Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers (1988)
Director: Michael A. Simpson
Starring: Pamela Springsteen, Renee Estevez, Walter Gotell, Brian Patrick Clarke
What do you get when you take a trans slasher, send her to summer camp as a counselor, and let her murder anyone who breaks the rules? You get one of the most gloriously stupid, tone-shifted horror sequels of the 1980s — and we wouldn't have it any other way. This week, John and Sean dig into Sleepaway Camp II's bizarre pivot from straight horror to self-aware slasher comedy, marvel at a budget under $500K, and debate whether a movie this ridiculous can still be genuinely fun.
In this episode, we discuss:
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Angela Knows You Know She's the Killer — We break down the surprisingly refreshing choice to show the killer's perspective from frame one, with zero whodunit mystery, zero obfuscation, and zero apologies — and why that bold structural move is both the movie's biggest strength and the reason it runs out of gas before the final act.
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Dead Bodies That Won't Stop Breathing — From the ghost-powered cordless drill kill to corpses that sneeze, twitch, and gasp on camera, we celebrate the gloriously terrible special effects.
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The Brat Pack of Camp Rolling Hills — Characters named Charlie, Emilio, Rob, Demi, and Judd roam a camp populated by Bruce Springsteen's sister and Martin Sheen's daughter, running something called the Tit Patrol with a Polaroid camera. We unpack the movie's self-aware horror parodies of Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, and a hobo Leatherface, and argue whether this counts as meta before Scream made meta cool.
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An 80-Minute Movie That Somehow Drags — We dig into why the second half of an hour-and-20-minute movie feels like it's running on fumes, how two added scenes were literally inserted to stretch the runtime to cable-ready length.
We Also Talked About:
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Gates of Heaven (1978) (Youtube) — Errol Morris's first documentary, a rambling, abstract examination of the pet cemetery business in Northern California that famously inspired Werner Herzog to eat his shoe and earned a spot on Roger Ebert's all-time top 10 list.
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Whatever It Takes: Inside the eBay Scandal (2024) (Amazon) — A documentary about a couple who ran an independent eBay blog and found themselves on the receiving end of live cockroaches, pig masks, Craigslist parties, and physical stalking — all traced back to a shocking source.
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Exorcist III / William Blatty's Legion (1990) (Tubi) — The director's cut of the Exorcist sequel, assembled from workprint VHS tapes after the studio destroyed the original footage, resulting in a confusing mess featuring George C. Scott, Brad Dourif's unhinged Gemini Killer, and Patrick Ewing as the Angel of Death in a dream sequence.
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Untold: The Testimony of Vince Young (2025) (Netflix) — A Netflix Untold documentary about the Texas Longhorns legend who peaked in college and crashed in the NFL, with Jeff Fisher lurking in the background ruining quarterbacks like it's his life's purpose.
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Untold Raygun: Breaking Badly (2025) (Netflix) — Another Netflix Untold entry, this one about the Australian breakdancer who somehow qualified for the Olympics, featuring a husband-coach so unhinged the whole thing feels like a backdoor pilot for a reality show.
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Teenage Wasteland (Netflix) — A Netflix documentary about a 1990s high school English class where a teacher turned his students into investigative journalists, leading them to uncover mob ties at a local toxic waste dump near Buffalo, New York.
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