Fifteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #7 Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers (1988)

 I watched the original Sleepaway Camp all the way back in 2008, and even though the snippet I wrote about it is rather flippant, I seem a bit nostalgic for it.  So when I saw Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers pop up on my Prime watchlist, well, why wouldn't I?  I needed a palate cleanser after that awful Creepshow III.  I'm not sure SCII:UC is exactly what I was looking for, but it was certainly better than that.

The original SC was about Camp Arawak and how everyone got murdered by camper named Angela.  This sequel opens with campers at a different camp, sitting around the campfire telling ghost stories.  Someone tells the "true" story of what happened at Camp Arawak but can't remember the killer's name; they say that they heard that she got cured and released from the mental hospital she'd been put in.  At this point, a female counselor marches up to the campfire and demands that the girl camper come back to the bunk with her.  On the way back, the counselor whacks the camper over the head with a log and cuts out her tongue for telling nasty stories.  This counselor's name?  Angela.  As in, the Angela.  With that out of the way, Angela goes on quite the killing spree, ending up with at least nineteen confirmed kills by movie's end.

This flick wasn't terrible, but it wasn't particularly good either.  The kills were inventive but there was absolutely no suspense or tension since we see, plain as day, who the killer is within the first three minutes of movie.  I suppose if you hadn't seen the first Sleepaway Camp, it might have been a little surprising to find out who Counselor Angela is.  But come on - who is seeing this second one who didn't see the first one?  

It's a very 80s movie, with the hair and the high-waisted shorts and the bare boobs and the completely shitty hair band soundtrack and everyone being WAY too old to be at summer camp.  One thing I did find interesting: in the SCII:UC universe, the Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th movies exist, because two campers dress up as Freddy and Jason to try to scare Angela.  For whatever that's worth.  Oh!  And the one good girl camper who Angela likes, Molly, is played by Renee Estevez who is (1) Emilio Estevez's sister and (2) also plays Betty Finn in one of my all-time favorite movies, Heathers.