The Correct Order To Watch The Sleepaway Camp Franchise

Quick show of hands: how many of you reading this knew there were five "Sleepaway Camp" movies? Put your hand down, liar in the back, I see you. Casual movie fans are likely aware of "Sleepaway Camp" due to the film's infamous ending, or tracked it down after that one "Robot Chicken" sketch where they recreated the ending with claymation as a character exclaimed, "Oh, my god! Somebody remembered this movie and wrote a comedy sketch about it!" /Film gave the original film a spot on our ranked list of the "Best Slashers of All Time," so even if fans are unaware of the latter installments, there was, of course, always going to be sequels.

"Sleepaway Camp II" and "Sleepaway Camp III" mark the leading actor debut of Pamela Springsteen (yes, of that Springsteen family) and take place years after the events of "Sleepaway Camp." The fifth film released but fourth in the timeline, "Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor" might as well be a lost film at this point, and "Return to Sleepaway Camp" from 2008 saw the return of both Felissa Rose as Angela Baker, but was also directed by the original film's same director, Robert Hiltzik.

Do you really need to watch all of these films? Well, I'm here to give my expert opinion on the ultimate order to watch the franchise. All art is subjective and it's not like I wrote the book on it or anything (except my wife and I actually did), but as a lifelong fan who has lost count of how many times I've watched this delightfully disastrous horror series, I've got you covered.

The original "Sleepaway Camp" is a ridiculous, messy triumph, and a breath of fresh air in a subgenre of "Friday the 13th" ripoffs. Starring actual teenagers instead of adults playing a decade younger, there's a youthful, rebellious spirit to "Sleepaway Camp" that has gone unmatched. And as the film takes place at a youth summer camp, this also means that the film makes the shocking decision to kill off kids, something that even the scariest horror films avoid out of fear of upsetting the apple cart. Here are all five films in release order:

• "Sleepaway Camp" (1983)
• "Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers" (1988)
• "Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland" (1989)
• "Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor" (1992/2012)
• "Return to Sleepaway Camp" (2008)

"Sleepaway Camp II" and "III" lean far more into horror comedy than the original slasher, while "Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor" is a lot like "Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2" in that much of its runtime utilizes footage from the previous films. The movie's crew began shooting new footage for the flick in the early '90s, but the production company went bankrupt before they could finish. The footage was initially released as a special feature on the "Sleepaway Camp" Survival Kit DVD box set, but 20 years later, filmmaker Dustin Ferguson and producer John Klyza of SleepawayCampFilms.com gave the film a proper release.

There are three different options for the correct order to watch the "Sleepaway Camp" franchise. I asked my wife and "Sleepaway Camp" book co-author, and her recommendation was "watch the first film and then politely turn off the TV and go do something else with the rest of your time," because she is a dyed-in-the-wool, capital-H Hater of the rest of the series. I'm a little bit nicer, so I've got two other suggestions. If you're a completionist, watch the films in the order in which they were released, which is listed in the slide above. If you're looking to track timelines, you can either watch "Sleepaway Camp I-III" and forego the other two, or you can watch "Sleepaway Camp" (1983) and then "Return to Sleepaway Camp" to get the Felissa Rose canonical timeline.

If you want a little dessert after your watching, you can also track down the unrelated "Caesar and Otto's Summer Camp Massacre," a horror buddy comedy spoof of "Sleepaway Camp" featuring Felissa Rose as a mysterious camp counselor named Carrie, and the feature debut of "Empire" star Trai Byers. Yes, this does mean "Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor" is the forgotten child in both of these recommendations, but that movie is essentially a glorified fancut. It's also out of print and next to impossible to get your hands on, so there's no need to waste your time trying to track down a film that is certainly not worth the hunt.