While Sleepaway Camp 2: Unhappy Campers was markedly different from part one (far more of a comedy, no mystery), part three is really just a rehash of part two. And that isn't necessarily a bad thing. All of the little things that worked in part two work here - they're just a little bit diluted from having been done before. It's a little slower, and the kills are not as frequent (or quite as good). But it was still nice to see Angela back at camp again, killing bad kids.
The set up here? Angela (Pamela Springsteen) somehow knows of a camper getting ready to head out to Camp New Horizons. It's a new camp (built on the same grounds as camp Rolling Hills, where Angela killed a bunch of kids in part two) with a unique premise: they get a bunch of teens from the upper class and a bunch of teens from the lower class, and over the course of camp-time they'll (theoretically) learn to overcome their differences and work together. Angela kills one of the lower-class kids (subtly running her down in broad daylight in a semi-truck) and takes her spot at camp. It doesn't take long for her to get back to her old camper-killing tricks - the dozen or so campers are conveniently split into groups of four, so Angela can pick them off relatively easily.
The whole class dichotomy set-up seems like it could be fertile ground for sneaking in some thematic heft, but Teenage Wasteland isn't really going for that. Sure, the concept kind of pads the film out a bit; characters get to see how the other-half lives and we see some prejudice coming from both groups. But the film forgoes doing anything really interesting in favor of keeping things pretty light. Most of the would-be (will-be?) victims are pretty much one-dimensional stereotypes - you don't really get to know them and never feel too bad when they get killed.
And much like part two, Pamela Springsteen is the highlight as Angela, the strangely principled killer. She delivers her lines with this upbeat inflection, and she seems to be having some fun with the role. Angela gets a little too close to "religious-crazy" at times (nothing too obvious - just language choices) - I prefer her just being a morally upstanding citizen who happens to kill people.
It's never really a "scary" film - you know the kids are going to get it, and Angela is presented in such a way that you are pretty much cheering for her. There isn't much tension, because you realize pretty quickly that this is going to be a lot like part two, where pretty much everyone dies. And these similarities shouldn't be much of a surprise - same writers and director, released a year apart. But why mess with what (more or less) works? The key differences here - the kills aren't quite as good, and the camp is a lot smaller, so there are fewer victims. I don't know if it was budgetary or what, but the effects/gore just weren't as good as I would have hoped. Plus, in this one, Angela seems really keen on beating people to death with a stick - the hits look pretty weak, and you just assume the victim would try to fight back. Conceptually, a couple of the kills are pretty interesting - I particularly dug the flagpole one - but generally speaking it seems to hold back in the gore department.
So it's been slightly diminishing returns for the Sleepaway Camp series. The first one is awesome, the second one is quite good, and the third? Still pretty good. I still get a kick out of the overarching concept of a "moral" killer in a semi-comedic slasher setting. A third entry in a series being this good has to be considered a win.
I would recommend this film.
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