SLEEPAWAY CAMP II: UNHAPPY CAMPERS (1987) & SLEEPAWAY CAMP III: TEENAGE WASTELAND (1988)

 SLEEPAWAY CAMP II: UNHAPPY CAMPERS (1987) 

2-Disc Collector's Edition DVD/BD

SLEEPAWAY CAMP III: TEENAGE WASTELAND (1988)

2-Disc Collector's Edition DVD/BD

Label: Scream Factory
Region Code: A
Rating: R
Audio: English 2.0 DTS-HD MA with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.78:1) 
Director: Michael A. Simpson
Cast: Valerie Hartman, Tony Higgins, Brian Patrick Clarke, Pamela Springsteen, Renée Estevez I Tracy Griffith, Pamela Springsteen, Sandra Dorsey, Haynes Brooke, Mark Oliver, Michael J. Pollard

SLEEPAWAY CAMP II: UNHAPPY CAMPERS (1987) 

Synopsis: Welcome to Camp Rolling Hills! Meet your camp counselor, Angela Baker! She's the kind of counselor who enjoys camp songs, nature walks, board games and… murder. Five years after the horrific slaughter at Camp Arawak, Angela (Pamela Springsteen, Fast Times at Ridgemont High) has created a new position for herself as a counselor at Camp Rolling Hills. Angela is about to teach "bad campers" a brutal lesson in survival when they are sliced, stabbed, drilled… and much worse. Renée Estevez (Heathers, Intruder) and Walter Gotell (The Spy Who Loved Me) co-star in this outrageous sequel to the original cult classic.

Beware campers, transgendered killer Angela is back with a vengeance in the sequel which strikes a much different tone from the original, going for more campy (pun intended) humor with more than an eyeful of female nudity and absurd murders. This time out Angela is played by Angela Springsteen (sister of Bruce) and she brings a brattier quality to the character, the tone is completely different, but I like what she beings to the role, a sort of spunky moral avenger with a twisted sense of right and wrong that drives her insatiable appetite for murder. 

It is explained that through whatever means Angela has served her time following the massacre at Camp Arawak at an institution for the criminally insane, and has in fact been granted a sex change operation during her incarceration. A lot of this is told through a spooky campfire tale at the start of the film. What the counselors and kids at Camp Rolling Hills don't realize is that Angela is now a counselor at Camp Rolling Hills and it won't be long before she resumes her killing spree, killing immoral teenagers one at a time. 

The sequel sets itself apart from the original with copious amount of camp humor and a lot of nudity, there's a lot of titties on display throughout, particularly from the character of Ally (played by hottie Valerie Hartman) who just cannot seem to keep her shirt on for more than fifteen minutes in this movie, she's a bitchy teenage fornicator with a nice pair of tits, obviously things will not end well for her. 

The story is almost non-existent, we basically have a group of people who offend Angela through their immoral  action sand then we have Angela stalking and killing them in a series of murderous vignettes, that's about the extent of the storytelling. The set-ups are fun but the kills mostly happen off screen and are not gory, but at least they're fun. There's a lot of bashing people in the head with tree limbs, a bloody drilling, acid to the face, roasted over a fire, a decapitation, multiple stabbings, and homages to both Freddy Kruger and Jason Vorhees -- complete with a razor-clawed glove and a chainsaw,. The most memorable death being when Angela forces Ally into an outhouse and down into the shit-hole, which for some reason is infested with blood sucking leeches. Some great set-ups but the movie is hurt by the lack of gore, choosing instead to focus on the humor and corny one-liners from Angela, who went from near mute in the first film to slinging Kruger-esque verbal puns. 

Something I always wished the sequels would have exploited more was the psychological underpinnings of Angela's transgendered murder-spree, which is touched upon briefly but largely ignored. There's plenty of deep psychological material here to explore if the screenwriters had chosen to do so but instead it largely bypasses the deeper stuff in favor of the camp comedy and surface level slasher tendencies. There's a pretty great nightmare sequence about halfway through the film, ia dark moody moment that's at odds with the rest of the movie, watching the special features we learn it was created as a convenient way to extend the run time of the film, I would have enjoyed more of that type of tension, but it's just not that sort of slasher. 

As each of the campers and counselors go missing Angela covers their disappearance by explaining she sent them home for bad behavior, which becomes harder to swallow as over a dozen people go missing until the camp is about empty, save for goody-goody Molly, played by Renée Estevez, who I will always identify as Betty Finn from Heathers (1989) .A very silly slasher but I do love the fun tone and playfulness of this camper-slasher, despite the lack of gruesome gore, it's very entertaining. I enjoyed the mid-eighties rock soundtrack which is stuffed with choice cheese from The Dead Milkmen, Anvil and Obsession among others, it's difficult not love an 80's camp slasher loaded with sweet teen boobies and a retro-metal soundtrack.

Scream Factory have given us a bunch of cool extras to pour through beginning with an Audio Commentary With Director Michael A. Simpson And Writer Fritz Gordon. There's a new Red Shirt produced making-of featurette with new interviews from Director Michael A. Simpson, Cinematographer Bill Mills, Editor John David Allen. Unfortunately we don't have any input from star Pamela Springsteen or hottie Valerie Hartman, but sometimes actors move on and jut don't wanna look back, what we do get are some insightful interviews from the cast and crew that fans of the movie will enjoy immensely. 

There's a fun set-visit titled Abandoned – The Filming Locations Of SLEEPAWAY CAMP II and III – A Tour Of The Shooting Locales from the AdamtheWoo.com crew who visit the vastly overgrown filming locations, this was a fun one, its crazy how near unrecognizable and overgrown the former YMCA youth camp looks these days in the wilds of Georgia.

Additionally we have some behind-the-scene video with commentary by director Michael A. Simpson, a home video promotional trailer straight from a VHS source, and a gallery of 43 behind-the-scene and promotional imagery, and a short film which answers just what happened to the character of Molly, which is left open at the end of the film, but is answered here based on the original script.

Special Features: 
- Audio Commentary With Director Michael A. Simpson And Writer Fritz Gordon
- A Tale Of Two Sequels – Part One Featuring New Interviews With Director Michael A. Simpson, Cinematographer Bill Mills, Editor John David Allen And More 28 Mins) 
- Abandoned – The Filming Locations Of SLEEPAWAY CAMP II & III – A Tour Of The Shooting Locales (15 Mins) 
- Behind-The-Scenes Footage With Commentary By Michael A. Simpson (13 Mins) 
- Home Video Promotional Trailer (2 Mins) 
- Short Film: Whatever Happened to Molly? (2 Mins) 
- Still Gallery (49 Images) 

SLEEPAWAY CAMP III: TEENAGE WASTELAND (1988) 

Synopsis: Welcome to Camp New Horizons, where an autumn retreat brings together a group of obnoxious rich kids and surly city thugs for an "experiment in sharing." Under new inept management, this is the ideal setting for notorious psychopath Angela Baker (Pamela Springsteen, Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers) to join the camp and do what she does best – eliminating "immoral" teenagers with everything from a knife to a lawnmower. Michael J. Pollard (House of 1000 Corpses, Bonnie & Clyde), Tracy Griffith (Fear City, The First Power) and Jill Terashita (Night of the Demons) co-star in this third installment of the cult series.

The third film in the series continues the campy humor-infused tone of the first sequel beginning with a strange opening, a young woman wakes up in the morning,  bare-breasted naturally, the words "milk" and "shake" are tattooed on her tiny titties, Walking down the street to where she is to catch the bus to camp she is run over by a garbage truck driven by  Angela (Pamela Springsteen) who then proceeds to steal her name and take her place at Camp New Horizons, which is the same location where she massacred campers and counselors just the year before, only this time she one of the campers, not a counselor. 

Camp New Horizon is run by the pervy Herman (Michael J. Pollard) and his obnoxious wife Lily (Sandra Dorsey) who have organized a little "social experiment in sharing" by mixing together underprivileged inner-city kids with more affluent kids, which sounds misguided and a recipe for certain disaster, now add murderous moral-crusader Angela into the mix and you have a corny camper-slasher loaded with carnage, titties and a surprising amount of racism, most of which I had forgotten about since my last viewing.

Officer Barney Whitmore (Cliff Brand) is the third counselor at the camp, and he just happens to be the father of one of Angela's victims from the year before. again, which puts Angela on edge. Again, the story is threadbare only serves to provide a backdrop to the murderous vignettes. Compared the the first sequel the carnage is amped up with more creative and gruesome deaths, which was a plus for me. Again, we have a few too many blows to the skull with tree limbs but Angela spices things up with a lawnmower, drops someone on their head from atop a flagpole and blows someones face off with a firecracker, it's good stuff and we have more blood or better orchestrated slasher scenes which the previous sequel was largely lacking. The Sleepaway Camp sequels are fun body count films, I enjoy the humor, but they do lose pints for a lack of suspense and tension, we know who the murderer is from the very beginning and they lack the impact of the originals shocker-ending, but as a goofy series of camp-slasher films they are hugely entertaining.

Scream factory again come through with some excellent supplemental material to enjoy after your viewing, again we have Audio Commentary With Director Michael A. Simpson And Writer Fritz Gordon, and the second part of the A Tale Of Two Sequels with new Interviews With Director Michael A. Simpson, Cinematographer Bill Mills, Actors Mark Oliver And Kim Wall, another wealth of information about the making of the film, again we have no input from star Pamela Springfield, but what we have is damn good stuff with some fun remembrances of the offbeat actor Michael J. Pollard and the making of the film.

There's another Behind-The-Scenes Footage With Commentary By Michael A. Simpson, Home Video Promotional Trailer, the Tony Lives Short Film,  and a Still Gallery. The best extra for my money is the longer Workprint Cut of the film, which has been sourced from a VHS, the longer cut is authentic to the fullframe VHS source, it look pretty scuzzy but you can now watch it with the gorier bits trimmed by request of the MPAA, and there's some good bloody bits that were cut from this one. A fantastic extra, this is the sort of extra you wish they could dig up for the Friday the 13th films. If you choose not to sit through the entire work print you can watch the extended gore sequences which have been collected in the Deleted Scenes Featuring Additional Gore Footage There's also a slipcover for the release with new artwork by Nathan Thomas Milner who also did the new artwork for Scream Factory's Sleepaway Camp and Sleepaway Camp II releases on Blu-ray. It'd be great if Scream could offer the trio of titles as a box set with a heavy-duty slipcase, sort of like the Nightbreed Director's Cut Limited Edition Blu-ray, offering it as a box set or as a separate slipcase you could purchase, which will never happen, but wouldn't that look great on your shelf? 

Special Features- Audio Commentary With Director Michael A. Simpson And Writer Fritz Gordon
- A Tale Of Two Sequels - Part Two Featuring New Interviews With Director Michael A. Simpson, Cinematographer Bill Mills, Actors Mark Oliver And Kim Wall And More (26 Mins) 
- Behind-The-Scenes Footage With Commentary By Michael A. Simpson (8 Mins) 
- Workprint Of The Longer Cut (From VHS) (85 Mins) 
- Deleted Scenes Featuring Additional Gore Footage (Taken From The Workprint) (19 Mins) 
- Home Video Promotional Trailer (3 Mins)
- Tony Lives Short Film (1 Min) 
- Still Gallery (49 Images) 

The Sleepaway Camp sequels stray from the tone and aesthetic of the original movie, eschewing the transgendered shock ending and the fallout thereof for a more straight-up comedy infused camp slasher that's more along the lines of Student Bodies (1981) or a Troma movie than anything resembling Friday the 13th. But they are fun and the filmmakers have their tongues planted in-cheek and Pamela Springsteen's performance as the crazed moral-avenger is fun stuff through and through, all the sleepaway Camp movies come recomended. 4/5 

Blu-ray Review: INTRUDER (1988)

INTRUDER - DIRECTOR'S CUT (1988)

 Blu-ray/DVD Combo

LABEL: Synapse Films
REGION: Region FREE
DURATION: 88 minutes
VIDEO: 16:9 Widescreen (1.78:1)
AUDIO: DTS-HD MA English 2.0 Mono, Dolby Digital English 2.0 Mono
DIRECTOR: Scott Spiegel
CAST: Sam Raimi, Ted Raimi, Bruce Campbell, Elizabeth Cox, Danny Hicks, Renée Estevez
TAGLINE: Tonight, This Supermarket is Having a Sale... ALL HEADS HALF-OFF!

SYNOPSIS: "It’s 10 pm and the employees of Michigan’s Walnut Lake Supermarket are in for a really bad night. The place is shutting its doors for good, and the night crew has a long shift ahead of them… longer than they think! The lovely check-out girl has a deranged ex-boyfriend, the store’s phone lines are cut, and the employees start dying in the most stomach-churning ways imaginable (courtesy of Academy Award®-winning KNB EFX Group). A deranged killer is on the loose in the grocery store! Can anyone stop this murderous intruder?"

Scott Spiegel's probably best know as the co-writer of Sam Raimi's EVIL DEAD 2 (1987) and the producer of the HOSTEL film series but some of you fiends out there may recall him as the director of the late 80's splatter classic INTRUDER (1988), a film that's probably best remembered for it's extreme gore courtesy of the pre-KNB EFX team of Howard Berger, Robert Kurtzman and Greg Nicotero who were willing to do the effects on the film for a song to help launch their new effects group and what a calling card it was, the gore effects are outstanding even two decades later and under the scrutiny of 1080p high-definition, they're ingenious, blood soaked and fucking awesome.

It's been a few years since I last watched the film and what struck me aside from the effects and how great the transfer is were the crazy amount of POV camerawork from director Spiegel, these are some of the nuttiest POV shots ever committed to film with odd views from a rotary phone, a milk crate, a wine bottle and a shopping cart, not once but twice. The inventive visual gags not just look great but create a quirky sense of atmosphere that's hard to peg down. The script is pretty witty and the film is nearly a comedy in some respects, perhaps even a send-up of the genre which by the late 80's had really run it's due course.

Looking at the characters I wouldn't say we get a lot of development but I've never been one to require much of it when I throw on a slasher either. What we do get is quite serviceable with appearances from EVIL DEAD alumni Sam Raimi, Ted Raimi and Danny Hicks with a cameo from Bruce Campbell. Without spoiling the killer's identity I'll just say that I really enjoyed how unwound and bat-shit crazy the culprit becomes, really unhinged stuff. At one point he's puppeteering a decapitated head and then beating down a victim with it in the next scene, that's just entertainment pure and simple. The film is definitely offbeat which I think might throw a few folks off but the humor is dark and demented just the way I crave it and really delivers the goods, so it worked for me.

I have to once again give it up to the KNB EFX Group who really shower the film with scene after scene of bloody death. There's just so much to choose from here, we get a head crushed in a cardboard compactor, machetes flying everywhere, a nice eye-skewering, a meat hook through the neck and what must surely be the centerpiece of the film; a head grotesquely sawn in half with a band saw sending brains, teeth and meat everywhere, it's a showstopper and sickening brutal.

Great slashers were slicing through the cinemas in the early to mid 80's but to find a really brutal, well done slasher in 1988 seems a rare feat indeed. Scott Spiegel deserves some major love for this late entry in the game particularly when you consider what was to come to the cinema post-SCREAM just a few years later. Unfortunately Spiegel didn't go onto direct a ton of films but I'm pretty amped to see him back in the director's chair with HOSTEL III after taking this in.

BLU-RAY: Synapse's brand-new 2K HD transfer of INTRUDER is presented in 16:9 widescreen (1.78:1) - this is the uncut director's version of the film with all the tasty extreme gore presented in all it's splatteriffic glory - the KNB FX shots are nasty effective, gore hounds are gonna be delighted. The transfer looks pretty sharp, colors are vibrant and the film's fine grain is nicely intact, no unnecessary DNR scrubbing here folks, par for Synapse the transfer is pretty phenomenal considering that this shoestring budget splatter classic was filmed using 35mm short ends. Audiowise we get a DTS-HD MA English 2.0 mono track on the Blu-ray that sounds very nice, dialogue, score and effects sound very good, the mono soundtrack doesn't offer much depth of separation but seems accurate and decently robust.

Special features are plentiful beginning with a feature length commentary from director Scott Spiegel and producer Lawrence Bender, it's a fun commentary with tons of great behind-the-scenes anecdotes from financing the film on through to the MPAA butchering of the films upon it's initial VHS release. There's also a great half hour featurette featuring interviews with most of the principal cast, director, producer and executive producer Charles Band with clips from the 8mm short film NIGHT CREW and actress Elizabeth Cox is kind enough to demonstrate her various screams as heard in the film providing commentary about the subtle variations, good stuff. On top of that we get over 10 minutes of extended murder scenes from the workprint, nearly seven minutes of outtakes from the NIGHT CREW short, a picture gallery, two trailers and a featurette wherein the director of A BETTER PLACE tells of his experience renting the VHS only to find the gory bits as seen in Fangoria were missing. It's a jam-packed Blu-ray and there's a DVD edition of the film included with all the same special features which is a always nice value add when considering a purchase, don't think too hard though, just buy it. Clearly Synapse have done right by this film and an upgrade is easily recommended if you own the previous DVD edition because this 1080p presentation is gonna blow you away when compared to that murky mess.

SPECIAL FEATURES:
- All-New 2K Digital Restoration of the Original Uncensored Director's Cut
- Audio Commentary with Writer/Director Scott Spiegel and Producer Lawrence Bender
- Slashing of Intruder (3:26)
- Slashed Prices - The Making of Intruder (38:22)
- Never-Before-Seen Extended "Murder" Sequences from the Original Workprint (10:25)
- Outtakes from the Now-Lost Short Film, NIGHT CREW (6:47)
- Original Cast Audition Footage (11:04)
-Behind-the-Scenes Still Gallery (4:20)
-Original Theatrical Trailer (1:19)
- NIGHT CREW Trailer (1:19)

VERDICT: INTRUDER is an entertaining, visually imaginative splatter-flick filled with nutty gore that's in need of some serious attention, a classic deserving of some shelf space for any serious gore fan. Sure, it's a bit silly and quirky but above all else it's a super-gory slasher that's finally been given a gorgeous release courtesy of Synapse Films, a must own. 3.5 outta 5