18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Summer Camp Nightmare a.k.a The Butterfly Revolution, February 24, 2002
This review is from: Summer Camp Nightmare [VHS] (VHS Tape)
Many are unaware, but this movie was based on a book titled above and changed in order to cash in on the commercial sounding horror teen market. This is known to be a "cult favorite" among my best friend and I. The title is a bit misleading as it is not so much a horror flick but more like an action suspense. The plot is simple enough: The start of what appears to be a fun and innocent summer at sleepaway camp is interrupted when a young C.I.T. who is bent on taking control of situations, finds a way to get other members of the young staff to overthrow the camp management in order to have their own revolution. Considering the severity of this action, and without adult supervision, routine soon becomes a memory and things get out of control. The leader of the revolution, Franklin Riley, declares himself a "General" and ranks others in ways that he sees fit using old school control tactics to keep his peers in line. When a rape and a murder occurs, some of the kids become more deeply involved in the revolution and others start to have second thoughts, which creates the basic conflict in the plot. Although the movie has pretty decent acting and directing, some of the dialogue is really corny. (Look for an angry denim jacket wearing punk teenager responding to being accused of rape by saying "That's a bunch of baloney!" But other than the dialogue, it moves pretty fast and is definitely high in basic entertainment value. The main character, a 12 year old boy named Donald, will tend to make a child hater out of Dr. Seuss, but hey no movie is perfect!
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5.0 out of 5 stars
A different kind of summer camp flick, December 29, 2011
This review is from: Summer Camp Nightmare [VHS] (VHS Tape)
As L.A. Morse points out in his indispensable 1989 film guide "Video Trash & Treasures II," during the 1980s the summer camp was traditionally either the setting for low budget, backwoods slasher flicks or sex comedies with "Porky's"-level humor (and of course plenty of gratutitous T & A). All that changed in 1986 with the arrival of "Summer Camp Nightmare," which apparently had a very limited theatrical release (in the U.S. only) but hit cable and home video shortly thereafter.
The new head authority figure Mr. Warren (Chuck Connors) at a distant boys summer camp, populated by both young kids and 20-something counselors, institutes a rigid caste system restricting all the boys' fun, including no TV, no swearing, and worst of all, absolutely no access to the nearby girls' camp. Through a series of events one of the head C.I.T.s (Counselors in Training), who is also a student of social order-type theory and revolutions, uses force and weapons to overthrow control of the camp, thereby holding all the adults captive in order to achieve his ends. The camp is then forcibly combined with that of the lovely ladies of Camp South Pines, the girls camp a stone's throw away. Incessant drinking, partying and other assorted debauchery then become the new order of the day at Camp North Pines, until in somewhat of an homage to "Lord of the Flies," it isn't long before the unsupervised kids resort to violence and general savagery in their new degenerated society.
Literally believable this movie may not be; and yet I've loved it to death ever since I first saw it on HBO as a 12-year-old in 1987. It's low budget, to be sure, but the direction of Bert L. Dragin and the co-script of Penelope Spheeris ("Decline of the Western Civilization Part II") make this a fun, extremely amusing little thriller all the way through. There's just a certain atmosphere about classic "B" movies from the mid '80s like this one that could never be reproduced. Part of that, I'm sure, is due to the typically dated '80s synthesizer soundtrack, but I for one lap up every moment of it. Charles Stratton gives a great and commanding performance ala Timothy Hutton in "Taps" as General Franklin Reilly, head of the "Supreme Revolutionary Committee," or the main ringleader and instigator of the trouble in other words.
After 22 years of only being an obscure VHS title, "Summer Camp Nightmare" was apparently finally given a DVD release of sorts in 2009, one I'm told was sourced directly from video, only to have the company that made it go out of business, and hence it's now rarer than natural cubic zirconia on the internet and I haven't seen a single copy for sale on Amazon for eons. The movie needs to get a real DVD release complete with remastering and a boat load of bonus features, but in the meantime there are decent bootlegs available on DVD-r sites elsewhere on the web if you search hard enough for them.
But get it any way you can; "Summer Camp Nightmare" has classic written all over it and is like a time capsule back to the mid '80s, a place I'd probably spend more time if I could. They just don't make 'em like this one anymore.
(Final sidenote: Before Stratton and his cohorts seize control of the camp, there is a summer talent show of sorts complete with dated mid '80s Fat Boys-style rapping by one of the campers and a sped-up version of Fear's "Beef Baloney" by two of the ruffian C.I.T.s, one being a delinquent long-haired metalhead who wears an Iron Maiden shirt named Stanley Runk, in another Oscar-worthy performance by Stuart Rogers. Note that there is a Top 1000 Amazon reviewer who is such a fan of this movie that he's based his whole Amazon profile around it and also incidentally answers to the name Stanley Runk. For years I was hoping he'd be one of the few here to review this because his reviews are so great and funny. I'm with ya partner! Runk the punk lives on in cyberspace!)
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