Ranking The Best Summer Camp Slasher Movies (Besides Friday the 13th)

Summer camps are treacherous places in horror movies. Everyone is familiar with the “Friday the 13th” series, but there are a ton of other summer camp slasher movies out there. Here are my top three.

**3. The Final Girls (2015)**

Have you seen the movie Pleasantville, where Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon are inside the world of a 1950s TV show? The Final Girls is the horror equivalent of that film. Max (Taissa Farmiga from American Horror Story) is mourning the recent death of her mother in a car crash.

Desperate for relief from her grief, she decides to accompany her friends to a theatrical showing of Camp Bloodbath, a summer camp slasher that her mom had starred in decades earlier.

Somehow, Max and her friends get sucked into the movie. They’ve already seen Camp Bloodbath so they know where the movie’s machete wielding killer is supposed to strike next. But they soon realize that their presence has altered the movie’s storyline.

Max encounters Nancy, the movie’s final girl, played by her mother. Unfortunately, Nancy is unaware that she is a fictional character and has no idea that she was Max’s mother in real life. Despite this, Max hopes that she can gain emotional closure by teaming up with Nancy to take down the killer.

The Final Girls has fun contrasting the modern characters with the rowdy ‘80s campers. The movie’s wicked sense of humor and creativity are its main strongpoints. It’s the most mainstream (and most sentimental) movie on this list so if you are looking for something more hardcore, keep reading.

2. The Burning (1981)

Cropsy, a summer camp janitor, suffers severe burns over his entire body when some teenage campers play a prank on him.

After languishing in a mental institution for years, the grotesquely disfigured and completely insane custodian decides to take revenge. He grabs a pair of shears, goes back to the camp, and gets down to business.

The Burning is absolutely brutal, one of the most violent slasher movies of its era. Its most notorious scene is the raft sequence. Cropsy lies down inside a floating canoe to make it appear empty.

After a group of campers on a raft approach nearby, the hulking maniac rises to his feet and eviscerates them with his shears. The Burning has above average acting, superior production values, and better developed characters than most slasher movies. It is one of the few horror movies to have a “final guy” battle the killer at the end instead of the more common final girl.

This movie features a couple of young actors who later became famous. Jason Alexander, who would star in Seinfeld a decade later, appears in a supporting role. The film also features a brief appearance by Holly Hunter, who has starred in numerous award-winning films.

1. Sleepaway Camp (1983)

Sleepaway Camp stars Felissa Rose as Angela Baker, a shy and mysterious girl who accompanies her cousin to a summer camp. The other kids bully the socially awkward Angela, and she also becomes the target of the camp’s sleazy cook, a creep who preys on young girls. But someone isn’t happy with how Angela is being treated.

Her tormentors are viciously dispatched one by one by a mysterious assailant. The camp counselors believe that Angela’s hot-headed cousin Ricky must be responsible. The quiet, innocent Angela couldn’t have anything to do with the murders, could she?

The cast portraying the campers is composed of youth performers, which sets the film apart from most ‘80s slashers. The horror movies of that era were notorious for casting actors in their twenties and even thirties to play teenagers. Felissa Rose was 13 when she portrayed Angela and the rest of the young campers were about the same age.

Rose has only a few lines of dialogue, but she uses body language to express Angela’s simmering rage, fear, and inner turmoil. There isn’t much gore, although I will give the movie credit for creativity. This is the only film I’ve seen with a curling iron as a murder weapon.

Sleepaway Camp is best known for its shocking, grotesque, and controversial ending. The film’s final scene is probably the reason that Sleepaway Camp is one of the few prominent ‘80s horror movies that hasn’t been remade. Societal views on gender and sexuality have undergone profound changes over the last four decades and this movie’s perspective is a far cry from modern films.