Noticias

It’s time for a new episode of the Real Slashers video series, and with this one we’re looking back at the 1989 release Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland (watch it Here). You can find out all about it by watching the video embedded above!

Directed by Michael A. Simpson from a screenplay written by Fritz Gordon (a.k.a. Michael Hitchcock), Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland started filming three days after Sleepaway Camp 2 wrapped. This one has the following synopsis: Psychotic Angela is itching to do what she does best: slaughter dozens of teenage campers. As luck would have it, the previous site of her murders has been renamed and converted into an experimental summer camp meant to bring together privileged and lower-class teens. On the day the youths are boarding the buses to camp, Angela runs over a potential camper with a garbage truck and assumes her identity.

[We're celebrating some of the most memorable horror and sci-fi movies of 1989 this month in Daily Dead's Class of 89 retrospective series! Check back on Daily Dead throughout the rest of August for more special features celebrating the 30th anniversaries of a wide range of horror and sci-fi films!]

Camp hasn’t always been kind to Angela Baker, but that doesn’t keep her from trying to enjoy all it has to offer, whether it’s at Camp Arawak, Camp Rolling Hills, or in the case of Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland, Camp New Horizons. The third entry in the Sleepaway Camp franchise, Teenage Wasteland mixes up the franchise’s killer summer camp formula and features Pamela Springsteen further embracing her role as Angela Baker, who just wants to camp until she dies… and will kill anybody who gets in the way of her ultimate goal.

Since her stint as a camp counselor didn’t go exactly as planned last summer (unless drowning someone in an outhouse was on the itinerary), Angela decides to return to her roots as a camper in Teenage Wasteland, taking on the identity of another camper unfortunate enough to cross paths with Angela and...

The Sleepaway Camp series has been a longtime favorite of mine, as I’ve always found Angela Baker to be one of the more fascinating villains and cinematic serial killers the genre has ever seen. When we first meet her in the original Sleepaway Camp, she’s a precocious pre-teen (portrayed by Felissa Rose) who has endured one messed up childhood. By the time we are reunited with an adult Angela (Pamela Springsteen) for the next two sequels, she’s embraced her complicated nature through the "help" of some professionals and has evolved into the perfect camp counselor.

Far more decisively comedic in tone than their predecessor, both Sleepaway Camp II and III are a ridiculous amount of fun for anyone who grew up on a steady diet of slasher movies. They do a fantastic job of fully embracing and celebrating everything great that was happening in the horror genre at that time.