wrong, and the acting was top notch, but with the story going back and forth between the five friends and the mystery group… it was hard to get invested, since my mind was constantly working at the puzzle of what was really going on.
That’s one of the key components for a good horror movie for me. Getting to really know and like the characters in jeopardy, so that you care about the bad things happening to them, and that just didn’t happen for me.
It really did feel like an episode of Angel, only without the main cast. I could totally see Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins organisation as some Wolfram and Hart subsidiary. The dialog will feel very familiar and comfortable to fans of Joss Whedons TV shows. I read that he and Drew Goddard wrote the script in only three days, and felt that way to me, like they had a list of things they wanted to highlight and pulled a loose screenplay together around them.
I didn’t hate it the way I did some others I’ve watched this month, but I wonder how much better it could have been with more time in the oven. There were more than a few things that just didn’t make sense when I would think about them afterwards.
But don’t take my word for it. You may love the movie. It has 91% from critics and 74% from audiences on rotten tomatoes.
Late to the party, as usual 