Camp Algonquin. In interviews, screenwriter and director, Robert Hiltzik, has said that he attended that camp as a child. The movie was filmed in five weeks starting in September 1982 and ending in October of that year on a budget of $350,000. The film had been storyboarded but after the first day of filming, the movie was already behind schedule. The storyboards could not be used and were thrown out. The trees, with their leaves turning, belie the summer setting of the film. Unlike many of its contemporaries, which had adults portraying youth, the cast of Sleepaway Camp was primarily made up of adolescent actors. Release Sleepaway Camp opened in 85 theatres in New York City on November 18, 1983. According to the American Film Institute, it had its premiere in Los Angeles the following spring on May 25, 1984. The August 1984 Box review reported that the first week box-office gross at fifteen Los Angeles, California theaters was $90,000. Home media Anchor Bay Entertainment released Sleepaway Camp on DVD on August 8, 2000. Anchor Bay reissued this disc as part of a four-disc set titled the Sleepaway Camp Survival Kit on August 20, 2002, which also contained the film's two sequels, as well as a bonus disc featuring footage from the unfinished third sequel. This boxed set, which featured a medical red cross on the front cover, was discontinued in late 2002 after the Red Cross filed a complaint against Anchor Bay, which subsequently redesigned the box art to remove the cross logo. In 2005, the Canadian-based Legacy Entertainment released a region-free budget DVD release of the film. Unlike the original VHS release, this release contains numerous edits to the film to either shorten violence or certain moments like dialogue. Scream Factory released the film in a collector's edition Blu-ray set on May 27, 2014. This release contains a 2K scan of the original camera negative, and this release also has the film in its original uncut version, unlike the DVD released by Anchor Bay. Reception Critical response Contemporary On release, the film was frequently compared to Friday the 13th due to their shared settings and whodunit plot structure. A review in The Courier-Journal characterized the film as a "low-budget slasher in the Friday the 13th mold, with teen-age mayhem at a summer camp". In the Chula Vista Star-News, the film was deemed "a tasteless picture about mysterious murders