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Sleepaway Camp

Sleepaway Camp is a 1983 film from the USA, directed by Robert Hiltzik, running 81 minutes. reelscum files it under slasher.

Poster for Sleepaway Camp
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Year
1983 · 1980s films
Country
USA
Runtime
81 min
Director
Robert Hiltzik
Updated
29 Oct 2026
Obscurity
known (25/100)
Also known as
Nightmare Vacation

Defined in the glossary: Slasher

Ninety minutes of nothing, then an ending nobody who has seen it forgets.

For eighty minutes it is a cheap, slightly off summer-camp slasher with wooden acting and a strange atmosphere you cannot place. Then it delivers a final shot that nobody who has seen it forgets, and recontextualises everything.

Whether that ending is bold, exploitative or both has been argued for forty years, and the argument is more interesting than most of the film preceding it. The strangeness throughout turns out to be the point.

Go in knowing nothing. The last ten seconds are the whole reason it is remembered.

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