There are plenty of horror films out there with big budgets and fancy effects, but the Sleepaway Camp series found big success with its humble camp horror, which fascinated audiences enough to garner a number of sequels.

The 1980s were a glorious decade for slasher films, with many pictures taking a page from out of Friday the 13th or Halloween’s books. Sleepaway Camp is one of the more memorable horror capers from the ‘80s and it’s a movie that still comes up in current discussions about the genre. Sleepaway Camp looks at a basic plot where a killer runs amok at a summer camp, but the film makes its mark due to its outrageous performances, ridiculous kills, and one of the best twists to ever happen to a horror film. It’s the perfect combination for the best kind of B-movie horror film from the ‘80s.

Related: The 13 Weirdest Slasher Movies Of The '80s

All of the above factors made Robert Hiltzik’s Sleepaway Camp enough of a success that it led to several popular, albeit less iconic, sequels. The follow-up movies continue to look at the murderous Angela’s exploits as she masquerades as a counselor at summer camp and punishes morally bankrupt teenagers. Sleepawap Camp II: Unhappy Campers and Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland came out back-to-back in 1988 and ’89, but there was a significant Sleepaway Camp drought after this point. What’s interesting about this gap in the series is that more than one Sleepaway Camp sequel went into development after the third film in the series, but intervening factors got in the way.

Sleepaway Camp 4 Was Actually The Fifth Film Released In The Series

Plans for Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor went into motion in 1992, but it was during the filming of the sequel that the movie's production company, Double Helix Films, went bankrupt. As a result, Sleepaway Camp IV was abandoned, with only a little more than half an hour of footage shot. Meanwhile, in 2003, Robert Hiltzik the director of the original Sleepaway Camp tried to put together a sequel to his original film that ignores parts two and three, titled Return to Sleepaway Camp. The film was finished, but Hiltzik apparently wasn't satisfied with the quality of the film's special effects and he waited until 2008 until they could be properly improved and released the film then.

After the release of Return to Sleepaway Camp, rabid fans online were able to track down the 34 minutes of footage from Sleepaway Camp IV, as well as additional footage. They combined this material with stock footage from the first three movies, used in the form of flashbacks, to produce a 70-minute finished film that they released online in 2012. This was four years after the release of Return to Sleepaway Camp, but fans were still excited to get any form of the "true" fourth film in the Sleepaway Camp series.

Next: Why Sleepaway Camp's Ending Is Best Slasher Movie Twist