Think back to your first summer camp experience. That specific smell of damp pine, generic bug spray, and the low grade anxiety of trying to fit in. Now imagine all of that, but instead of a merit badge for archery, you get a body count in one of the most debated endings in cinema history. Sleep away camp, that's the flick we're gonna talk about today. This is Parallel Frequencies, I am Just Blane.

She's Coco and you are the Freqs. What's up Coco, how are you on the Whistful Wednesday? Not me, tired from watching this sleep away camp at 11 o'clock last night. Yeah. Only been late.

And we're gonna talk about why we put it on the list today, we will. Well, I mean we might as well just do it right now. It's wild, it's wild. It was a coincidence, a crazy coincidence that couple nights ago, I can't sleep, so I put sleep away camp on. It pops up on my Amazon Prime.

As you do when you can't sleep. You're like, when is that movie to put me to gentle lullaby? No, that's my thing. I love watching horror movies and going to bed. Like that's, yeah, I put it on.

I like, but I have a rule that after midnight, it has to be something that's like from the 80s or 90s. It's gotta be vintage, nostalgic. So it was like 1 a.m., couldn't sleep. So I'm like, you know what, I wanna see Felicia Rose and Jonathan Tears, then I wanna see them in sleep away camp. Because who doesn't like a good campy movie?

And this is where the camp slasher genre really, I don't wanna say started, because we can go back and find some more. But this is the one that put it on the map. You know, so, but the coincidence here. I watch it, and then not 12 hours later, we get news that Jonathan Tearston passed away. And he plays Ricky in Sleep Away Camp, which incredible role.

And Coco, we had something else scheduled on the docket today, but we were like, you know what? It's Whistful Wednesday, which is a nostalgic movie we normally do. Yeah. I just watched Sleep Away Camp, and then the news broke that Jonathan Tearston sadly passed away. I think we gotta do Sleep Away Camp.

That's how this came about, right? Yeah, yeah. Let's give tribute where we can, when we can. And definitely if there's been some sort of intuitive premonition, I think, on your part to watch the movie. I don't think that, I mean, obviously I'm in the woo world, but it's the second instance, right?

Like, I feel like something that's pushing us to do a certain thing. And then something like that happens. You gotta roll with it. So what's your witchiness say about that? I think there's a lot more to synchronicities than people would give credit for.

I mean, people like to say, coincidences are coincidences. Sure, that seems, you know, statistically, if you wanna map it out in a nice T-graph, sure, coincidences happen. But I think that for people who pay attention, I think that people who feel and intuitively go with their gut feelings on a lot of things that they do, they understand that feeling when something is, I'm being pulled or pushed or prompted or in some way guided towards something. I think that was kind of the, you know, could it possibly be coincidence that you just woke up and were like, I can't sleep and I need to watch something. I'm gonna watch this movie of all the 80s movies, of all the horror movies, of all the different things you could have watched.

And then to say, I'm gonna watch this one. I mean, come on people, I wanna hear your stories too. I wanna hear you tell me, have you ever had something where Jess felt like, I don't know why, but I've gotta follow this instinct, this prompting, this like feeling to do something. And then it turned out that it was just the exact right thing that you needed at that time or? Yeah, what's the, I mean, what is the chances that that coincidence lines up and it's just a coincidence, you know, I don't know.

A statistics major can figure that out for us. I took statistics in college and I barely passed. I could get myself out of a speeding ticket with a good discussion about, you know, differentiated deviation, whatever it's called, but I was not very good at statistics. I was the one on the test who was like, what's the likelihood you're gonna reach into a drawer full of batteries and some are packaged and some are not and some have a charge and then you grab it for your flashlight and what are the chances you're gonna get one that works or some such thing? And I remember just being like 100% because I'm gonna grab the packaged batteries.

What kind of push is this? So I just, I wasn't good at all the configuration of numbers. I mean, I think, you know, coincidence is just part of the simulation, you know, so that's- Okay, yeah, we can get into that, for sure. Yeah, we can totally get into that. Or, you know, the fact that we live in an algorithm or whatever else, we actually lost a internet 1.0 algorithm generator here back from way back.

And I don't know if you heard about this, but we had a sad funeral maybe, I don't know. Here's the picture. Ask Jeeves, do you remember the website? Oh, was that still going? Yeah, well, not now, they had to shut it down after 30 years.

Jeeves? Ask.com, Ask Jeeves, remember this guy? Here he is on the screen, but he's gone, we lost him. And I gotta say though- That's before Google, right? Am I right in remembering?

I mean, I wasn't up on what was the technology advancing, but it was, Ask Jeeves was before Google, if I remember right. I believe so, I believe so, because like I said, this was an early pioneer of- Yeah, search engine. The early wild west days of the internet, AOL, Yahoo, all these other ones, Ask Jeeves was right in there with them. So the kids out there, if there's any Freqs who are younger than probably what, 30 I guess, since it was 30 years ago, said yeah, if you're younger than that, you don't remember Ask Jeeves. They're like, who is Jeeves?

Who is this? Yeah, I mean, when technology advances to a point where something else pops up and is more accurate, and searching, and more accurate in facts, and it kind of trumps, one trumps the other until it becomes like the prominent way that people go to search information. So I think that's my guess on what happened, but it's interesting that we were just talking about using AI to assist us in things, and having a butler named Jeeves, even if it's an AI butler, is right up the alley of what's coming out in modern advancements. So I mean, it's interesting that it's gone now when it's probably the time it should be coming up. Coming up, you know what?

I'm working on an AI assistant for myself, sure, I know. I'm just gonna duplicate myself, but I'm gonna name him Jeeves. I've been trying to figure out a name. I think Jeeves would be perfect for my AI assistant. Yep, a little tip the hat.

Yeah, keep him going. And we're naming the next generation of helpful technology assistants. Yeah, yeah. Eastwood Technology too much, I can tell. Let's get to West Full Wednesday and the movie.

All right. Sleepaway Camp, the movie that really shouldn't work. It's low budget, the acting is inspired, maybe, and the fashion is aggressively 80s, but it becomes a cornerstone of the cult horror world. Why? Why does this movie still haunt us?

Is it the gore? That's my question. Is it the deeply weird, uncomfortable energy? Like that is radiating in every frame of this movie, by the way. Is it the short shorts?

You know, I don't know, maybe those shorts were. And some tight clothes. Yeah. On one camp counselor in particular. Dig time.

You know, he's standing while other characters are at sitting level. Little bit of uncomfortableness for me, well, noticing that, but yeah. Tight shorts. Yeah, but let's get into this mess called Sleepaway Camp, 1983. I said it's a mess, it really is.

I mean, think about the opening scene, that speedboat accident, that's pure 80s chaos right off the bat. The first real star of the movie, first 10 minutes, Aunt Martha comes in, you know. She sounds like she's constantly recited in a dark nursery rhyme while being slightly over-medicated. It's almost, it's wild. So you've got this weird relative, this weird energy already at the beginning.

Yeah. Yeah, what were you feeling? I just threw this one on you literally yesterday to watch this movie. And I will say even from yesterday to today, this is a two watch requirement. Oh yeah.

Like I was gonna watch it once yesterday afternoon, fine, all good. I went on a date with my husband last night and we got Ethiopian food by the way. Oh nice. Favorite food in the whole world. We were out to dinner last night and I started telling him about this movie and I'm like, you gotta see, I gotta show you these scenes.

And I'm like describing it. And then I get to a point where I'm like, all right, we'll just go home and watch it. So last night, probably too late when we shouldn't have been up that late, we sat down and I was like, start to finish. And even as I started watching it the second time, I was like, wait, I don't remember that. Yeah.

Oh, I'm so glad I watched this the second time because there were things I was kind of Googling the synopsis of certain things because I was a little confused the first watch and just so glad I watched it a second time. So glad that I like forced myself to do that. But I have a question before we like really get into my thoughts a lot. What, you know, we talked about this being a cult classic, right? There are so many horror fans out there that like they dig deep into these particular type of horror movies, especially from there from the seventies and eighties where it might be low budget.

They're kind of, I mean, some of them are like, you don't recognize a single name in the cast at all, but people love these movies. And I just want to know, cause I'm not ear on the ground in with that. Yeah. I want to know what is it? What is it about this movie that they love so much?

What makes it a cult classic? Do you know? I mean, I could guess it's probably a mix of the atmosphere that the movie has. It's sure being at a camp, because if you went to a camp as a kid, it was always cool. And if you didn't get to go to a camp as a kid, this was always kind of the way in.

Weirdly enough, this was the way in to see what a camp life was like. I don't think I ever went to a camp, but I got to see it in this, in these kinds of movies. And at this point, it's nostalgic. We get to look back at what it was like in the eighties, because that's a lost moment in time. Now, I don't think they got campgrounds that are quite like this now.

I don't know. I hope they do. I wish they did. If they do, I'll sign up to be a camp counselor right now. Yeah.

For good reason, I think they've gotten themselves kind of a bad rep, some bad PR for wilderness retreats, for kids, things like that. Yeah. And I think there are probably some excellent ones out there, but I think even they know when they run an operation like that, whether it's for therapeutic reasons, or if it's one of these kind of just, you know, sleep away camp, like a boarding school for summer, they have to be real careful. They're working with the kids. And I think this movie highlights a lot of the reasons why.

It's very true though, yeah. Very first thought in watching this movie was, you know, the kitchen staff, obviously like the comments made about kids. And I was like, ugh, already I was, you know, every muscle in my body is tightening up. And I'm like, uh-oh. Yeah.

I'm glad we're showing an example of something that even in 1983, this movie comes out and they're like, this is bad. Yeah. And it's real. These movie viewers are inappropriate. Looking at kids this way is wrong.

Like they were kind of displaying that and also showing the evilness of it. Yeah. You know, it's like, let's not lose sight of that as we move into new. You see it too, that the fat chef that tries to force himself onto the girl in the kitchen, he's one of the first to die and we don't feel bad. No, I don't feel bad.

We're like, whatever, bro, you know. Yeah, I'm a little more uncomfortable with the other kitchen staff members like Ben, who he felt safe enough to fully display his pedophile thoughts outwardly. And Ben's doing the whole like, ah, this is just locker room talk kind of thing. He wasn't like, what did you just say, man? I need to get the police out here.

No, he was like, oh, don't say those things out loud. And like Elbow walk out of frame. I was like, not only is it uncomfortable that he said the things out loud, the thoughts out loud, but like, nobody's like catching on. Nobody's gonna slap him in the mouth like he deserves. I gotta go back to the why this movie hits.

And it is, once again, it keeps coming back to me in my head. It's the camp. We got camp Aura walk here. Yeah. And it is its own character.

Just like a Camp Crystal Lake in a Friday the 13th movie is its own character. So there's something that's attractive about that that brings us in too. Yeah. Like I said, it's the camp. I don't know, there's something just intriguing about it.

Yeah, I mean, do you have a Sleepaway Camp? It's a fun idea. You're away from your parents. I mean, come on. Whole summer with friends and there's activities constantly and outdoors and you're bunking with friends, like a sleepover every night.

I mean, the idea, the general concept of Sleepaway Camp is really appealing and fun and sounds like a blast. And then in the movie here, we get to see the 1980s bullying because that's a big part over here all the way through this movie. I mean, Judy, my good Lord. Judy, she's the alpha bully archetype. She doesn't just wanna be popular.

She wants to mentally dismantle anyone who isn't wearing a crop top. It's fascinating to watch how they portrayed camp life but it's essentially Lord of the Flies. Like that's what this thing is. Yeah, I agree with you thinking that too where you're just watching this and going, where are the counselors? Why isn't anybody stepping up?

It was so weird because I watched this movie and Lord of the Flies literally just came out on Netflix. I watched it almost in parallel with this and I was like, holy crap, wait a minute. This is very similar. So Sleepaway Camp had Lord of the Flies vibe to it. So exactly, but where are the counselors?

Yeah, because I mean, in this day and age, you would expect this kind of camp. Most of those adult supervision are all 16 to 18 year old kids. They're not that much older than the kids that are participating in the crop. They were hired to come and be camp counselors but Meg, for example, is a camp counselor and she's just as awful as Judy. I mean, she's mean and terrible and gets her just reward, I guess.

Yeah, she's a lot. She's a lot. That's all I can say about it. But we see this unfiltered honesty to how mean these kids are. It's not a Disney.

It's not your Disney Channel type of mean. Go ahead, yeah. They definitely were earning their R rating. You can sense this. I said this as I was watching it.

It was almost like the movies you were warned about when we were kids. I don't know if you did this on the playground but there was always that one kid who had seen a really bad movie and he's like, this movie I saw one time, it was rated like X, X, X or whatever. I'm like, whatever that even means. But then they're telling you about it and they're like, they say bad words, like this bad word and that bad word. It was almost like this movie was trying to live up to that.

I mean, just the overabundance of insults and words, even from Ricky himself, when he's hurling insults at the other kids, it's just like every bad word I can think of is gonna be stuck in my head. I love that, eat shit and die and then he yells back, eat shit and live. I think it's great. It's constant, the whole movie. When the kids are on the roof throwing the water balloons and I think it's Ricky there, is it not?

It has his outburst yelling at the kids up there and the old man comes out and I love this because this is probably how I was. He's a younger kid. I'm talking, he went the fuck off on them on that roof and the old man standing back just letting it happen and finally he's like, okay, calm down. And I guarantee you, that's what I had in my life. I probably was allowed to get everything out and then there was probably somebody near me to say, all right, now calm down and I started thinking.

I was like, I've got a six-year-old and a three-year-old and if they, not that they're throwing out F bombs and stuff like this, but when they have their moments, their freak out moments, I'm noticing that I'm that one that's always kind of like, all right, all right, calm down, calm down and I'm holding them back a little bit but not like a get mad at you type of way. So do your thing. Yeah, I love that interaction though because it reminded me, yeah, but man, what a fireball. He really was. Yeah, you gotta hand it to Ricky, being kind of the, more or less the hero in this whole story because he's working so hard to defend his cousin and to be like, you know, putting everybody in their place and standing up for the little guys and all of that.

So, you know, you kind of hand it to Ricky, although my question about Ricky's character in this and I wanna know your thoughts is, I was asking myself all the way to the end, did Ricky know? Was Ricky made aware? Like we're made aware from the very beginning, as you mentioned his mother. Yeah. He's just kind of like, oh, there goes mom going off again.

He's fully aware his mom is a little nuts and she's not all there. And that, you know, that is clear. Again, on the second watch, I didn't recognize the storyline and the connection to the boating accident in the beginning and when they say, oh, Dr. Thomas is coming and they're like, oh, aunt Martha is Ricky coming too. That's when I kind of started to piece together a little bit more of the details and the connections here but my first watch, I wasn't totally clear on that.

No, I wasn't. But then I'm like, okay, so we find out at the end, right? The big surprise, the big ending is, but did Ricky know that this cousin who came to live with them after this boating accident, is this Angela or is it Peter? Does he know that? Good question.

Freqs, I wanna hear from the Freqs. What do you think? Did he know? I wanna know what he knows. I'm not sure.

I'm not sure. I'm really not sure. It's not obvious, right? It's not obvious. He's treating her like this is my cousin Angela.

This is, there's never any awareness or any hint or any clue from his demeanor or his words or anything he says or does that's like, that he knows anything different than this is my girl cousin Angela, right? Yeah, and it's one of the few endings that genuinely feels wrong in a way that sticks with you. It like sticks to your ribs. Like, you're not getting rid of this. Yeah, I think I was a little mad that I made him watch it, to be honest.

You gotta see this ending. You gotta see it. But is it a product of its time? Or is it a tragic story about a child who was forced into a box they didn't fit into until they finally just snapped? You know, I don't know.

What is going on there? I think looking at it now through like a 2026 lens is a little bit different because we handle a lot of stuff differently now, identity, trauma, gender. You know, so I- Yeah, the separation of gender for sure. And I felt, and this may be just my interpretation. Again, I love to know what the Freqs think.

I love to know like, you know, cause there could be a lot of interpretations in watching a movie like this and say, this is how I, what I got. I felt like there was this underlying, not explicitly said, but the message or like what I was getting was, if this was Angela all along, if this had been the girl, Angela, she wouldn't have committed these murders. Like she was committing murders because she was Peter. Do you know what I mean? I felt like this was like, oh, a girl wouldn't have done this stuff, but a boy would.

Yeah, exactly. That's the message I was getting. And I'm like, I don't know if today in the way that we like understand gender and we don't put things into these boxes of roles as much, thank goodness, I hope. But yeah, I kind of got that impression. I was kind of like, are they trying to say that like Peter is strong enough to like hold somebody down?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or whatever, like, but like, if it was Angela, it wouldn't have been, I don't know. I mean, just my thoughts. That's my final question. How about that?

No final thought, final question for the Freqs. Does the ending still hold up? Is it a shocker or does it feel a little bit different now that we're more culturally aware? Go ahead, Kalka. Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, that's a great question.

My final thoughts, if I could have the real horror, the only moment that I felt, okay, actually I have two final thoughts, sorry. It just occurred to me that I have another one. The only real horror I felt like I got from this movie, because, you know, again, horror feels a little differently in a modern day. Yes. Watching a 1983 version where you're just kind of like, oh, that's cute.

Yeah. Oh, that happened. Well, the real horror for me was watching the beginning of it and seeing the chefs cooking for all those campers and seeing the piles of corn they had to cook up. And for a second, I imagined what it would be like to be like camp chef or cook. Oh, to me, that's a real horror.

Thinking about spending all day in the kitchens feeding like however many 60 camper kids in the mess hall. Not only that, but- That's a real horror story. Just 60 unappreciative campers, because you know they're not coming in and they're being nice about- You're like, yum. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Although if they're getting real corn, like real ears of corn rather than canned corn or like creamed corn, which is what I would expect from most places, but they should be appreciative.

That's pretty, in our day to day, we'd be like, do you know how much money that would cost to trial the corn? It's pretty expensive. I think we should find us a sleep away camp or have one, we should make one. I don't know. They're all haunted.

I know. There's gotta be a lot. There's gotta be a lot near us. Yeah, I'm sure there are around here. There's some really good ones, by the way, for behavioral and therapeutic purposes.

There's a couple out here that I've heard of, but they're actually top of the line, like incredible for kids struggling with behavioral issues or mental health issues. And so I just wanna point that out. So if there was somebody looking for something like that, we have some good ones out here in Utah. I just know. But more than that, I know I love to just circle around it, but I actually was pleasantly, pleasantly surprised at the quality of the horror effects in this movie.

Like when it showed the guy, he was attacked by bees, or when it showed the guy boiling in his face and skin, melting off. I was actually really surprised at how realistic it looked and for being low budget, I guess, we can classify this movie. I thought it was excellent. I just wanted to say that. Big time, big time.

And shout out to, once again, Felisa Rose. I follow her on Instagram. She's a great follower. Check her out. She's still active.

She's still very active in movies. She's still active in the con scene. And I don't mean that in a bad way. I'm talking about Comic Con, Fan Exes, those kinds of things. Gotta go check her out.

I would love to talk to her right here on the show. We could do another episode if Felisa come talk to us. Big fan of hers. Seen her on Joe Bob before. Her and Joe Bob are tight, so I know they've got a great relationship.

But that's gonna do it for this edition of Parallel Frequencies. Wistful Wednesday, once again. Sleep away camp. Rest in peace to Jonathan Tearston, once again. Yeah, love to his family.

And I am Just Blane. She is Coco. You are the Freqs and we'll see you on the other side.