Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland / * (1989)

It appears, quite likely, that I have simply misinterpreted the bloody jaunts orchestrated by one Angela Baker. After two movies in which we see her do away with nearly all her peers, usually in moments where awkward posture emphasizes her meek stature next to victims that otherwise ought to be able to overpower the situation, a reader has wisely chimed in that she may have just been kidding the whole time. “These movies are supposed to be funny!”, he confesses. Ok, let’s go with that for the sake of moving through “Sleepaway Camp III,” which occurs one year after the events of the previous, when the community seems to still permeate the stigma of tragedy. Yes, it is entirely possible to view the fact that this year’s roster of participants camping on the same grounds as the previous murders is hilarious – after all, who would be stupid enough to really allow the possibility, especially knowing that the culprit was still at large? Or how about the fact that the camp counselors function less like authorities and more like clueless caricatures, unwise to Angela’s mayhem until they are staring back at her instruments of death? How about that whopper of a development of a supporting player named Barney, who is actually a cop, and the father of a son who was beheaded by Angela the year prior? Normally we would assume he is there to be a protector to those who might face repeating history, but those clever old writers have stumped us; he doesn’t realize she is back on campgrounds until staring at the loaded end of a gun. What a romp of a good time all of us could have had, if we knew from the start that this was done with a tongue firmly planted in the filmmaker’s cheek!

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer / ***1/2 (1986)

The bone-chilling opening scenes of “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer” carry a very ominous subtext: several of them replicate actual crime scene findings of real-life homicide. In their presentation is a pattern that amplifies their findings to the pinnacle of unnerving reactions; the camera cautiously swerves into view of deceased victims frozen in poses of terrible death, and the speakers vibrate with the muffled sounds of their final moments, most of which include horrific screaming as they are violently attacked and murdered. They are not necessarily related to one another, but a common bond does unite them – namely, they are victims of the same man, a creature of corrupt morality who must feed on the power of other’s fading life essences. What drives men like him to the brink of that urge? That is always the question, it seems, in a genre that must consider the antagonists directly. Some do so because their internal suffering has made it their only satisfying outlet. For a rugged loner like Henry, the notion of causing death seems merely to be an act of passing time in an existence that slogs along without purpose or joy.

Steel Magnolias / ***1/2 (1989)

The six women at the center of “Steel Magnolias” are the embodiment of a social class that went extinct in the trenches of current cultural standards. Their audacious impulses carry the undercurrent of flamboyant storytellers, and when they engage in gossip or berate one another with colorful insults and euphemisms, their convictions are solely from a place of virtue. Sometimes their honesty is laced with a bravado that invites outright dismay, and hurt feelings are only momentary to the shock of a cold truth splashed in one’s face. What ties them together goes to the root of all perceptions of human compassion, but they are not dependents whose lives only mean something with one another filling in a void. They have formulated an unending series of friendships because, basically, their depth is enriched by those who share the same capacity for love, and that capacity is a refreshing sentiment in the hands of a world too busy to stop and smell the flowers.