Who says that being Bruce Springsteen's little sister doesn't have it's benefits? Just look at prime example Pamela Springsteen. This fine young woman went from a small but pivotal role as a hall monitor in the sci-fi classic *cough*cough*bullshit*cough*cough*, My Science Project, to play the lead of Angela Johnson/Palmer here in this follow up to the useless and barren of any entertainment value what-so-ever summer camp slasher crapper Sleepaway Camp... I'm really hoping that the sarcasm in that last statement wasn't lost on anyone. After all, I'd hope nobody would take a sentence mentioning the siblings of Bruce Springsteen and My Science Project in any kind of form other than insincerely and with the greatest efforts at humor. Sure, I probably could've tried a little harder in the delivery, but you get the idea, right? Anyway, will this prove to be a time of healing from the pain and festering brought about on me by Sleepaway Camp? Or, will it just be another journey into the dark heart of cinemasochism? Boys, girls, nipples of all ages, take my hand, because we're off to Never-Never Land...

Remember Angela? Sure you do, if you were unfortunate enough to see this flick's precursor, you'd know Angela was really a disturbed lad named Peter whose aunt Mae him dress like a girl and act like a girl until the ripened age of 14, when he went to Camp Arawak for a summer of fun, frolic and death, only to reveal his twisted secret when an unfortunate young lad fell in love with the maturing drag queen. Pete killed the kid and ended the movie stark ass naked, hairier than a lumberjack, balls swaying in the night air as the survivors of the Arawak massacre discovered him/her... yes, I too get chest pains just pondering that 90 minute session on the cinematic crapper myself... the longest, most painful, rectal scorching bout of diarrhea is like a life-sized chocolate Barbara Crampton (with gum drop nipples and a chocolate covered cherry for, well, a cherry, heh heh) in comparison. Anyway, what happened after that was a mystery that I had hoped I'd never have to see sequelized... we see how much the cosmos listen to my pleas at night... As the opening campfire tales tell us here, Pete went on to years of mental therapy in an effort to "fix him right". This "fixing" included years of mental tweaking and a full on sex change signed for by the asylum's doctors... medical logic with this case? Zip. You'd think that trying to cure a crazy guy from his troubles wouldn't INCLUDE supporting those troubles by turning his bizarre fantasy world into a reality. Am I a doctor? Well, since I didn't go to college half my life and I don't drive a car that costs more than the entire building my ratty little apartment resides in, I'd say no. However, I'd be a fucking brain surgeon if we're talking Hollywood doctors. Whether it's committing malpractice surgery on patients, having an affair with my half nekkid nurse assistant (who just wants me for my cash) or butchering sex crazed teens for motivations all my own, I'd have all the bases covered! Yep, I'd be a PHD MVP.

So, Peter's officially become Angela now and Angela's no longer interested in just going to camp, now she's a counselor. Yes, brandishing a first class resume with gold star references from all her doctors at the nuthouse, Angela has little trouble becoming the newest child herder at Camp Rolling Hills. It's not long before she's back to her old tricks though, as she catches a female camper chilling by a campfire with the boys, telling each other retarded stories in a lame effort to spook themselves. The only way to discipline a little lady who breaks curfew? Crack her upside the skull with a log and saw off her lips with a pocket knife. Sounds like the beginning to a fairly amusing, brainless little slasher flick, right? Well, if your idea of "amusing" is a killing scene so badly thrown together that it takes the girl a second to register the fake log has hit her head before falling to the ground and there's no blood from the bitch's lips being sawed off, then here's your beef. As for me, I want to cry, but at the same time I want to laugh. I want to dance and cavort and sing, but at the same time I want to dismember and eviscerate and quisinart. So, to put it in short terms (something I'm obviously not good at), I don't know what to think right now... I'm so confused. So, no surprise, Angela's going to be killing any campers or fellow counselors who get too close to her dirty little secret over the course of the next 90 minutes... oh wait, the doctors already chopped off her "dirty little secret"... my mistake.

I won't bore anyone with too much of the "plot", as what little there is has already been summed up. Angela's a wholesome type who looks down on girls who dare to even communicate with boys and doesn't take kindly to chickies who enjoy sleeping in the "natural". The guys she doesn't really bother with much, and the other counselors she pretty much ignores... they'd be harder to cover up anyway. As for her excuse for all the disappearing kids, Angela simply says she "sent them home", an act which her boss doesn't exactly bare his pearly white dentures over, since these kids' parents are coughing up good money to send them to Rolling Hills to begin with. The only thing more annoying than Angela's annoying voice and demeanor is her undying obsession with the "leisure" activities that come with camping... don't tell me that her magic summer at Camp Arawak created all of this, because there HAS to be some other reason for his twisted mentality! Sure, Sleepaway Camp was awful and may have scarred me for a millennia or two, but I don't have an insane fear of going into the woods and sleeping in a tent or anything. I'd say it's time for me to go back and watch the original again to look further into this phenomenon of Angela's, but nothing short of crucifixion is going to get me to sit through that level of movie shit again! Okay, so, anyway, aside from Ang's heaviest discipline this side of Billy's "PUNISH!" rampage in Silent Night, Deadly Night, there's also this side story going on involving Angela's only fan at Rolling Hills, a girl named Molly (look out, it's Martin Sheen's daughter, Renee Estevez!), who's in competition with the most popular girl at camp, Allie, over the heart and hard-on of the camp's hunkiest and yet morally endowed beefcake, Sean McHardsteak... I know his name's Sean, but it's the McHardsteak part I'm throwing darts at.

We all know this generic type of plot point: the mousy and shy girl falls into the crosshairs of the strong and attractive popular guy who's really only looking for that special piece of ass he can take home to meet mom and dad over dinner and freakish incestual sodomy. Meanwhile, the popular chick (i.e. the slut) wants to get a hold of the sensitive hunk's, well, his sensitive hunk, for no other reason than she either loves the conquest or she can't stand to see an unpopular girl getting some fresh squeezed man juice that she herself can't seem to win, despite her wily charms and her "perfect 10" body. We all know how it starts, we all know how it plays out and we all know where it ends, so enough of this and let's get back to the death. Who said I'm Obsessive-Compulsive? I'll kill you! I'LL KILL YOU ALL!!!! Uhm, yeah... okay, victims #2 and #3 (I'm gonna go all The Prisoner here for this one kids, as these campers don't deserve names, simply numbers... they're all just as generic as the "love triangle" crap anyway, plus this saves me the time and effort of having to learn names or type them out) find their fates in the flames of a good ol' fashioned campfire BBQ when Angela finds them goin' down on a bottle of Jack Daniels™ and getting a little too close with one of the lads. The rest go as follows: #4 gets a power drill perforation for exposing her titties one too many times (the words “too many times” cannot be used with a healthy rack such as that my friends); #5 and #6 get their throats slashed and torsos carved with a chainsaw respectively when they dress up like Jason and Freddy in an all too sad effort by modern day creativity challenged teens to scare Angela, only to fall to her bad Leatherface costume and matching Stihl™. The lesson to be learned here? Leatherface owns and that's that. To continue on, Allie gets to be lucky #7, as she's lured into the woods by Angela's fake love letter from Sean. We don't get to read it, but the message is obviously one of love… sweaty love… maybe even sweaty butt love… either way Allie falls for it and the result is an unpleasant one, as the sex kitten is stabbed in the back repeatedly and stuffed into an outhouse toilet to play and frolic amidst the shit, piss and starving leaches. Yes, millions of leaches are forced to live in outhouse toilets everyday awaiting any unsuspecting victims asses that might wiggle their way into the leaches den. But, we can put a stop to this senseless abuse of our leachy loved ones with just pennies a day. For the price of a cup of coffee, your donations could feed an entire crapper full of the poor bloodsuckers. This would of course leave you without your daily caffeine injection, making you sluggish and unproductive at work and costing you your job, but think of the leaches! If that's not enough for you bleeding hearts out there, for the cost of all the porn you buy in a weeks time (don't deny it, you're getting aroused just thinking about the stacks and stacks of fake tits and surgically implanted horse genitals) your donation can be used to purchase solid gold septic tanks that these unfortunate parasites can move into and away from the squalor of outhouse living… Sally Struthers I'm not, but her cost for a cameo in movie reviews is something like 47 individually wrapped Twinkies™, and I'm not shoveling any more of my processed snack cakes into that festering food hole after last time…

Back at camp that night, the token black girl discovers that none of the girls Angela “sent home” made it to their domiciles, as none of their parents can vouch that the kids have made it back safely. This broad is obviously #8, strangled with a guitar string after Angela's long glimpse into how a professional murderer selects that perfect weapon. Say goodbye to #9, who walks in on Angela disposing of #8, only to find her salvation in a barrage of titty stabbings. By this point, Ang has “sent home” all of the girls except for Molly, meaning its almost time for this slasher to wind down. While we await this oncoming finale, Ang slips into a dream state, where we learn that despite all her chit-chat about love and the drug-like euphoria of the camping lifestyle, the tranny isn't really a happy camper, as she dreams in blue tints… unless my TV's colors getting all fucked up again. The next day, Angela gets fired for “sending so many kids home”, throwing her from her already unstable state into a downward spiral of depression. Molly and her boy toy Sean attempt to console our villainess as she sulks at her abandoned cabin hideaway deep in the forest, but while Molly's trying to cheer up the lunatic with a round of “ Coombahyah ” (spell check anyone?) and dirty thoughts of marshmallow roasting over a fire she built herself by rubbing two sticks together, Sean has to be Mr. Nosey and push his way into Angela's Fortress of Solitude, discovering, what else, but a room full of rotting bodies. While he's busy puking his guts out from the stench, Ang splits his skull with a series of blows from a convenient stick of firewood. As for Molly, she gets tied to a chair while the head male counselor (to whom Ill refer to as Lovemeat Erectbody for this single reference, due to his overly active action hero approach to doing simple tasks like opening doors and running through the woods and shouting a lot) bounds to the rescue. When he does arrive, Lovemeat gets a face full of battery acid for his heroics, dying almost instantly to become #10. Hmmmm, double digits, a sign of a sure fire 2+ star movie. A nice surprise comes in at #11, when Angela decapitates Sean, one of my sure bets for a survivor, ending his meager existence when his running off at the mouth reveals his father was one of the fuzz who originally arrested Angela when she was still Peter… or should I say, “still had a peter”. Remember kids, even the things that seem stupid and pointless when said, like Sean's repeated “my dads a cop!” shpiel, hold some kind of merit in the movies. Then again, 80% of the time these things are never explained in any way shape or form as being important, which is just bad writing and a sign that the people involved are just in it to sign their name on a paycheck.

Here's a kick in the ass for me: Angela leaves Molly bound and gagged while she goes off to procure victim #12, and while she's gone, Molly manages to slip free from her ropes. You'd think that someone obsessed with summer camp and the activities involved with it like Angela would know how to tie a knot a little better than that. Christ, when I was a little pup of a jackal-headed Death God I could still tie a knot that not even a Hindu wiseman contortionist could free himself from, and I never even liked summer camp! Well, those years at Crystal Lake will always have fond memories for me, but that's a lame joke that doesn't need further attention. The liberated Molly waits behind the door of the abandoned cabin, brandishing her own clublike piece of firewood with which to strike her captor upon her return. The plan goes off without a hitch, though there isn't really a whole lot of room for error in a situation like that. Step 1: grab club and hide by door. Step 2: Hit attacker over the head repeatedly while her back is turned. Step 3: Run like a sprinter with his ass on fire and don't stop running until you reach help or your chest explodes like a set of bad squibs. Well, everything would've turned out fine, if it weren't for Angela's apparent enrollment in the Jason Vorhees School Of Teleportation. Yes, though Molly gets a good 20-30 second head start on Ang, the demented counselor still manages to pop up right in front of her prey… As the chase continues, it soon finds its end when Molly's betrayed by her sneakers, slipping from a height of something like 3 or 4 feet and smacking her skull on the big rocks below, knocking her unconscious. While she's counting crippled sheep, Ang finds her way into camp once more, where she claims #13-17. We don't actually see these murders, but when Molly reawakens she discovers them all… and it looks like we missed some potentially decent scenes of bloodletting, including a dismembered hand… see what happens when “story” takes precedence over carnage? While Molly stumbles around in a daze like this is all some bad nightmare, Angela is busy with a dykey redneck broad, making her #18 and stealing her pick-up. Molly finally ends this escapade predictably enough, as she stops a passing truck to beg for help. The truck? Well, since this is a backwoods area, its not too likely there's going to be a lot of traffic, so yes, its Angela and her new beater. And its on that note that we end the flick, with Angela still perky to an annoying fault and Molly screaming in terror when she realizes she's an Estevez in a bad genre flick co-starring with the sister of Bruce Springsteen.

Well, that's that. All in all, Unhappy Campers outdid its predecessor in some very positive ways. The pretentious “hey, guess who our killer is and what's so wacky about their genitalia!” storyline is instead dropped in favor of a much simpler and standard hack n slash affair. Gone are the twists and turns of confusing and bland plot, replaced instead by some humor and a much bigger bodycount. Don't get me wrong, I like a good story with enough shit to keep me guessing, but if its as badly tossed together like Sleepaway Camp keep it away from me and any open flames. I'm a gore whore by nature and like my blood and guts. Even if the FX guys cant get it graphic enough, at least gimme a double digit pile of corpses and Ill be satiated until I can tear up my own victims. The direction? Well, the extent of the directors “tricks” is Angela's dream sequence, when the entire scene was shot in a blue tint… yes, that's the only trick up Mr. Michael A. Simpson's artistic sleeve… Speaking of Simpson, on the cover of the movie, there's a little line that caught my eye, stating something along the lines of “From cult director Michael A. Simpson!”. I think the word “cult” gets thrown around like a cheap slut anymore. If you want to reel in the nerds (or the “fans of independent cinema” as they prefer to be called), there are few better ways than to tag the word “cult” on the propaganda for your movie. I don't care if its “The Cult Sensation!” or “The Cult Classic!” or “Featuring Cult Actor/Director/Producer/Gaffer (Your Name Here)!”, if you throw one of these buzz phrases on your movie, you're bound to triple the gross on your direct-to-video “feature”. I seek to prove this one day, as I make my own horrible no-budget flick and toss on the cover blurb “Featuring cult stars, from a cult director, its the cult hit of the year!”. I might toss in some stuff about winning some independent film award I made up, that should give me another 15%… As for this “cult” following Simpson has, I try to picture it and I see five guys with Coke bottle specs, faces like the surface of the moon and DC Comics™ T-shirts of various insignias and sizes, from the Green Lantern symbol (size: Enfeebled) to the Daily Planet logo (size: XXXLazy-Assed), all sipping on their Yoohoos™ and popping their zits at each other while going over the minutes of their last meeting….

8:17pm - Gather the Michael A. Simpson cult in my parents living room and discuss possible recruitment of new members.
8:32pm - Begin talks of the official Michael A. Simpson Cults member t-shirts over a game of Magic: The Gathering™, Revised Section 52 Tournament Triad Rules of course.
9:00pm - Watch Sleepaway Camp 2: Unhappy Campers, followed by a copy of its alternate titled version, Nightmare Vacation II. Follow with a debate over who would win in a fight, Michael A. Simpson or Ralph Macchio.
12:08pm - I insist that Nightmare Vacation II is a subtly superior film to Unhappy Campers. Though Bill and Mitch agree, James and Carl disagree, making it a 3-to-2 vote in my favor. As for the Ralph Macchio question, its unanimous: Michael Simpson is an ass kicking machine! Woooo!
12:15pm - Bathroom break. I really wish I had my own place, with 4 bathrooms and a closet to keep my harem in. Chicks dig me, I just need my own place before it all takes root…
12:34pm - We turn on Mr. Simpson's second greatest film, Sleepaway Camp 3: Teenage Wasteland and ponder how long it will take us to save up enough allowance to buy our own elusive copy of Nightmare Vacation III from that bootlegger jerk in the back room of the comicbook store, despite James and Carl's insistence that its the same movie and there's no point is spending $35 on an ex-rental copy. Plebeians, they're not even worthy of their Michael A. Simpson Cult t-shirts! I think Ill cut the order by two by “accident” and show them the error of their ways, *snicker*.

I cant go on, its the same crap all over again. You thought the hours from our H.O.P.E.L.E.S.S. parties were bad? Pray I don't publish this text, or the Bibles plagues will look like a magical trip to Fairyland with Dorothy Gale and Pippi Longstocking. Hmmmmmm, about 8 years ago, that would've been a very arousing thought… errr, excuse me, I have to go do something that you cant play audience to. To wrap this all up, Unhappy Campers is one of those rare sequels that's better than its original material. However, it's still little more than a bad Friday The 13th sequel, so don't trip over your shoelaces to pick this one up. Instead, better wear your Velcro just in case. And you know how mommy hates it when you go out without your helmet…

Also Known As: Nightmare Vacation II

Sequels: Sleepaway Camp 3: Teenage Wasteland

If You Liked This Flick, Check Out: Friday The 13th Part V: A New Beginning or Camp Blood 2