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Henson's 11 (ganked from kradical):

Send Elayna to Explo!

The full list of raffle prizes being offered is up over at shadesong's LJ. There's some amazing stuff there, from some amazingly talented folks.

Days of Horror: Return to Sleepaway Camp

(Apologies for any typos; I've been working on a keyboard that has issues.)

Return to Sleepaway Camp. 2008. Written and directed by Robert Hiltzik. Distributed by Magnolia Home Entertainment.

As I noted in my review two years ago, Sleepaway Camp is the most accurate portrayal of summer camp (killings aside) on the big screen. It captures the bullying, the weird staff/camper dynamics, and the actual schedule of a camp better than any other movie I've seen.

Return to Sleepaway Camp does a decent job of capturing the feel. That's probably one of the better things I can say about it.

No, wait. The best thing I can say is this: It's the first, and likely only, movie that has made me shout, "Jesus Fucking Christ, will you just rip his dick off already?"

But that scene comes later. Let's start at the beginning:

A little background first: The first Sleepaway Camp, of course, ended with the infamous (and horribly-done, f/x-wise) scene in which, ZOMG, Angela's Got a Penis! There were two sequels (reviewed here and here) which were basically killfests and ways to display Splat Johnson's f/x talents. In those movies, Angela had undergone surgery, and was fully post-op when on her sprees. None of the other survivors from the first movie are featured in those films. Return to Sleepaway Camp, written and directed by original Sleepaway Camp writer/director Robert Hiltzik, ignores those sequels.

So, here's the sitch: Twenty or so years after the murders at Ararak, a new camp has opened up in upstate NY, and one of the owners (and the head counselor) is Ronnie, the counselor from the first movie (once again played by Paul DeAngelo, although not wearing the ubiquitous short-shorts from the first film).

The other owner is Frankie, played by Vincent "Big Pussy" Pastore. Frankie does not like kids nearly as much as Ronnie does. When we first see him, he attempts to get them to listen to Sheriff Jerry, the Local Bumbling Law Enforcement. Jerry has had his larynx removed thanks to smoking (cigarettes are bad, mmmkay?), and the kids make fun of the computer voice microphone he uses, causing Frankie to blow up at them, and establishing that Kids Today Just Don't Respect Their Elders.

But the real star of this movie is Alan, a young teen who manages to be both a bully and the bullied. He's fat, sick (having suffered from rheumatic fever), and not all that bright. He gets wedgied, ganged up on in paintball, tricked into smoking cow dung, dumped in the lake, and (in one memorably horrifying scene) stripped to his underwear and displayed on stage in front of everyone. But he also beats up smaller kids, doesn't change his clothes, and yells at and disrespects counselors (his catchphrase is, "your ass stinks!"). It's not Todd Solondz, but it does the trick.

Other characters worth knowing about: Michael, Alan's stepbrother, who hates him as much as anyone; T.C., the camp bully; Bella*, the other camp bully; Randy, Alan's bullying counselor; and Karen, the Nice Girl who actually treats Alan kindly. Both Alan and Michael have crushes on Karen. Oh, and near the middle of the movie, we finally see Angela's cousin Ricky, who now works construction an has absolutely nothing to offer this movie other than some continuity with the first film.

Anyway, just as with Angela in the first movie, people who do Bad Things to Alan find that Bad Things happen to them, in turn. And as in the first movie, the initial victim is the camp's assistant chef**. After abusing Alan by yelling and throwing things at him, he goes to make himself a burger and fries. But he ignores the seventeenth rule of horror movies: Never stand on a chair over a deep fryer where someone can sneak up behind you and dunk your head into the fryer***. Needless to say, soon enough his body is thrown in the dumpster (never to be seen again),

Our next prank features a pair of potheads who get Alan to smoke cow dung. When the head pothead (named "Weed"****) is out late that night, lying on a lawn chair and smoking some dope, he gets tied to his chair, force fed an entire can of gasoline, and given a lit cigarette.

Wait, you say. Now that a camper has just gone and exploded, surely folks will figure out that something's up, right?

Nope. Sure, Ronnie remembers the series of "accidents" that plagued the camp before, and thinks something is up, but everyone else just assumes that the explosion was the result of drugs. Yes, smoking weed can lead to explosions!

We get more pranks on Alan (including a sequence in which Michael tricks Karen into thinking that Alan tortures and skins small animals), and finally he snaps and runs off into the woods. And naturally, this is the night when things really start to go wrong.

It starts with Frankie, who gets knocked upside the head, and while he's unconscious, a birdcage gets placed over his head. This gets all sorts of points, as only the best-prepared killers come with custom-designed birdages with holes in the bottom so that they can be placed over someone's head. This is the sort of advanced preparation normally only practiced by Dr. Giggles and that wanker from the Saw films. And once Frankie wakes up, the killer opens the door to the cage and inserts a couple of rats. Despite all their rage, they still are just rats in the cage, so they do what comes natural and start eating Frankie's face.

Yeah. Nasty. Sure, it's essentially an update of the bee murder from the first flick, but this is one of the rare slasher murders that just plain squicks me.

Anyway, our killer isn't done yet. Randy and a female counselor (Linda) drive out to the middle of nowhere to go have sex. While she unpacks the car, he takes a leak, and the killer sneaks up on him and ties him to the tree. Really. But wait -- it gets better. Randy is the only male alive who, when taking a leak in the woods, stands with his back to a tree and fertilizes a patch of open ground. So, as he's standing there, tied to the tree, the killer lowers a noose made of fishing wire over Randy's penis.

Now, things get interesting. And by "interesting," I mean, "silly." And by "silly," I mean "stupid."

First, the ropes around Randy's neck, torso, and feet are insanely loose. Anyone could slip out of them, if they were okay with a few scrapes from a tree branch. And given a choice between finding that Mr. Happy is missing or a few scrapes, the latter seems like the way to go.

But then we see the fishing wire get extended and attached to Linda's car, a length of easily 100 feet, without snagging in any way that causes Randy to lose his junk. Or for Linda to notice.

Better yet, when Linda finally heads back into the woods, she sees that Randy has been tied up, and instead of helping him, she quickly deduces that there must be a killer out there, and screams (in a Razzie-worthy performance), "oh shit, he's coming after me!" She then runs to the Jeep. Yes, the killer's plan relies entirely on Linda being a moron.

But we're not done. Naturally, the car won't start at first. And then, as Linda drives, the wire plays out. And out. We're at about 400 feet of wire now. Just as we think Randy's finally going to die, the car stalls in some sand. She spends well over thirty seconds attempting to get it moving again. It was at this point that I screamed the line I mention near the beginning of this review.

Finally, Linda manages to get the car going, and Randy loses one of his favorite limbs.

Oh, and while all this was happening, the killer also stole a batch of barbed wire from where Randy and Linda were, and set it up down the road. Something that's real easy to do in just five minutes. So as Linda drives away, she finally speeds right into a length of barbed wire that had been set up between two trees. She has time to scream a sentence or two, but not time to duck. No, we don't get a nice decapitation; instead, the wire wraps around her head, and she crashes into the tree.

But we're not done yet! We cut to a cabin, where the bully T.C. has been grounded. As he tries to read some porn, a sharp stick is poked through a hole in the floor, impaling the magazine. T.C., in a move that almost defies description in its complete and utter stupidity, then gets on his knees and looks into the hole! But the killer doesn't take advantage of him, and all T.C. sees is the stick on the ground*****. Another boy comes in, so T.C. has him look in the hole. They trade off looking at the stick, until the director, finally remembering that this is a horror movie and not a summer-camp version of Waiting for Godot, gets back to the story and has the killer stick T.C. right in the eye. He screams in pain for a few minutes, then runs right into a wall, driving the stick through his head. Nice gore, dumb setup.

Wait, did I say, "dumb setup." Oh, you ain't seen nothing yet. See, earlier, Bella and her bunkmates went to the canteen. Now Bella -- and no one else -- returns. She lies down on her bunk, and looks up to realize that the top bunk above her now has a bunch of spikes. Before she can say, "hey, how the hell did the killer have time to kill three other people and quickly perform some carpentry work in the bunk, and also how did the killer know that I'd come back to the bunk by myself, and hey, it's not like those spikes can harm me anyway," the killer, who had -- and I swear I'm not making this up -- been lurking in the rafters of the cabin, jumps onto the top bunk, causing it to crash down, impaling Bella.

Seriously.

After that bout of stupidity, we enter the endgame. Karen is almost killed when she sees two of the bodies, then sees the killer, faints, and wakes up to find a noose around her neck and the automatic basketball net being raised off the ground. Michael saves her, then decides that Alan is the killer and goes to find him in the woods. Even as Michael beats Alan with a croquet mallet, the real killer sneaks up behind him.

Time for the endgame. Even as Ricky, Ronnie, and a third counselor find Alan, we hear the voice of the sheriff, but as "he" talks, we see the fake beard and the cap getting tossed to the ground, and the voicebox being removed, and ZOMG it's Angela! And by "ZOMG," I mean, yeah, it's Angela. Big fucking surprise. Even as they discover Michael skinned alive (in two minutes?), Angela cackles maniacally, and we fade to black.

But wait, there's more! After the credits, we get a flashback of Angela with a broken-down car. The town sheriff comes along to fix it, and as he looks at it, Angela gives the jack a kick, and poof! Dead Sheriff!

Yes, the entire plot relies on there being only one cop in town, and on no one knowing who he is.

Yeah, this was a disappointing piece of crap. It lacks the charm of the first movie, and the fun of the second and third. The plot makes no sense, the killings are ludicrous, and there's simply nothing much to like here.

Even if you're a huge fan of the series (as I am), this is probably worth a rental at best..

Bonus fact: According to the DVD extras, the murderer here is actually the "real" Angela (supposedly dead years ago), and her transgendered brother is still locked away******. I'm not sure how that's supposed to make more sense things better, since it contradicts the first movie. Then again, there's really nothing that could make this one better, other than maybe a better writer/director and a stronger cast.

Bonus Fact #2: The credits feature a gratuitous apostrophe (you've got to squint a bit to see it).

* No, she does not sparkle. Or fuck anything that sparkles.

**The head chef, by the way, is played by Isaac Hayes. Yes, this was his last role before dying. Sad, ain't it? He only has one scene, though. Casting him as the chef is a double joke. Aside from the obvious South Park reference, he's also meant to remind us of the late Robert Earl Jones, who played the head chef in the first film. I suspect that Jones would have been in this part if they'd started this film when he was still alive.

*** This comes up slightly less frequently than Rule 16 (Never, ever make any statement containing the phrase 'I wish.'), but more often than Rule 18 (No matter how hot Mathilda May looks, do not bring her to Earth).

****Go originality! We never discover who the sexpot campers are, but let's assume they're named "sex" and "screwing". Also, for those who care, Weed is played by Adam Wylie, of Picket Fences fame (better known to me from his stints on Gilmore Girls and Legion of Super-Heroes).

*****In spite of the fact that it's nighttime and this is a hole under a cabin, the stick is still brightly lit and very visible.

******Remember the graphic novel Kingdom Come? There's be bits where we'd see a character for one panel in the background, but in interviews and on the trading cards and the websites, Mark Waid would tell us that this character was actually The Red Wonder, the child of Wonder Woman and Ray Palmer, conceived when the latter, in one of his periodic fits of insanity, shrunk down to microscopic size and masturbated in WW"s uterus. And the fans would rave about how this was the best shit ever, because of all the backstory that Waid had developed. And I hated it, because the actual, you know, story in KC just plain sucked. That's what this sort of DVD extra reminds me of. There's deep reading, but then there's stuff you don't get told at all. The latter sucks.