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Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers is actually the first movie in the Sleepaway Camp franchise that I’d ever seen. The VHS cover art lured me in as a kid by teasing possible appearances from iconic villains, with Freddy’s glove and Jason’s hockey mask poking out of a woman’s backpack. I was a bit too young to understand the concept of trademarks at that age, so you can imagine my disappointment when neither character made so much as a cameo. Since I hadn’t seen the first film and didn’t have any context for the franchise as a whole (or that twist), I just thought of the movie as low-budget trash.

As I’ve grown older, however, I’ve discovered that low-budget trash can be a lovely thing. And I think it’s important to distinguish trash from “so bad they’re good” movies like Troll 2...

There are three kinds of sequels in this world. The sequel that continues the story of the previous installment in a series, the sequel that has fuck-all to do with the original and creates a completely new story in lieu of the absolutely workable earlier installment and sequels in name only. So I ask you where a movie like Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers fits in? Sure it continues the original story with its focal point still on Angela Baker though we now refer to her as Angela Johnson, but if you mean to tell me that Michael A. Simpson created a continuation story from the original Robert Hiltzik classic as anything more than a way to get exploitable elements on screen then you might not have seen Return to Sleepaway Camp, a true continuation of Hiltzik’s vision. When I watch Sleepaway Camp II I think of it as...

We’ve been on hiatus. I think that means I’ve been lazy, but to you it probably only felt like moments. Seconds even. Maybe you’ve been chomping at the bit awaiting the arrival of the latest installment of 1980x. Maybe you forgot about me.. well I didn’t forget about you dear readers. I got soooo busy reviewing goddamn movies that I forgot about what it is that I love about writing about ideas. Concepts. I forgot that analysis is anal with a few letters scrawled at the end to make it look fancy. Not that there’s anything wrong with anal… which brings us to tonight’s conversation on It Came From 1980x. Let’s talk about the psycho-sexual, munging and cunnilinguini of Brian Yuzna’s 1989 satire horror gross out, Society.

From the back of the VHS box:

“If You Don’t Belong, They’ll Eat You...