Pitch a tent with these 9 queer summer sleepaway camp movies
look right in the eye—we’re talking about good old-fashioned summer camp.Whether you’re an outdoorsy queer or not, camp holds a special place in our memories.
A break from the norm, these summer retreats allowed us to explore and experiment away from the judging eyes of parents. Sure, sometimes they were their own kind of hell, but camps offered many baby gays their first taste of freedom and helped us meet new friends.
Even if it was just for the summer, it was a space to find some of our earliest chosen families.Related: Strangers By The Lake: 10 sexy, queer lakeside stories perfect for a summer watchPerhaps that’s why camp, in all its forms, is a setting frequently revisited in LGBTQ-focused films, for better and for worse.
With summer in full swing and a frightening new addition to the camp canon on its way (more on that in a second), we decided to assemble a list of nine notable queer and queer-adjacent stories set at campgrounds worth packing an overnight bag for.And, because queer camp films come in many forms—comedy, horror, musical—we went ahead and labeled them according to which type of camper they’ll most appeal to.
