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Review – Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor

5354e230c0653f3c7d3f155f8b52afa9Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor… The unfinished entry in the franchise… The film of myth and legend… In 1992 Double Helix Films, the company that produced Sleepaway Camp’s first two sequels Unhappy Campers and Teenage Wasteland, began principle photography on what it hoped would be another successful installment in the cult horror franchise started in 1983. Unfortunately, the company would go bankrupt and production was immediately halted with only 34 minutes of usable footage becoming available, most of which was shot on the first day. A short teaser trailer and a featurette on the Sleepaway Camp Survival Kit DVD Box Set in 2002 was all that manifested of the film.

Then, ten years later, SleepawayCampFilms.com editor John Klyza and filmmaker Jim Markovic pulled the old production footage off the shelves of Hollywood Hell and began creating a way to showcase the brief moments and heavily debated concepts of an unfinished sequel as a standalone feature film in the Sleepaway Camp franchise. Keeping the original title, Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor was officially released online via Amazon.com and CreateSpace through Rainbow Studios. Having done a “Where Are They Now?” piece on Pamela Springsteen, I was motivated enough to watch this film last night despite hearing nothing but negative comments about it. Well, here’s my honest review having seen it in full.

Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor was directed by Jim Markovic throughout its various edits and releases based on the original screenplay by Tommy Clohessy. The only crew members listed from the original 1992 shoot dates are executive producer’s Gerald Muller and Krishna Shah, line producer Ben Bryant, camera operator Peter Davis and production assistant Athena Neff. The only cast members to appear in the new footage include Carrie Chambers as Allison, John Lodico as Jack the Ranger and Victor Campos as Eugene the Hunter.

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One of the biggest complaints is that Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor hardly has any footage from the original days of filming despite a reported 34 minutes being available. In the editors’ defense, the goal of this project was to edit into a somewhat cohesive story to wrap around clips and montages of the previous Sleepaway Camp installments. Pieces that didn’t fit the overall vision had to be discarded. To be fair, I actually clocked the runtime of the new footage and to the exact second it comes out to 15 minutes. Enough to be its own, really rough short film, but hardly enough to classify as a feature film on its own merit. So it’s important that you know going into it that there’s hardly any new content, but what did you expect from a production shoot that lasted less than a few days?

Let me take a moment to summarize exactly what happens in terms of the new content. Do not continue reading if you dislike spoilers. It starts with a quick opening credits sequence that features both the old 1992/2002 crew members as well as the 2012 group. Then, we get a long scrolling text box of a letter from a psychiatrist that is treating a patient named Allison who is plagued by unexplained nightmares and fits of amnesia. The end result is the psychiatrist urging Allison to return to the source of the nightmares to seek closure: an area she’s never been that is home to Camp Arawak, Camp Rolling Hills and its reworked premises Camp New Horizons. The psychiatrist arranges for Allison to meet with a forest ranger so he can walk her through the woods which have now become Federal Property.

After sunbathing on the docks of a lake for the afternoon Allison and the ranger meet and instantly develop chemistry. After a heavy make-out session, Allison is reluctant to continue their romance and escapes the ranger as he is about to rape her. He chases her through the forest, but backs off once she’s saved by a friendly hunter. The whole event has left Allison unnerved and deranged and she kills the hunter before starting her hunt for the ranger. When she finds him, she is quick to warn him to stay out of her way, but upon the next shot we see that she killed the ranger anyway and is standing in the middle of the forest in her lingerie while awkwardly holding a large knife. There’s a long ending credits sequence that includes all of the crew members and notes of the archive footage used and that’s about it!

One of the biggest questions the new material begs is: who is Allison, really? It’s certainly debatable. Allison has an inner monologue that plays throughout most of her scenes as a voice over and one of lines is, “I remember that day,” in reference to the day Angela Baker and Ricky arrived at Camp Arawak. It’s happened before, a case where an extremely minor character in one film returns as a lead or supporting character in a sequel to make it a direct follow-up. So, Allison could be an original camper from the first massacre or she could still be another disguise of Angela’s. In the second film, Unhappy Campers, we learn that Angela was “cured” by a gender reassignment surgery and years of electroshock therapy. Is it possible that she received the same treatment again, broke out of the mental institution again and was forced into another psychotic rage at the thought of she, herself having premarital affairs, one of Angela’s biggest no-nos. I guess we’ll never know, and I’m kind of enthralled by the film’s open to interpretation standpoint.

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Now, speaking on the production quality of Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor is where I feel that I have to slaughter the film. Again, in the editors’ defense, I know that even with modern video and sound editing technologies it’s not always easy to save a film that was a disaster in the first place. The audio is all over the fucking place here; too loud, too low, too fuzzy, too high pitched. The picture quality looks a little out of date for the time period and assumed production budget, but it’s not even close to as bad as other people have proclaimed it to me. I don’t know what any of the crew members were thinking way back in 1992, but maybe it’s better the film never had time to make it to fruition to save them from embarrassment? As far as acting goes, Carrie Chambers and John Lodico are stiff as a board, but Victor Campos has life to him, which is probably why he’s the only one to maintain a career in Hollywood with roles in Shallow Ground, Murder on Yellow Brick Road and Locker 13.

I think the biggest flaw of Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor is the idea to still put it forth into the world as the long forgotten fourth entry in the franchise instead of something else. They could have salvaged a few ratings sources – Amazon has it at a 1.9 and IMDB has it at a 1.8 – and they could have earned a little more money in DVD purchases and streams by marketing it as Sleepaway Camp IV: The Documentary. Instead of trying to say it’s a “feature film,” they could have re-worked the 34 minutes of 1992 footage as the main file, added the trailer, filmed a featurette about the fight to get the film released and included the 55 minute montage of Angela’s best kills, hokiest kills and story developments as an extended featurette. That, in my opinion, would have been the best way to do this entry in the franchise, official yet not a complete slap in the face.

If you’re looking for another person to rag on this film, it’s not going to be. Is it a complete disaster? Yes, it really is. However, whether you like it or not, the 15 minutes of new footage that make up Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor and the other unseen 19 minutes are a piece of horror film history… a constant reminder of what could have been. In the film Allison says to the hunter, “I need your help,” just before she kills him. What does Allison, or Angela, need him for? We’ll never know, but would you pass up the opportunity to see unused footage of a canned entry in a franchise you love just because it’s not 100% polished? I don’t think so. Let me be clear, Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor is NOT worth the price of a DVD purchase unless you are a diehard fan of the now five part series. If you are a horror fan that loves the golden oldies, though, it is sort of worth the price of the $1.99 stream on Amazon Instant Video.

Final Score: 4.5 out of 10

Michael DeFellipo

(Senior Editor)

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