Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland (1989)

***Mediocre, but fun, rehash of the previous film***

Angela (Pamela Springsteen) returns to the same camp where she slaughtered the inhabitants the year before under an assumed identity. Renamed Camp New Horizons, the coordinators seek to bring together privileged kids from the suburbs & small towns with underprivileged kids from the big cities. Michael J. Pollard appears as one of the camp counselors. The other counselor is reminiscent of Paula Dean.

“Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland” (1989) is a rehash of the previous film (1988) with the same director/writer team and star (Springsteen), but of course a whole new cast of victims. The film even features cuts by the same semi-obscure 80’s bands: Anvil (“Wild Eyes”), Obsession (“Methods of Madness” & “Killer Elite”) and John Altyn (“Sleepaway”). The main difference is a focus on tent camping and the mixing of “rich” kids with “poor.”

The movie’s fun, but it lacks the mojo of the previous film. There’s less depth as far as human interest goes: The characters and their relations are so exaggerated it’s campy, which kills any realism. Yes, I realize it’s an amusing 80’s slasher flick set at a youth camp, but the two preceding movie’s included gems in the coming-of-age context, which is largely lacking here. Still, “Sleepaway Camp III” has its entertaining moments. Tracy Griffith as redhead Marcia and Stacie Lambert as Jan are highlights.

The film runs 1 hour, 20 minutes, and was shot in Bremen, Georgia, about an hour’s drive west of Atlanta (the same as Part II); with the opening scenes shot in Atlanta.

GRADE: C