1983's Sleepaway Camp stands as a cult classic in the slasher canon of Friday the 13th ripoffs, but there's no way its content would fly today. The 1980s were of course the golden age of the slasher sub-genre of horror, which was sort of unofficially kickstarted by John Carpenter's Halloween, then cemented by Friday the 13th, itself an unabashed Halloween imitator. Friday the 13th would actually prove to be more influential to slashers as a whole, if only due to it being fairly easy to copy. Put characters in a remote location, throw in some gore, nudity, and a surprise killer reveal, and one has the basic recipe down.
The 1980's saw literally dozens of films fitting that bill, many of those being so bad that it made Friday the 13th's relatively quality level a lot more apparent. Some though, such as The Burning, turned out pretty good, serving as worthy alternatives to any slasher fan tired of re-watching Jason Voorhees' adventures. My Bloody Valentine was also a great example of a good Friday the 13th clone.
Arguably the best, or at least most memorable of the lot though is Sleepaway Camp, which spawned several sequels, sadly none of which were really worth much. The original remains a favorite of many, but several factors, especially one major one, ensure it could never be made today without a drastic overhaul.
Sleepaway Camp: Why The Cult Classic Wouldn't Be Made Today
Sleepaway Camp is the kind of horror movie that really doesn't get made today, outside of the occasional indie movie specifically trying to emulate that style. Some would say that's good, but fans of 1980s slashers would certainly disagree. Either way, societal standards have changed a lot over four decades, and a movie as relentlessly and unabashedly politically incorrect as Sleepaway Camp likely wouldn't get made now. If not for one particular factor, the most impossible to adapt to modern times aspect would be the camp cook, who's an overt child sex offender, clearly wanting to take Angela in the back and molest her. The way he talks about young girls is quite shocking by today's standards, and was still definitely gross back in 1983. At least he gets a deservedly harsh demise.
The biggest issue is of course the resident elephant in Sleepaway Camp's cabin, that being the twist ending, in which a double reveal occurs: quiet soft-spoken Angela was the killer all along, and she was born a boy, but psychologically tortured by her sadistic aunt into assuming a female identity. In 1983, this ending was mostly played for sheer shock value, with a hint of the "gay panic" that permeated the 1980s. Now though, some see Angela as being trans, and that leads into a very messy realm of possible interpretations. Is her being trans supposed to be connected to her drive to murder? Is the ending twist as a whole transphobic? Unsurprisingly, since no group is a monolith, the opinion of Sleepaway Camp within the trans community tends to be mixed, with both defenders and detractors.
Then again, the idea that Angela was tortured and manipulated into being trans introduces even more uncomfortable questions, since gender identity is obviously not something people should be forced into. Either way, these are all issues most filmmakers or studios aren't going to want to touch with a ten foot pole in the 2020s, lest they create potential outrage and boycott threats. Perhaps that's just as well though, as the debate over the original Sleepaway Camp still hasn't really ended.