Sleepaway Camp

So last night I had a few drinks with the lady and whenever that happens we usually end up watching a really bad movie. It was a toss up between Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Leprechaun In the Hood or Sleepaway Camp. We ended up watching Sleepaway Camp from 1983, which is a summer camp slasher movie that is about as bad and cheap looking as any I have ever seen (it apparently has 3 sequels too). The movie is about a killer running amuck at a summer camp that is being attended by a mouthy kid and his mute cousin whose father and brother are killed in an opening epilogue that's about as funny as any death scene I can imagine. While at camp the girl is made fun of by the slutty popular girl and the moronic counsellors while the guy in charge of the camp worries about his reputation as people are getting killed off one by one.

The movie itself is never once scary and is oftentimes very funny in it's amateurism (it looks like something I could have filmed on my back yard with a video camera that records on VHS), and leads to a really stupid conclusion that the movie itself advertises as one of the most shocking ever filmed.

Whenever I watch a movie like this I always wonder A) who actually put money into this and B) do people actually take this stuff seriously? So I was shocked when I went on Rotten Tomatoes and found that 7 of the 10 critics featured gave it a positive review. I know, none of these people fall into the Top Critic category but still, they are talking about it as if it is a serious piece of filmmaking. Here's some excerpts:

Tim Brayton says: Not a particularly effective movie... [but] it is an exceptionally memorable one - one that lingers in the brain, disturbing and discomfiting

Some guy named Stefan whose last name is too long for me to want to type out says: classic stuff, the ending is the creepiest since "invasion of the body snatchers"

Rumsey Taylor says: Sleepaway Camp belongs to a pool of slasher films known for their generic prolificacy; it must be noted that it is one of the first and best

Nick Schager says: Still the finest Sleepaway Camp, if only because of its memorable final shot.

And Pablo Villaca says: Capaz de despertar risos graças ao estilo datado (vide figurinos), ao roteiro ridículo e à direção capenga (o acidente que abre a narrativa é genial neste aspecto), merece créditos pelo plano final, que é simultaneamente hilário e perturbador. I have no idea what that means but it was a positive review nonetheless.

The movie's Wikipedia page even quotes someone with a Ph.D who, without giving anything away, wrote about the film for a thesis as if it were a serious work that needed to be considered on some level of social commentary.

So what the heck? Do people actually take movies like this seriously? Does Troma actually produce great works of art with unquestionable social significant and we just don't notice it?

Here's the trailer for this movie, what do you think: stupid or groundbreaking?

Just as a side note, although the trailer looks kind of scary, those scenes are the only "slasher movie" scenes in the entire movie. The rest is just kids doing camp things like playing baseball while councillors in too tight shorts look on stupidly.

Here's the ending if your curious but don't want to sit through the whole thing