Summer Camp (1979)

In the spirit of trying to say one positive thing about the rotten sex comedy Summer Camp, director Chuck Vincent and his collaborators avoided implications of youth exploitation by telling a story about characters in their twenties, rather than teenagers. Accordingly, the film’s numbing barrage of nude shots and sex scenes is distasteful without being truly creepy. That said, Summer Camp has virtually no redeeming values, even though the overarching plot is more or less coherent. Among myriad other problems, this sex comedy is neither erotic nor funny, and in fact some sequences are grotesque. For instance, campers participate in a “Fantastic Feces Contest,” with top honors awarded to the camper whose output is most prodigious. Similarly, one character is a hot-to-trot young woman who comes on to every man she sees, which leads to not only myriad simulated encounters but also to crude remarks about premature ejaculation and the like. Another character—the requisite beer-drinking slob in the John Belushi mode—explains that he’s nicknamed “Horse” because of what he claims to be an impressive endowment. Set to awful disco music, Summer Camp has a workable premise, because Camp Malibu’s director (Jack Barnes) invites past campers to a 10-year reunion in the hopes of persuading the young adults to help raise funds for the struggling camp. Yet the moment the campers arrive, Vincent—who made X-rated porn films prior to Summer Camp—spirals into heavy petting, panty raids, voyeurism, and (shudder) folk music sung around a campfire. For what it’s worth, trash-cinema queen Linnea Quigley, at this point just a few years into her long career, plays one of the sex-crazed campers.

Summer Camp: LAME