How Sleepaway Camp's Iconic Ending Was Created (On Accident)
The 1983 cult classic Sleepaway Camp has one of the most notoriously unsettling endings in horror cinema, but how was the nightmarish imagery created?
The last shot of the 1983 horror cult classic Sleepaway Camp is notoriously considered one of the most nightmarish images ever put to screen, but the unsettling scene is a perfect storm of unsophisticated special effects and guerrilla-like filmmaking. Director Robert Hiltzik certainly intended for the twist ending to be shocking, but it's unclear if he and the crew were aware of just how horrifying the visual and sound combination of their slapdash work of art truly was.
Sleepaway Camp is merely one of the heaps of slasher movies to come out in the 1980s, but its legacy has survived better than the majority of its contemporaries due to its infamous shock finale. In the final minutes of the film, the audience learns that the shy female camper and protagonist Angela is not only the mysterious killer, but also a boy, the survivor of a boating accident who was adopted by his aunt and raised as a girl. It's still a highly controversial twist, especially considering the current debates surrounding transphobia, but the sheer disquieting surprise of the scene cannot be denied.
It's not necessarily "Angela's" naked male body that makes the image so timelessly creepy, although that might have been Robert Hiltzik's intent. The camera shows the killer's male genitalia in full view, but the audience's eyes are drawn to the crazed, demonic face that is locked in a strange, unnatural expression. Mouth wide open, eyes bugging out and looking to the side, it resembles more of a creature than any sort of human being, especially because of the disheveled hair and blood-stained body. To top off the nightmare fuel, Angela can be heard emitting an animalistic growling noise that sounds like something out of the pits of hell.
How Sleepaway Camp's Ending Got So Horrifying
This terrifying imagery, however, arguably could only have happened in the type of low-budget B-movie filmmaking environment that the cast and crew of Sleepaway Camp were working in. Felissa Rose, the actress who played Angela, was thirteen years old at the time of filming and could not perform naked. Reportedly, Rose was originally supposed to don a prosthetic penis, but due to the obvious legal implications and pushback from the actress' mother, Robert Hiltzik instead hired a college student from the area and made him a plaster mold based on Rose's face to wear.
Apparently, the anonymous student was drunk while filming the scene in order to gather up the courage to stand next to a cold lake wearing nothing but a freaky mask. The unsettling result is due to the Hiltzik's cheap method of overcoming his creative roadblock, as Angela's artificially frozen facial expression is all the more uncannily chilling attached to a larger, more muscular body. The effect sounds clumsy and would be laughable if it wasn't for how abnormal the visual combination looks. It's a reflection of the surreal camp that makes the entirety of Sleepaway Camp so weirdly fun to experience, especially because of that traumatic conclusion.
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