My goal here is to provide the equivalent of an informative commentary track that Summer Camp Nightmare is likely to never get. Not being an insider, I can only offer comparisons to the novel, observations, and bits of trivia that I’ve picked up over the years. Just like a commentary track, this won’t be all that interesting for anyone who hasn’t seen the movie. It would probably function better in audio format, but then you would have to listen to my voice for 90 minutes. I wouldn’t want to subject anyone to that.
The film opens with a group of buses driving up a winding path heading to Camp North Pines. Superimposed over this is the title Summer Camp Nightmare. The film is actually an adaptation of the 1961 William Butler novel The Butterfly Revolution. I’ve always found the title Summer Camp Nightmare to be misleading. It sounds like a Friday the 13th type slasher movie.
I first found Summer Camp Nightmare in the horror section of Video Paradise, my primary video rental store. I was infatuated with slasher movies at the time, summer camp slashers in particular. I rented Summer Camp Nightmare hoping for another Sleepaway Camp or something of that ilk. I was wary of the PG-13 rating and of the guy on the cover holding a gun, but the scared letter home from Marvin and the girl screaming on the cover was enough for me to commit to it for the weekend.
Instead of a camp slasher, what I got was more of a Lord of the Flies type of story. I was disappointed after my initial viewing, and most reviews I read online lead me to believe that this was a common sentiment. It feels like marketing Summer Camp Nightmare as a camp slasher was just the easiest way to go. This continued as recently as 2005, when an unofficial looking DVD with a VHS quality transfer hit the budget bins of retail stores in the US. The cover of this one featured a picture of the character Trixie/Doreen looking either demonic or maniacal and holding a butcher knife. The butcher knife is nowhere to be found in the movie, but the picture is actually from a scene that I’ll point out later where she is trying to look sexy/seductive.
In the end, maybe it was for the best that it was in the horror section. Sure, it took me longer to appreciate the movie, but seeing as I rarely wandered out of the horror section, who knows when, or even if, I would have found it.
On the bus we see counsellor Ed Heinz, played by veteran TV actor Rick Fitts, leading the kids in a rousing rendition of “Hail to the Bus Driver”. There are a few things to note here. First, he’s wearing a Camp North Pines shirt. The adjacent girls camp is Camp South Pines. This is a change from Camp High Pines and Camp Low Pines in the novel. The only time the name change really comes into play is during the talent show, which we’ll touch on later.
More important is the change in Heinz’s race from the novel. He’s changed from a young white man of 19-20 to a middle aged black man (Fitts would have been in his late 30s when Summer Camp Nightmare came out). While Heinz’s race isn’t explicitly stated in the novel, Butler’s story has considerable racial subtext that would lead me to believe that it would have been mentioned if he was black. The changing of race of Ed Heinz and Ham Pumpernill (we’ll meet him shortly) increase the diversity, but also negate some of the insidious racism that was thematically important to the novel. We’ll come back to this important issue later as we discuss the elimination of the character Don Egriss.
We also get a brief glimpse of the bus driver. I think we can all agree that, while not essential, he was a wonderful addition to the movie.
This brings us to one of the more perplexing changes made for the movie. Protagonist Winston Weyn is rechristened Donald Poultry, nicknamed Duck. Interestingly, both characters had nicknames taken from Disney cartoons. Winston was often derisively called Winnie Pooh by other kids. I don’t dislike the name Donald, or even the nickname Duck. The monosyllabic pet name is used more affectionately in the movie. It’s the last name of Poultry that seems to take things almost to the realm of parody. It rarely comes up in the movie, but when it does, it seems more corny than funny.
Like Winston, Donald still uses a diary to frame the story and move the narrative forward. In a move that seems directly inspired by the character of Data from The Goonies, Donald is now interested in high tech gadgetry instead of literature and political philosophy.
This shot where Ed Heinz and Manuel Rivaz are putting in the tape always confused me. It gives the impression that they’re playing music over the PA system, but a couple of shots later, we see Manuel playing his guitar and singing in a tree.
The characterization of Manuel Rivaz is another interesting choice. His Spanish surname is part of the racial subtext of the novel that we’ll get to later. Here he’s played by Doug Toby1. His ethnicity is only referenced once when he asks the guys planning the revolution, “Are you guys loco?”. When he delivers that line, it sounds like Toby is affecting a forced latino accent. Retaining this ethnicity supports the increased diversity mentioned earlier, but having a non-latino actor play the role is indicative of a common problem seen throughout the history of movies up until maybe the last 5-10 years. This is maybe not as egregious as Fisher Steven’s Indian character in the Short Circuit films but it does speak to the whitewashing that was accepted in the film since the very beginning of the medium.
It’s an unfortunate concept that appears in a lot of my favourite movies. I thought Ben was hilarious in Short Circuit when I was a kid. It was always an interesting bit of trivia that one of the Puerto Ricans in Dawn of the Dead was actually John Amplas in brownface. I’m going to come out and own it now. I didn’t know it was wrong or how damaging it was. I know I can’t speak for other people, but I don’t think Stevens or Amplas has any malicious intentions either. My hope is that now that we know better, we can do better in situations like this.
Speaking of unfortunate, a few shots later we see a white kid running out of a teepee wearing a full First Nation headdress and doing a cartoonish war cry. This problematic trend was particularly common in summer camp movies. The character of Ned performs a very similar routine in Friday the 13th (1980) before the cop calls him both Cochise and Tonto in the span of about a minute.
Again, this is a much bigger topic than can be adequately addressed on this forum. I just don’t think movies that I love should get a free pass on cultural insensitivity2 just because it was common place at the time.
It’s nice to see the novel get such a prominent on screen credit. It was this credit that stuck with me for a while after I saw this movie that prompted me to track down the novel in the first place.
Underneath the credit you can see a bunch of kids running to the water. Watch the boy at the end of the group that gingerly dips his toes in the water. I can’t confirm it, but there is a cast credit at the end of the movie for Tony Willard as Fat Camper. The kid in front of him isn’t particularly svelte either, but I’m pretty sure FAT CAMPER is the guy in back. What a thing to have listed on your resume. If IMDb is accurate, he didn’t work again until he was Surf Judge #1 in Costa Rican Summer and Harry in Luther’s Magical Weed.
Any of these scenes in the lake were shot during the first week of filming at Franklin Canyon/Coldwater Canyon, which has also been seen dozens of TV shows and movies, including A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Creature From the Black Lagoon. The majority of the camp scenes were shot at Trancas Canyon.
After some generic but enjoyable camp hijinks, we meet the bully Stanley Runk the Punk as he gets physical with Donald. Chris Wade and Ham Pumpernill intervene. This is another bit of casting I really like. I can’t read the novel anymore without picturing Stuart Rogers as Runk the Punk. I’m sure that’s not what Butler had in mind in the early 60s, but I credit Rogers for bringing a nice balance of menace, bravado, and vulnerability to the character.
You’ll notice that the older teenagers in this movie aren’t campers as they are in the novel, but Counsellors in Training (CITs). This changes the dynamic as to why the kids stage the revolution in the first place. In fact, many aspects from the novel have been simplified for this adaptation. Obviously, some concessions had to be made for the change in medium, but I think the main fault in the film is the oversimplification of many of the novel’s ideas and characters.
The character of Chris Wade typifies this. His counterpart in the novel is Don Egriss, the only black kid at Camp High Pines. Don serves as Winston’s protector much as Chris does here, but there is an incredible amount of depth and subtext surrounding Don. Chris takes over some of the actions Don had in the novel, but he’s oversimplified to the point of just being a generic good guy.
Ham Pumpernill gets the same race swapping treatment as Edward Heinz. In the novel, we never learn his first name. He says it’s because he’s interested in building transistor radios, but some of the other kids say it’s because his last name sounds like a kind of bread. In the credits here though, he’s listed as Hammond Pumpernill.
By turning the Don character white (Chris) and the Ham character black, the movie downplays the racial tensions in the story. Admittedly, race relations in the late 80s weren’t what they were in the 50s and 60s when this story was conceived. Still, I think it lends to the mistaken notion that racism was eliminated by this time.
The movie doesn’t actively make any of these assertions, but by leaving out the novel’s more complicated ideas, it relegates itself to being a fun, but ultimately superficial story.
I like this quick scene here where Mr. Warren talks about his butterfly collection to Peter and some of the other kids. No, the butterflies don’t show the disconnect between adults and kids the way they do in the novel, but they provide a nice connection to the novel. It’s not a throwaway either as the butterflies come up a couple other times in the movie.
I also like the portrayal of Mr. Warren here. He’s not a sneering villain. He can be gentle and understanding with the younger kids while maintaining his authoritative presence. This makes the later accusations made against him believable. It also gives him some depth when we see his authoritarian approach to disciplining the older teenagers.
Mr. Warren is played by Chuck Connors. Connors is probably best known for playing Lucas McCain, The Rifleman in the 50s and 60s. Horror fans are more likely to recognize him from his memorable turn in 1979’s Tourist Trap. As a young man, he also had stints as a professional athlete in the MLB and NBA. Connors is fantastic in this role. As a whole, I would say Summer Camp Nightmare is very well cast.
In the mess hall, we’re formally introduced to all the counsellors. Ed Heinz is the fun guy, Mr. Warren is the strict authority figure, and Mr. Caldwell is the alcoholic sports director. We’re subtly clued into this fact when we pours some vodka into his cup as Mr. Warren discusses that camp rules. That goofy guy who pointed out the mixer earlier must not have been allowed to sit at the grown ups’ table.
Anyway, the point here is that Mr. Warren was the principal of the rough Braxton High and that the kids are wild, horny, and think that Mr Warren “must be a real shnazi”. We also learn that there is a meditation centre where kids can go voluntarily for some quiet time or where they will be sent if they violate a rule. This building was in the novel as well, except it was referred to as the brig.
After Mr. Warren is done explaining the rules and promising a memorable summer, we see Franklin captivating the younger kids with a gory fairy tale. In the novel he was named Frank Reilley. Since he’s only listed as Franklin in the credits, I assume that the misspelling of his last name (Reilly) on sites like imdb and Wikipedia are typos. His first name is extended though and if I had to hazard a guess, I would say it’s because it sounds better when it’s chanted by a group of campers toward the end of the movie.
Franklin is played by Charles Stratton. I think he does a great job with the role. I particularly enjoy his rapid fire blinking when he gets stressed. Stratton was also in Munchies the same year and has more recently directed an episode of The Fosters.
Here at the rope bridge, Franklin tests his theory that society keeps us in line through the use of fear. He asserts that when we overcome fear, we stand above society. A variation of this line was used on the back of the British VHS sleeve for the CBS/FOX video.
There’s a nice touch here where he calls out John Mason, saying, “I’ll do it if you’ll do it.” In the novel, Frank Reilley is known to do anything he was dared to do as long as the the person who dared him is willing to do it too. I appreciate that small character moments like that are included in the adaptation.
It cracks me up that when Mr. Warren was explaining the rules, he said the rope bridge was off limits for two reasons. First, it leads directly to the girls’ camp, and second, it’s unsafe and can only be used incase of emergency. Look at that bridge. What emergency could come up where crossing that bridge would be the safer option?
This is also a good time to mention how much I love the synthesizer score here. It’s got kind of a Goblin meets Craig Safan feel. Every time I watch Summer Camp Nightmare, I’m surprised by how good the score is.
There’s an interesting bit at the end, when the boys are congratulating Franklin that Chris tells him, “Not bad – for an uptown boy.” Franklin’s background in the movie is that he comes from a rich family. Earlier, one of the kids mentions that he was dropped off at the bus stop in a limousine and that his father wanted him to see how the other half lives. At the end, the police mention that they’ve located his parents in Paris. In the novel, the only bit of his background that is given is that he’s a straight A student and that his father was a police officer that was killed on the job. I think this change works well for the film. His motivation for staging the revolution remains a bit ambiguous.
This brings us to the swimming scene. If you look quickly, you can see Mr. Caldwell studying the clouds and what appears to be our old friend Fat Camper in his usual place on the dock. As Ed Heinz watches dutifully, Franklin reads Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience as Chris attempts to teach Duck how to swim, and the rest of the campers play volleyball or otherwise frolic. In an understandable departure from the novel, the kids no longer swim naked.
This scene plays out similarly to how it does in the novel. Duck is attempting to learn to swim and kind of catching on when Ed Heinz notices a rash on his ass. Nurse Newman (no longer the fat character described in the novel) takes a took at it and sends him on his way. He is a little overambitious when he runs for the cover of water and goes underneath the water. In the novel, he is saved by Don Egriss, but Don’s movie counterpart doesn’t notice. Instead, it’s Franklin who saves him, but not before smirking slightly and waiting to see how this all plays out.
Ed Heinz is busy chatting with Nurse Newman, and Mr. Caldwell is further indulging in the good fight against dry rot and rust (drinking). Franklin waits until he goes under for what would be the last time before swooping and saving the day.
I like this scene. Aside from the omission of Don (my biggest problem with the film), it hits all the important parts from the novel and further establishes Franklin’s issues with authority. We also see what a pent up horndog John Mason is when Nurse Newman shows up, but we’ll get to that later.
When Franklin goes to get dried off, he finds a despondent looking Peter in the cabin. Peter tells him a story about how Mr. Warren kept lifting him up during the butterfly hunt and that he peed his pants. It was established on the bus ride that Peter can’t hold his pee very well. Runk comes in and Franklin tells him that Warren may be more of a fruit than they initially thought. When Runk begins to get riled up, Franklin insists that he will handle this. Runk readily agrees.
The potential of Mr. Warren being a pedophile is an invention of the film and serves to be one of the catalysts for starting the revolution. It’s certainly more expedient than the reasons from the novel, which mostly focus on how out of touch the adults are with youth culture.
A couple things to note here, Peter has.a stutter that has been established in a few earlier scenes. It’s exacerbated by the stress of the peeing incident. I think it’s a nice character touch, but it feels like it’s a little out of Scott Curtis’s range to pull it off. I feel like it would have been better left out of the movie. You might recognize Scott Curtis from 1988’s Cameron’s Closet.
I like the touch of establishing Runk’s subserviance to Franklin early here. It comes up again later in the movie. I think both actors pull this off well. Of course, this is another aspect of the novel that is greatly simplified. Frank Reilley and Stanly Runk in the novel have a power struggle and a strained relationship throughout the revolution.
One thing that can be seen here and in many 80s movies that dates poorly is the latent homophobia and how interchangeable anything queer is with peadophilia. Even the characters portrayed as good casually refer to Mr. Warren as a potential fruit. When Mr. Warren is suspected of child molestation, it is easier to believe and makes him even more of a fruit. Where I live, there was a male school principal that was accused of soliciting explicit images from young boys. I was in the barbershop one day and overheard two people discussing it. One man’s response was, “I always thought that guy was a little bit faggoty.” In this day and age, it’s so disappointing to see that people still equate homosexuality with wanton abuse of children.
Over in the rec hall, Franklin’s strategic brain is further established during a chess game with Duck. He also continues to plant the seeds of malcontent by questioning Mr. Warren’s policy of rigging the television to only receive some channel with a televangelist. He then convinces Duck and Chris to go up on the roof so they can watch the racier parts of Robert Berryman’s music video for Lingerie.
Mr. Warren is of course unimpressed. He declares the that the TV will remain off and that the rec room will be closed. Duck and Chris are also ordered to report to the meditation centre, which the kids call The Pen. This scene brings together the idea that the camp’s primary authority figure is out of touch and too strict and the idea that Franklin considers Mr. Warren a potential pedophile.
This brings us to the talent show. If there is any scene people remember from renting Summer Camp Nightmare from the video store days, this is probably it. It was an unremarkable scene in the novel that Winston only mentions in passing. His friend Paul Indian played a piano sonata and Manuel Rivaz played a rock and roll song on his guitar. In the movie, it’s a showstopper.
First up is three girls from South Pines singing Down South. The whole segment screams 1980s and seems more like something 11-12 year old girls would do than girls this age. Regardless, there’s some innuendo that stirs up the hormones in most of the teenage boys.
The music is credited to Neeley-Chase, which one can assume is music department Gary Chase and Ted Neeley. The lyrics are credited to Robert Dragin (who I believe is the brother of director Bert Dragin). The vocals are credited to the three actresses scene here, Samantha Newark, Nancy Calabrese, and Melissa Brennan. There’s also a credit for Candace Chase, who I’m guessing was related to Gary.
Interestingly, Samantha Newark’s voice would have been familiar at the time from the animated show Jem and the Holograms. Melissa Brennan is now known as Melissa Reeves and is married to Scott Reeves, who played the male lead in Friday the 13th Part VIII. Nancy Calabrese also acted in some soap operas and graced the cover of Summer Camp Nightmare‘s bargain bin DVD I mentioned earlier.
Chris and John Mason go backstage to chat up the girls while Manuel Rivaz plays something on his guitar that we never get to hear. I appreciate the nod to the novel by having Rivaz play. I haven’t mentioned John Mason yet, even though we’ve seen him a few times. I like the sleazy performance from Tom Fridley, who is another Friday the 13th connection. He played a similarly horny, but less malicious Court in 1986’s Friday the 13th Part VI.
Mason takes the stage next with Stanley Runk for the movie’s most memorable moment. They thrash around and rock out with gratuitous crotch grabbing to Fear’s Beef Baloney. Nothing in the movie to this point could prepare you for what’s coming. It’s better to watch it as words can’t do it justice.
When I first saw this movie, I didn’t even know this was a real song. I thought it was something like Down South, but it’s the real deal. Fear even performed it on a Halloween episode of Saturday Night Live that was hosted by Donald Pleasence.
I also couldn’t tell if they’re supposed to be really performing it or just playing along to a recording. The guitars aren’t plugged in, but Ham is playing the drums and there’s another guy in the background playing a keyboard. I’m going to say that, within the world of Summer Camp Nightmare, Beef Baloney is a Runk/Mason original.
I had always assumed that Fear was used in this movie due to Penelope Spheeris’s connection to the punk rock scene. According to actor Stuart Rogers (Stanley Runk), this came from music director Ted Neeley (Jesus Christ Superstar). On the set, he remembers doing the scene to a Ted Neeley version of the song, not the Fear version that appears in the film.
Rogers credits Tom Fridley as the engine behind this scene. He said that Fridley was into the metal scene at the time and even notes his own long hair was because he was doing Shakespeare (Rogers would portray Roderigo in Ted Lange’s Othello in 1989).
I don’t know much about Bert Dragin other than his two directing credits (this and 1988’s Twice Dead and his credit on Suburbia. Penelope Spheeris mentioned that he came from Cleveland and owned furniture stores in the midwest. A little google style sleuthing led me to a 2015 funeral notice for Mike Baker, owner of Carl’s Furniture. According to the obituary, Mike and his high school friend Robert Dragin had opened Furniture Mart in Cleveland in the early 1950s. They sold the store to Dragin’s brother Bert when they were both drafted into the US Army. Spheeris stated that Dragin moved out to Los Angelas with his wife and kids and wanted to make movies. He put up half of the $500,000 budget for Suburbia with Roger Corman fronting the rest.
Both Spheeris and Dragin received screenplay credit on Summer Camp Nightmare. Was this ever something that Penelope Spheeris considered directing herself? I would love to know how much her original script differed from the finished film. Would it have been something more akin to Suburbia and The Boys Next Door?
I should also mention that Summer Camp Nightmare is shot very well and it’s worth noting that cinematographer Don Burgess has shot dozens of high profile films from super hero movies like Spider-Man and Aquaman to Forrest Gump and Contact.
Find part 2 of this commentary here.
Camp High Pines 
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