Summer Camp (1979) Seymour Borde & Associates/Comedy RT: 85 minutes Rated R (strong sexual content, full frontal nudity, language, vulgar humor) Director: Chuck Vincent Screenplay: Mark Borde and Avrumie Schnitzer Music: Sparky Sugarman Cinematography: Ken Gibb Release date: June 1979 (US) Cast: Michael Abrams, Jake Barnes, Kashka Bartisick, Bud Bogart, Louise Carmona, Verkina Flower, Brenda Fogarty, Barbara Gold*, Shelly Hart, Walt Hill, Ray Holland*, Peter Lovett, Debra Marx, John C. McLaughlin, Matt Michaels, George Mills, Dustin Pacino Jr., Harry Reardon, Alexis Schreiner, Valdesta, Ralph von Albertson, Robert Wald, Bonnie Werchan. Box Office: N/A
Rating: ***
You might think you’ve never heard of a single actor in the cast of the T&A comedy Summer Camp, but you’d be wrong. I can prove it with one word, pseudonyms. You’ll no doubt notice I’ve placed asterisks next to two names, Barbara Gold and Ray Holland. The former is Linnea Quigley, star of such classics as Silent Night, Deadly Night (the topless girl impaled on a set of antlers), Savage Streets (Linda Blair’s deaf-mute sister and gang rape victim), The Return of the Living Dead (the punk rocker who dances naked in a cemetery before turning into a zombie) and Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (lead role!). The latter is Walter Olkewicz from 1941 (1979), Hot T-Shirts (1980), Jimmy the Kid (1983) and Making the Grade (1984). He’s best known for playing bartender Jacques Renault on the popular TV series Twin Peaks and the movie prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992). You see, I told you! You do know them!
There’s another name in the cast that’s an obvious pseudonym. Can you pick it out? I’ll give you a minute. [Cue Final Jeopardy music] Who is Dustin Pacino Jr.? No really, who is he? He’s really the director Chuck Vincent. He plays a prospector nosing around Camp Malibu for whatever he can find. In real life, Vincent started out as a porn filmmaker (he made the 1982 hardcore classic Roommates) before moving onto softer stuff like Hot T-Shirts (1980), Preppies (1984), Hollywood Hot Tubs (1984), Warrior Queen (1987) and Bedroom Eyes II (1989). He died in 1991. Thankfully, we have all these titles and Summer Camp to remember him by.
Although it beat Meatballs to theaters by a month, some still see Summer Camp as a rip-off of the hilarious Bill Murray comedy. I don’t fully agree with that. Meatballs has more of a plot. Summer Camp has a concept of one. It’s more of a premise really, connective tissue fusing together a series of gross-out gags and sex scenes. Camp Malibu director Herman (Barnes [real name, John F. Goff], The Fog) comes up with a brilliant scheme to save his failing summer camp. He invites a bunch of former campers back for a weekend reunion. The idea is to show them a great time so they will convince their wealthy parents to give him the money he needs. Once he gets them there, this plotline falls by the wayside in favor of the usual dumb hijinks.
The main problem with Summer Camp is that there’s no main character. Once the campers arrive on the scene, Vincent gets all scattershot. He introduces to a group of young characters most of whom appear to be in their late teens or twenties even though they all look closer to 30. We meet the usual stereotypes like the fat slob Horse (Holland/Olkewicz), the snobby rich girl Pam (Gold/Quigley), the van-driving horndog Mike (Albertson), the naïve virgin Muffy (Flower, The Capture of Bigfoot), the slut Kim (Valdesta [real name, Jacqueline Giroux], To Live and Die in L.A.) and resident “I don’t wanna be here” whiner Jerry (Mills). The closest we get to a main character is Matt (McLaughlin [real name, John Laughlin], Crimes of Passion), a smooth talker who lays the same BS about not knowing what to do with his life on everybody. He has a sidekick named Ricky (Michaels) and falls for a nice girl named Cindi (Bartisick). It would make sense if Summer Camp focused on the romance between Matt and Cindi, but it treats it with the same indifference as it does the other characters.
Plot and character are the least of Vincent’s concerns. He instead prioritizes sex and crude humor. He gives us the usual bits- a panty raid, a food fight, boys vs. girls competitions and various childish pranks- as well as something I’ve never seen before, a contest to see who can produce the longest unbroken turd (“The Fantastic Feces Contest”). We also get a scene of a disco dance party with an Arabian Nights theme. Everybody dances to cheesy disco songs like rejects from Saturday Night Fever. This should erase any all doubts that Summer Camp is a product of the late 70s.
Amusing, but Vincent’s attention is on the sex and nudity. We get the obligatory scene of horny guys peeking at naked girls in the shower. Kim figures prominently into two sex scenes. In the first, she screws the assistant cook in the walk-in cooler. It’s good, but the other is better. In it, she screws camp doctor Fox (Abrams) in the infirmary while unknowingly being filmed for the purposes of an embarrassing (and totally deserved) prank. Let me put it this way, there’s enough sex and nudity in Summer Camp to please even the most hormonal teenage boy.
Summer Camp is the only movie that makes Gorp look like a comedy classic. It’s rude, crude, gross, crass and stupid. It’s poorly made on a technical level with the sloppy editing and bad lighting. The whole thing is slapdash. It’s like Vincent was rushing through it to get it into theaters before Meatballs. He succeeded, but at what cost? How about quality? There is NONE here. At the same time, I’d rather watch this Summer Camp than the unrelated one with Diane Keaton, Kathy Bates and Alfre Woodard. That one is just cringe.
I remember wanting to see Summer Camp when it hit theaters in summer ’79. I was a mere lad of 11 and knew damn well my parents would never in a million years take me to a movie like this. They didn’t let me see the PG-rated Meatballs either. I would have given my left middle finger to see Summer Camp. It’s a fair deal; I’d still have one to flip off deserving people.
I finally got to see Summer Camp in spring ’86. I rented it from West Coast Video one weekday afternoon when I probably should have been thinking about what college I’d be attending that fall. I didn’t like it at all. I didn’t laugh or even chuckle once. I thought it was a colossal waste of time. I decided to try it again when I recently came across an old copy of it, a print replete with scratches and skips. The grindhouse aesthetic alone was worth another 85 minutes of my life. Summer Camp is still a bad movie, but it’s one that’s fun to watch. It’s fun precisely because it’s so bloody awful. I admire the purity in form. Vincent set out to make a dirty movie and succeeded in spades. It’s best just turn off your brain, pause your sense of decency and enjoy the perversion.
