Editor's Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on October 29, 2008, and we're proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
Within the first 10 minutes of Return to Sleepaway Camp, a character is introduced who is so gratuitous and ridiculous, and such a transparent ruse, that you can’t help but think, is writer/director Robert Hiltzik kidding? Is he intending to celebrate the 25th anniversary of his cult slasher flick with a sendup of his own creation?
Actually, as revealed in the extras on Magnet/Magnolia’s DVD, Return was produced 20 years after the original, and has taken an extra half-decade to make it to general release. Watching the movie, it’s not hard to see why. It would be nice to say that Return to Sleepaway Camp at least succeeds in delivering a gory/campy good time, but instead it’s an 86-minute endurance test that quickly wears out its welcome by taking forever to get to the murder spree that is its raison d’etre, in the meantime spotlighting the most annoying cast of characters it would be your displeasure to meet.
“Kids can be so mean” is the film’s tagline and its overbearing (in both senses of the word) theme, and the one they’re the meanest to at Camp Manabe is Alan (Michael Gibney), an overweight teen who’s subject to wedgies, egg-peltings and assorted other humiliations from his fellow campers and staff alike. “Everyone keeps picking on me because I’m different,” he wails, but in fact, everyone keeps picking on him because he’s a big a-hole who regularly harasses, insults and disrespects everyone in sight. That includes the adults too, among them Manabe’s owner Frank (The Sopranos’ Vincent Pastore), whom Alan calls a “big pussy” (ho ho), and South Park’s late Isaac Hayes—what a sad elegy for him this is—who plays the chef (ha ha). Alan’s boorish behavior is responded to with more boorish behavior, and the whole ensemble is so obnoxious you’ll pray for them all to die, and quickly.
Instead, there are only two murders in the first hour, as someone who very obviously isn’t Alan dispatches a kitchen worker (in a scene evidently intended to reference the first Sleepaway) and a stoner (Adam Wylie, grown up from Picket Fences and looking remarkably like Crispin Glover). The stuff in between is too grating to be funny, and subject to strange ideas about continuity—one sequence starts out in daytime, transitions to night and then goes back to day again. Eventually, the killings begin in earnest, but are neither creatively conceived nor imaginatively directed enough to have the kick of the best bloodbaths of the ’80s, with the “suspense” drawn out to the point of irritation. Even when the “surprise” ending—which any Sleepaway fan with half a brain will see coming from the first reel—is sprung, it’s handled in such a hamfisted manner that it can’t be enjoyed as horror, humor or homage.
The DVD’s 1.78:1 transfer is sharp and colorful enough, albeit afflicted by occasional speckling, and the Dolby Digital 5.1 audio clearly presents a sound mix that sometimes unwisely emphasizes the overwrought score. A behind-the-scenes featurette by Sleepawaycampmovies.com webmaster/consulting producer Jeff Hayes runs about a half hour and offers a moderately interesting peek at a number of scenes being shot, a tribute to Isaac Hayes (the best part of this segment) and a good deal of material that can’t be discussed without giving something away.
Also included is a photo gallery that consists almost entirely of posed snapshots instead of movie scenes, the main-title rap song played over an accentuated version of the DVD cover art and a 25-minute collection of brief actor interviews, most of which consist of the young thespians declaring how much they love their characters and working with Hiltzik (who himself is conspicuous by his absence of face time in the extras). A couple of idiosyncratic moments do crop up here and there, like returning original Sleepaway co-star Jonathan Tiersten admitting that he took the sequel gig as an opportunity to network and promote his new band, and footage of Hiltzik demonstrating to non-smoker Wylie how to light up a joint. Elsewhere in this section, it is explained that a Sleepaway cast-and-creator panel at a Fango convention helped pave the way for Return, and I don’t think it’s a conflict of interest to say that that reunion was a lot more fun than this one.
