The Monster of Camp Sunshine or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Nature (1964)

Let’s make one thing perfectly clear right off the bat, despite what else you might think about it, it is pretty obvious that The Monster of Camp Sunshine is supposed to be a Horror-Comedy film, so all the over the top ridiculousness this film has is indeed intentional. Anyway, this film has a pretty odd plot in that it is set at a nudist camp where the mentally disabled gardener accidently drinks some chemicals which turns him into a homicidal killing machine. And save for a few more details, that really is about it. Still, there is quite a bit I like about this film, even if as whole it never really gels and does feel like it could have been better.

One of the elements of this film that works really well is the anarchic sense of energy this film employs. At times, especially towards the end, The Monster of Camp Sunshine feels very much like a Peter Sellers Comedy. This is not to say that quality-wise this is close to most of Sellers’ work; that is to be sure much better, but all the same the energy this film employs is very much reminiscent of Sellers’ best work. This can even be seen in the fill title which is, I kid you not, The Monster of Camp Sunshine or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Nature which is of course designed to remind us of the full title of Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Following from that, this film is jam full of parodies to many genres of the past. The Nudie Cutie Nudist Camp genre is the most obvious starting point, a genre which I talked about a bit in my review of The Beast That Killed Women, but even beyond that the film includes a lot more genres in its repertories of parody. This is a film that was made in 1964 and actually uses title cards from the silent films of the 1920’s. The whole thing is rather amusing and certainly one of the highlights of the film. This film also contains a rather entertaining send up of War and Western films at its climax which is pretty fun considering how blown up and over the top the climax of the film is, especially when compared to the rest of the film. It is also interesting to note to what extent this film feels like a really proto version of what would become the Slasher film with a big, hulking stupid killer preying on sexpots. Adding to that it also has some shades of The Toxic Avenger, which is odd considering that as far as anyone can tell this film was never theatrically released, only seeing the light of day thanks to the good folks at Something Weird Video. And as true to this film’s nudist camp setting and origins in the Nudie Cuties Nudist Camp films, The Monster of Camp Sunshine does indeed contain a good deal of nudity, though not as much as I was really expecting and certainly not as much as the similarly themed The Beast That Killed Women. Oh and I must give this film special props for having what may be the most insane opening credits of all time. As in the opening credits feature a guy humping a building, and no I am not kidding. Needless to say, I want whatever weed the folks who made this were smoking.

Despite having these very positive characteristics, The Monster of Camp Sunshine also contains several flaws that prevent this movie from fully gelling. Namely, while this film does contain an incredible amount of energy, it has the same flaw that plagues so many other high energy film, that flaw being a lack of focus and while the best examples of this genre have enough confidence to overcome this, The Monster of Camp Sunshine is not one of these films. Most of the time, the movie appears to be going no place in particular and looks rather lost. To be sure, there are plenty of technical problems with the movie, the ones commonly associated with films if its ilk, but ultimately the major problems this movie has are grounded in just how little focus this movie has. This was the first and last film of director Ferenc Leroget, at least from what I can find, though it can be difficult to track down who exactly helped make this film due to the amount of pseudonyms used in the credits. I’m unsure if “Ferenc Leroget” is a pseudonym or not, though even if it is, it appears to be the only film he made. Still, it certainly does look like a debut effort from a director and it’s a shame that he never made more films because for all the flaws this movie has, they are the flaws normally seen with first time directors, especially those with no formal training. More positively though, what he does show and what he does get right certainly does look like someone who had the potential to be a pretty solid director. The film’s final major issues is that while its attempt to be a Peter Sellers movie is certainly fun and does feel like it’s coming from someone who is a Sellers fan, it does still invite comparisons to Sellers’ movies and that is simply not something The Monster of Camp Sunshine is going to do and still come out on top.

The Monster of Camp Sunshine is a flawed film, perhaps even a deeply flawed film, but it still has a lot going for it. Sadly however the good bits of this film are never able to overcome the flaws and we end up with a mess of a film. The Monster of Camp Sunshine is not really a bad film and it certainly is not boring, it has far too much energy for that, but it is not very good either. Either way though, it is worth checking out, if nothing else to see one of the last hurrahs for the Nudie Cutie Nudist Camp film before loosening censorship standards pretty much ended whatever usefulness the genre might have had at one point. Check it out!

Similar Movie: The Beast That Killed Women (1965)

Please Note: Playback of this H.265/HEVC encoded video file in VLC media player may cause problem (like Green Screen). A fresh install of the player or a new version can solve this problem. I strongly suggest you to download and install "K-Lite Codec Pack (Full or Mega version; totally free with WMP Classic)" on your system first and then try to play the file in VLC. Or, you can just install PotPlayer, and no codecs will be needed. I use this player for playing all sorts of media… from MP3 audio files to 4K UHD video files.

Mac users please get help from the Internet and YouTube.MS18pp