TRACK #192

You’re Just What I’ve Been Looking For (Angela’s Theme) by Frank Vinci

Let’s take a little canoe ride from Camp Blackfoot across the lake to Camp Arawak for a 2 days overnighter with Angela Baker at Sleepaway Camp.

Mostly known for having the creepiest fuckin’ side-swipe ending of any generic Friday the 13th knockoff, Sleepaway Camp spawned several sequels and holds it own as a franchise that was able to climb out of Jason’s long shadow.

I’d love to post a gif, but I’d hate to spoil this for anyone that’s never seen it.

Ah, fuck it. This shit is 35 years old. If you haven’t seen this by now, I don’t know what to tell you, it’s just gonna get spoiled. Cause we can’t talk about Sleepaway Camp without talking about this ending. It’s the only thing that really differentiates Sleepaway Camp from any number of faceless Friday clones.Horrifying.

Seriously. This shit still gets under my skin all these years later.

I had the fortune of seeing Sleepaway Camp long ago enough so that is wasn’t spoiled for me, and at an age where it could do maximum damage. And it did.

With the benefit of hindsight and the ever shifting opinions of a thankfully progressive culture , Sleepaway Camp  tends to be filed these days as a crass artifact of Transphobia, much the same way De Palma’s Dressed to Kill is now criticized.

And the argument is certainly tenable. If the image of a someone presenting as a female but also having a penis was not frightening to you before, Sleepaway Camp certainly goes to some lengths making sure it forever will be. But, while I think that certainly supports an argument against the film, I think you can also cite some those same lengths as reasons why it isn’t perhaps wholly Transoygnist.

Like any good horror tale, Sleepaway Camp takes a social phobia (right or wrong) and uses it as a basis to create horror for its audience. I’m not sure the film is saying anything overt about that fear though. Is it exploitive? Definitely. But I don’t think it’s an out an out condemnation. But maybe that doesn’t matter. It’s certainly not sympathetic, but films from the early 80’s rarely were toward minority concerns. I don’t think that afford’s Sleepaway Camp a full-on pass, but maybe a modicum latitude in context. We can’t expect art of the past to reflect attitudes of the present, but we needn’t aggrandize harmful and outdated representations either.

Because you could (and many do) argue that simply using transgenderism as a source of horror is wildly insensitive. You could also argue that by making a transgender character a violent and horrifying freak because of their transgenderism, and then having the other characters react as such, is just flat-out irresponsible and transphobic. Thus you could easily condemn the entire film for perpetuating a negative cultural view of transgenderism as a whole and that would be totally valid.

I think part of Sleepaway Camp’s potential defense though, could be that Angela’s transgenderism does not come from within her, but from an external source. She is forced into it by her adoptive aunt. Being abused into identifying as any gender against your will is flat out wrong and itself horrifying. Almodovar’s similarly criticized The Skin I Live In also comes to mind here.

Considering this, one might argue that Sleepaway Camp is perhaps even pro-transgender rights; a cautionary tale of the dangers (figurative or literal – mental or physical) of forcing anyone to present as a gender which with they do not identify. Maybe the biggest takeaway from Sleepaway Camp, intentional or not, is to just let people be who they are instead of forcing them to be who we believe them to be. We are not them.

Additionally (for me anyway) the least horrifying aspect of this ending is the reveal of Angela’s gender. Sure, it’s part and parcel to the whole scene and its endurance, but there are several elements at work which give this scene its haunting quality. You could say they are thus making the transgender reveal horrifying, hence the argument against it. But I would say they are the factors, and not the reveal, which actually make this scene so horrifying. That might just be splitting hairs though.

Firstly, there’s the music. The piercing brass stabs are enough to set your teeth on edge by themselves.

Then there’s the build up. It’s abrupt and clumsy, but Aunt Martha’s characterization is so over the top and cartoonishly creepy, it is enough to give you the willies in context.

This is then followed by Angela’s guttural moaning. She says nothing. There’s no pleads of innocence, no explanations, just a heaving and animalistic breathing that send shivers down my spine still.

Then, the most effective part of this sequence, that wide shot. While this of course features the gender reveal, it is Angela’s frozen gaze which I’m most disturbed by here.

This shot was made possible by life casting actress Felissa Rose’s face in the making of that same horrifying look. Then, they turned that cast into  a mask which was worn by a male actor. For me, this is the most upsetting part of the whole reveal; Angela’s static expression, made doubly creepy (and doubly static) by this horrifying mask.

It’s just stays there, frozen. And then the film freeze frames on Felissa Rose’s actual face and rolls the credits.

Credits over which you will hear this Shindigger, a creepy synth pop number seemingly written specifically for the film.

So, whether or not this ending, or Sleepaway Camp as a whole, is something you find totally offensive and reprehensible, you can’t deny that it causes a deep emotional response, and that is something you don’t always get from this sort of lower-tier, copycat effort. And maybe that alone is worth the legacy.