Downtrodden youth revolt and take over their summer camp by force and who could blame them? It’s run by an evil Chuck Connors, whose old Rifleman charisma has been replaced by weathered Grecian formula creepiness. He’s a crumbling Sphynx and believable as a man who likes people best when they’re under his boot heel. He wants nothing but the most wholesome of fun at his camp, up to banning all television channels except for the religious one. Any violators of his strict rules get banished to an old school prison-like hot box. Along the way, the film draws out a sometimes bloody allegory about how revolutions can fail when a regime topples and then other sects fight to replace it and end up imitating their former oppressor.
It’s not quite Over the Edge, but it isn’t far removed from Massacre at Central High, another low-budget cult classic that uses youth rebellion as an explicit political metaphor and that has a title that sounds like a slasher movie.
Screenplay co-written (with director Bert L. Dragin) by Penelope Spheeris and loosely adapted from William Butler’s 1961 novel, The Butterfly Revolution.