Sleepaway Camp

Sleepaway Camp opens at a lakeside summer cottage on Long Island. John Baker is at the dock with his partner Lenny and his two children, Peter and Angela. The children paddle out on small rafts. A reckless teenage boater plows through them, capsizing the rafts. John and one of the children are killed. A single surviving child, kept off-camera, is taken in by John's eccentric sister, Aunt Martha.

Eight years later, Aunt Martha sends her niece Angela and her son Ricky to Camp Arawak together. Angela is painfully withdrawn, often mute, refuses to swim, and won't change clothes in front of anyone. The other campers immediately mark her as prey — Judy, a former childhood friend of Ricky's now turned popular and cruel; Meg, a counselor who openly bullies her; and a clique of older boys. Ricky, fiercely protective, tries to defend her.

Bodies begin to appear around the camp. Artie, the camp cook, attempts to lure Angela into a pantry to assault her; later he is gruesomely scalded when a tall stockpot of boiling water is tipped onto him in the kitchen. A bully who threw Angela into the lake later drowns alone. A counselor is stabbed in a shower stall. The owner Mel Costic refuses to close the camp and blames the deaths on accidents and on Ricky, who has a quick temper.

Angela meets Paul, a sympathetic boy who is patient with her silence, and they share a brief, awkward romance. After Angela catches Paul making out with Judy, the killings escalate. Judy is murdered in her bunk in a particularly horrific scene the film mostly cuts away from. Meg is stabbed to death in a private moment. Ricky is increasingly suspected by counselors but keeps surfacing elsewhere when the bodies turn up.

After a night campout on the beach, the counselors and Mel converge on the shoreline. They find Angela crouched naked at the water's edge, cradling Paul's severed head. As they approach, she slowly stands and faces them. The camera reveals that Angela has male genitalia. A final, lingering freeze-frame holds on the snarling, animalistic figure as a counselor delivers the explanation: Aunt Martha already had a son and longed for a daughter, so when the only child to survive the boating accident turned out to be Peter, she raised him as Angela. The film ends on the frozen image.