Truly one of my favorite horror movies of all time, Robert Hiltzik’s 1983 summer slasher Sleepaway Camp first shocked me as a young genre fan and continues to age like a fine genre wine with every passing year. The cult classic is finally coming to Blu-ray courtesy of Scream Factory and, to celebrate, Daily Dead recently chatted with Hiltzik about the film that defined his career.

Thanks so much for speaking with me today, Robert. Sleepaway Camp has always been one of my favorite horror movies, so I’m really excited to talk about it and the new Blu-ray.

Robert Hiltzik: Oh, thanks so much. I haven’t had a chance to see the Blu-ray yet, but I know Scream Factory does some great stuff on their titles, so I’m really happy they’re the ones putting out Sleepaway Camp.

They definitely are the right ones to be handling the Blu-ray- it looks incredible. I wanted to start off by going back to when you were first coming up with the story for Sleepaway Camp. Considering how shocking a lot of the material is, especially since this was the early eighties, were you ever concerned that Sleepaway Camp was going to be too much for audiences?

Robert Hiltzik: At the time, I definitely knew I was going to shock some audiences, but that was the big appeal to me. I wanted to do something different. There were a lot of slasher movies being made around then and I didn’t want Sleepaway Camp to be the usual “point A to point B” type of movie. At that time, slasher movies weren’t really doing much in the way of character development either, so that was something else I wanted to focus on. I was looking to give the story texture and layers because I knew that was good entertainment.

I remember when we were first waiting for our rating to come and I was really nervous that we were going to end up with the dreaded X rating. Then I got the call and all I remember hearing was, “Listen, we’ve got some bad news. We got an R rating.” I don’t know if I ever exhaled as deeply as I did on that call. I was like, “Oh, darn” (laughs).

I started working on Sleepaway Camp while I was still in grad school in New York and I’d say the biggest influence on me while coming up with the story was Bride of Frankenstein. I wanted characters that you could relate to and that had some skin on their bones too.

I always loved the fact that even the villains in the movie had ‘something’ to them as well- especially Judy and Meg. In fact, I just picked them as some of my favorite mean girls of the horror genre. I don’t think two antagonists have really stuck with me the way that they did.

Robert Hiltzik: You know what’s really interesting about the role of Judy- I had originally written that role as a blonde character because I wanted her to have this stark contrast against Angela visually. But then Karen (Fields) walks in and just nailed the audition, so I said to hell with needing a blonde- I found my Judy. What’s funny is that Karen is quite possibly the nicest, sweetest, quietest gal ever; definitely nothing like Judy was at all (laughs).

Wow- and she was so great at being pretty much the worst person ever in the movie. Although she may not have been nearly as bad as some of the cooks working at Camp Arawak though (laughs).

Robert Hiltzik: I know, right (laughs)? Those kind of characters in Sleepaway Camp were written that way specifically to set them up for the slaughter. It’s probably a weird thing to say, but I needed to be able to justify the murders. The one thing I still struggle with out of everything in Sleepaway Camp were the kids’ deaths. I still don’t think that scene came across the way I wanted it to. I got a lot of things right on this movie, but that’s the one thing I still question.

Was there anything you weren’t able to get done during production at all?

Robert Hiltzik: Nah, we were really prepared going in, even though we didn’t have all the resources in the world at our disposal. Pretty much everything that was in the original script is up there on the screen. We made that time we had shooting really count.

What were your first impressions of Felissa (Rose) back when you were casting for Sleepaway Camp? What did you see in her for the role of Angela initially? I mean, clearly it was the right choice (laughs).

Robert Hiltzik: Yeah, I’d say I made the right choice for sure (laughs). And when I do auditions, I always have people come in and do them improv-style so I can see what they’d bring to that particular character. I always watch to see if they’re playing to me or if they’re playing into their own intuitions on the role. When Felissa came in to do her audition, she was this precocious little 12-year-old who was just absolutely perfect. I don’t think anyone else could have ever played that role.

Sleepaway Camp was a pretty modest horror movie at the time and since it was released in ’83, we’ve seen several sequels come and go and it’s become an incredibly well-loved cult film as well. Could you have ever imagined that the original and all the sequels would still continue to resonate after all these years?

Robert Hiltzik: I didn’t really. I knew we had a good movie with a great title, but, back then, franchises really weren’t that big of a thing, so it wasn’t something that I was ever thinking about. I know there have been a few sequels, but I wasn’t really happy with them. I was even a bit disappointed in Return (to Sleepaway Camp) too just because the production and financing wasn’t exactly what I had envisioned for it. But I love that these movies endure and I do think there’s at least one more Sleepaway Camp movie to be made. I just don’t know if it’ll happen, but I do have a story in mind.

The one thing that was really surreal for me was a screening that we had a couple of years ago in Chicago. We were screening in this gigantic movie theater; it was cavernous, that’s how big it was. I was prepared for a truly embarrassing evening because I thought there was no way we were going to get a third of the theater filled, let alone pack the house and somehow we did. We had almost the entire theater filled for this little movie and it was incredible. I think I signed autographs and talked to fans for like four hours after that screening too. I couldn’t believe it.

  • Heather Wixson
    About the Author - Heather Wixson

    Heather A. Wixson was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs, until she followed her dreams and moved to Los Angeles in 2009. A 14-year veteran in the world of horror entertainment journalism, Wixson fell in love with genre films at a very early age, and has spent more than a decade as a writer and supporter of preserving the history of horror and science fiction cinema. Throughout her career, Wixson has contributed to several notable websites, including Fangoria, Dread Central, Terror Tube, and FEARnet, and she currently serves as the Managing Editor for Daily Dead, which has been her home since 2013. She's also written for both Fangoria Magazine & ReMind Magazine, and her latest book project, Monsters, Makeup & Effects: Volume One will be released on October 20, 2021.