Top 10 Camping Films

Summer's here and, for many, this will mean stuffing a backpack or loading a caravan for a camping holiday. In order to get in the mood for sleeping under the stars, Cinema Paradiso presents a selection of comedies, dramas and chillers that are guaranteed to be in tents, sorry, intense.

One of the most iconic scenes in British cinema takes place under canvas. With his foot badly frostbitten and supplies running low, Lawrence 'Titus' Oates makes the noblest of sacrifices to help his comrades make it home in Charles Frend's Scott of the Antarctic (1948) by leaving the wind-whipped tent with the immortal (if misquoted) line, 'I'm just going outside; I may be away some time.'

Strictly speaking, the members of Captain Robert Falcon Scott's polar expedition were sheltering for the night rather than camping. The same could be said for all those intrepid climbers in the glut of mountaineering documentaries that have been released over the last couple of years. Likewise for the prospectors panning for gold or the trappers seeking furs in wilderness adventures. Occasionally, audiences get to see a cowboy bivouac on his bedroll while herding livestock across the plains in one of the numerous Westerns that Hollywood produced during its Golden Age. Those travelling with frontier wagon trains also slept rough, although the First Americans whose land they traversed were much more comfortable in their teepees.

Although they sometimes get to spend a night in an abandoned or bombed-out building, soldiers in combat zones also have to grab their shut-eye wherever and whenever they can. Even when they get to sleep in tents on manoeuvres, they can hardly be said to be camping, in the leisure sense of the word. So, we won't be making further mention of temporary wartime accommodation after we remind you of Captain Mainwaring (Arthur Lowe) crushing a row of tents with a steamroller in Norman Cohen's feature version of Dad's Army (1971).

Instead, we'll be focussing on weekenders, holiday-makers, summer camp conscripts, friends reuniting and the occasional hiker on the journey of a lifetime (or deathtime). Oh, and there will also be the odd person with no clothes on!

All in the Best Possible Taste

Naturist films have been around for almost a century. In the 1930s, short studies of life in nudist colonies were highly popular on the independent exhibition circuit that wasn't governed by the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America. The likes of Michael Mindlin's This Naked Age (1932) and Carl Harbaugh's Elysia, Valley of the Nude (1933) were presented as educational items, but they slipped from view either side of the Second World War and only came back into vogue when Max Nosseck made Garden of Eden (1954) in colour.

Cinema Paradiso users will be familiar with the name Edgar G. Ulmer from such classics as The Black Cat (1934) and Detour (1945). But he also made The Naked Venus (1959), which ventures into the world of nude artist models. Herschell Gordon Lewis will also be known to schlock aficionados, as the director of Blood Feast (1963), Colour Me Blood Red (1965) and The Wizard of Gore (1970). However, he started out in partnership with producer David F. Friedman on such outings as The Adventures of Lucky Pierre (1961) and Daughter of the Sun (1962), the former of which being the first 'nudie cutie' in both colour and Skinamascope.

The future director of The Godfather (1972), The Conversation (1974) and Apocalypse Now (1979) wasn't above directing a couple of saucy comedies at the start of his career. Unfortunately, neither of Francis Ford Coppola's Tonight For Sure or The Bellboy and the Playgirls (both 1962) is available on disc. The same is true of Doris Wishman, who, en route to making The Transplant (1970), became the only genuine auteur of the nudist flick with titles like Hideout in the Sun (1960), Nude on the Moon, Diary of a Nudist (both 1961) and Blaze Starr Goes Nudist (1962).

Wishman's influence on British nudist films is readily evident. Most renowned as the inventor of the lava lamp, Edward Craven Walker made three nudist films using the pseudonym Michael Keatering: Travelling Light (1959), Sunswept (1962) and Eves on Skis (1963). Respected film critic Arthur Knight also tried his hand at producing with My Bare Lady (1963). Cinema Paradiso users can sample the best of British nudies by ordering Ramsey Harrington's Pussycat's Paradise (aka The Nudist Story, 1960) and George Harrison Marks's Naked As Nature Intended (1961) which stars Pamela Green who had featured in Michael Powell's ground-breaking chiller, Peeping Tom (1960).

Marks would go on to become a fixture in the softcore sector that helped keep British cinema alive in the 1970s, with such hits as the Mary Millington romp, Come Play With Me (1977). Another leading light was director Arnold L. Miller, whose Nudist Memories (1961) was narrated by Jill Gascoigne and starred Anna Karen, who is best known for playing Olive in On the Buses (1971), Mutiny on the Buses (1972) and Holiday on the Buses (1973). Miller was also responsible for Nudes of the World (1962) - which was narrated by future Blue Peter icon, Valerie Singleton - and Take Off Your Clothes and Live (1963), which is set in a nudist camp in south-western France.

It was precisely this kind of 'information' film that Sid Boggle (Sid James) and Bernie Lugg (Bernard Bresslaw) take Joan Fussey (Joan Sims) and Anthea Meeks (Dilys Laye) to see at the start of Gerald Thomas's Carry On Camping (1969). Instead of a clothes-free haven, however, they wind up in the Paradise campsite run by avaricious farmer, Josh Fiddler (Peter Butterworth).

Don't Fence Me In

Cinema has certain rules when it comes to camping. They change according to genre and quickly establish which kind of film an audience is watching. There's a degree of overlap, especially where black comedy is concerned. But it's inevitable, for example, when Oliver Hardy is advised to camp out in the mountains for his health in Charles Rogers's Them Thar Hills (1934) that things are going to go wrong. Especially when Stan Laurel has come along for the ride.

No sooner have they parked their trailer beside a well brimming with bootleg hooch than Stan and Ollie are joined by Charlie Hall and Mae Busch and the seeds are sewn for the feud that plays out in Tit For Tat (1935), the duo's only sequel. Cinema Paradiso offers both films on Laurel & Hardy: Volume Two - Someone's Ailing (2004), which also contains James Parrott's Perfect Day (1929) and County Hospital (1932).

Mishaps also overtake Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz's caravanning expedition in Vincente Minnelli's The Long, Long Trailer (1953), which really should be on disc by now. However, the sublime byplay between Walter Matthau and co-star/director Elaine May in A New Leaf (1971) is available to be savoured, as the scheming Henry Graham seeks to exploit a camping trip to the Adirondacks with botanist wife Henrietta Lowell in order to bump her off and inherit her fortune.

An archaeological dig brings Kenneth Williams back to the great outdoors (after he got an eyeful at Camp Paradise) in Gerald Thomas's Carry On Behind (1975), as Roland Crump and fellow professor Anna Vrooshka (Elke Sommer) share some cramped accommodation at the Riverside Caravan Park. The humour becomes rather coarse, as some of the older male campers leer at their younger female counterparts. But there's a more satisfyingly caustic edge to the wit in Mike Leigh's Nuts in May (1976), as rulebook martinet Keith Pratt (Roger Sloman) and his wife, Candice Marie (Alison Steadman), have their Dorset camping trip spoilt by an inconsiderate student and a biker couple from Birmingham.

Some people are just not cut out for the great outdoors. Among them are the Griswolds (Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo), who check into Kamp Komfort en route to Wally World in Harold Ramis's National Lampoon's Vacation (1983). But, even the five reuniting members of the Cub Scout Owl Patrol discover that camping isn't as easy as they remember it, when they are mistaken by the FBI for escaped convicts in Danny Bilson's The Wrong Guys (1988).

The best-laid plans often go awry on vacation, as John Candy and Stephanie Faracy learn when her sister and her show-off husband (a debuting Annette Bening and Dan Aykroyd) turn up to ruin their lakeside stay in Pechoggin, Wisconsin in Howard Deutch's The Great Outdoors (1988). This John Hughes-scripted comedy shares its title with Catherine Morshead's BBC series, The Great Outdoors (2011), which sees Ruth Jones make a bid to oust Mark Heap from his position of ramble leader. And, speaking of sitcoms fathers Crilly (Dermot Morgan), McGuire (Ardal O'Hanlon) and Hackett (Frank Kelly) share a tiny caravan with Fr Noel Furlong (Graham Norton) and his youth group in the 'Hell' episode of Father Ted (1995-98), while Simon (Joe Thomas), Will (Simon Bird) and Neil (Blake Harrison) gather proof that Jay (James Buckley) has been making empty boasts about Caravan Club when they take a trip to Camber Sands in The Inbetweeners (2008-10).

Three's company in Steven Brill's Without a Paddle (2004), as old friends Seth Green, Matthew Lillard and Dax Shepherd camp out while on a canoeing expedition to find hijacker D.B. Cooper's aeroplane. In Ellory Elkayem's sequel, Without a Paddle 2: Nature Calling (2008), two old pals and a British stranger venture into the woods in search of a missing sweetheart.

A sudden change of plan sees the Munro family pile into a camper van and head for Colorado rather than Hawaii in Barry Sonnenfeld's RV (aka Runaway Vacation, 2006). However, fate conspires against Bob Munro (Robin Williams) at every turn, as he tries to hide the fact he's been ordered to attend a business meeting while contending with the eccentricity of fellow camper, Travis Gornicke (Jeff Daniels). Such odd-couple match-ups are common in Fabien Onteniente's Camping (2006), which proved so popular at the French box office that it was followed by a pair of sequels. However, humour doesn't always travel well and these romps have made little impact in the UK. Neither did Guillaume Brac's All Hands on Deck (2020), although it should have done, as this camping romcom is a Rohmeresque delight.

Equally charming is Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom (2012), which is set in 1965 and sees 12 year-old Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) slip away from Camp Ivanhoe, a Khaki Scout summer camp on the New England island of New Penzance, in order to camp in the wild with penpal Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward). Their readiness to pitch a tent and cling together contrasts with the amenities that failing author David Arquette organises in the hope of reigniting a spark with wife Amy Acker in Brandon Dickerson's Amanda & Jack Go Glamping (2017). However, a double booking at Greenacres proves the last straw and Arquette starts to unravel.

It Just Doesn't Matter

Summer camp is more of an institution in the United States than in the UK. But it seems so familiar because of the numerous films centred on American kids being sent to secluded retreats in order to endure the same kind of torments that had blighted their own childhoods. A dread of camping helps separated twins bring their parents together in a Disney classic and its remake, which each start at summer camp and culminate under canvas.

Back in 1961, in David Swift's The Parent Trap, Hayley Mills doubled up as Sharon and Susan, who discover they are sisters at Miss Inch's Summer Camp and then make life hell for father Brian Keith's new partner, Joanna Barnes, during a camping trip to the lake. Lindsay Lohan took over for Nancy Meyer's The Parent Trap (1998), which sees Hallie and Annie expose the gold-digging intentions of Meredith (Elaine Hendrix) during another campsite showdown.

Inspired by Erich Kästner's 1949 children's classic, Lisa and Lotte, the second version also contained traces of Henry Koster's Deanna Durbin vehicle, Three Smart Girls (1936). Echoes of the stories can also be heard in Andy Tennant's It Takes Two (1995), in which Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen play estranged twins who meet at summer camp and agree to switch places.

The classic summer camp movie, however, has to be Ivan Reitman's Meatballs (1979), which helped make a star of Bill Murray, who is featured in one of Cinema Paradiso's Getting to Know articles. He plays Tripper Harrison, a counsellor who teaches his charges to be proud of who they are and accept the mantra, 'It just doesn't matter.' When it comes to the annual Olympiad with the posh kids from Camp Mohawk, however, it turns out that it matters a whole lot.

Not every camp experience is so life-affirming, however, especially for those who have the misfortune of summering at Camp Crystal Lake. Twenty-one years after a couple of counsellors were murdered, the camp is being renovated, despite warnings from the locals about a boy who drowned there in 1957. Sean S. Cunningham's Friday the 13th (1980) introduced us to Jason Voorhees and 11 further films have centred on his pitiless slayings.

Written by Victor Miller and reinforcing the stalk'n'slash aspect of the serial killer sub-genre, the origin story contained echoes of Mario Bava's A Bay of Blood (1971). But, following Steve Miner's sequel, Friday the 13th, Part II (1981), the series received fresh impetus in Friday the 13th, Part III (1982) when Miner put Jason in an ice hockey goal-minder's mask and transformed him into a horror icon, who would continue to cause bloody mayhem in Joseph Zito's Friday the 13th, The Final Chapter (1984), Danny Steinmann's Friday the 13th - A New Beginning (1985), Tom McLaughlin's Jason Lives - Friday the 13th Part VI (1986), John Carl Buechler's Friday the 13th, Part VII - The New Blood (1988), and Adam Marcus's Jason Goes to Hell - The Final Friday (1993).

The camp doesn't appear in Rob Hedden's Friday the 13th, Part VIII - Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) and is only fleetingly seen in Jim Isaac's Jason X (2002) and Ronny Yu's Freddy vs Jason (2003). But Camp Crystal Lake still has a key role to play in Marcus Nispel's reimagining, Friday the 13th (2009).

We clamber back on to the lighter side for Miklós Lente's Oddballs (1984). However, this is very much a film of its time, as it invokes the spirit of such 'boys behaving badly' flicks as Bob Clark's Porky's (1981) and Neal Israel's Bachelor Party (1984) to show how the residents of Camp Bottomout strive to prevent the owner of the nearby girls' camp from pulling off a death-knell property deal. If you prefer your summertime nostalgia to be a bit less lascivious, Cinema Paradiso suggests you opt for family favourites like Harry Winer's SpaceCamp (1986) and Emile Ardolino's Dirty Dancing (1987). Okay, we're cheating a bit by including the latter, as it's set in a holiday camp in the Catskills. But Frances Houseman (Jennifer Grey) and Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze) are having the time of their lives.

A whiff of Lawrence Kasdan's The Big Chill (1983) can be detected in Mike Binder's Indian Summer (1993), in which Alan Arkin invites some Camp Tamakwa alumni to celebrate his retirement and seven friends from 1972 discover that they still have some unresolved issues and emotions to deal with before the week-long reunion ends. The same year saw Wednesday (Christina Ricci) and Pugsley (Jimmy Workman) dispatched to Camp Chippewa in Barry Sonnenfeld's Addams Family Values (1993). However, not even a spell in the Harmony Hut can prevent the pair from teaming with fellow outcast Joel Glicker (David Krumholtz) to sabotage the annual Thanksgiving Play.

Christopher Lloyd (who plays Uncle Fester) also crops up in Jonathan Prince's Camp Nowhere (1994), which is a big miss on disc, as it tells of a fake camp that is set up by kids seeking to deceive their parents for the summer. Steven Brill's Heavyweights (1995) is available to rent from Cinema Paradiso, however, and stars Ben Stiller as the fitness instructor at Camp Hope, whose exhausting weight-losing exercise regimes cause the campers to revolt. By contrast, 'Homemaker Harry' Haber (Leslie Nielsen) goes out of his way to endear himself to the orphans staying at Camp Sedona in Fred Gerber's Family Plan (1997). However, the grasping Jeffrey Chase (Judge Reinhold) has plans to redevelop the plot after owner Sol Robbins (Harry Morgan) dies.

If you tend to pick your pictures by the cast list, then get your order in now for David Wain's Wet Hot American Summer, as this parody of the classic 80s camp comedy boasts newcomers Bradley Cooper, Amy Poehler, Elizabeth Banks and Paul Rudd alongside established stars Janeanne Garafolo, Molly Shannon and David Hyde-Pierce. Elsewhere, Brad Renfro, Dominique Swain, Jaime King and Justin Long were among the upcomers finding themselves in charge of Camp Bleeding Dove after a lightning bolt takes out the summer director in Daniel Waters's Happy Campers (both 2001).

Camp Ovation is the destination for the aspiring thespians in Todd Graff's Camp (2003), which draws on the director's own experiences at Stagedoor Manor (which provides the film's setting). Anna Kendrick is among those hoping to catch the eye at the end-of-summer spectacular, which will be attended by the great Stephen Sondheim. While we're on the subject of the performing arts, we finally get to see why Michelle Flaherty (Alyson Hannigan) from Paul Weitz's American Pie (1999) had such fond memories of her musical summers in Steve Rash's American Pie Presents: Band Camp (2005), which includes a welcome cameo from Eugene Levy as Noah Levenstein.

There's more tuneful mayhem to be enjoyed in a pair of Disney musicals, as aspiring singer Mitchie Torres (Demi Lovato) tries to hide the fact she's from the wrong side of the tracks in Matthew Diamond's Camp Rock (2008). However, she's back with her Connect 3 bandmates to prevent deadly rivalsCamp Star from stealing the residents in Paul Hoen's Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam (2010).

Summer camps don't feature as frequently in European pictures. However, a German teenager is forced to confront his sexuality while attending a rowing camp in Marco Kreuzpaintner's Summer Storm (2004) and finds himself being drawn towards a member of the Queerstrokes crew. When it comes to German summer camps, however, nothing comes close in terms of ghastliness to the Jungvolk training camp to which 10 year-old Johannes Betzler (Roman Griffin Davis) is sent in Taika Waititi's Jojo Rabbit (2019), which earned the New Zealand director an Academy Award for a screenplay adapted from Christine Leunens's novel, Caging Skies. Having received his mocking nickname from the fanatical Captain Klenzendorf (Sam Rockwell), Jojo is give a pep talk by the Führer himself (Waititi) and proves his courage by grabbing a stick grenade. In case anyone gets any foolish ideas, however, Klenzendorf is quite right when he says, 'Don't to that!'

Have Tent Will Travel

What a difference a rewrite makes, In Claude Whatham's 1974 adaptation of Arthur Ransome's children's classic, Swallows and Amazons, the Walker and Blackett siblings respectively spend the summer of 1929 in a farm and a cottage in the Lake District. Andrea Gibb's script for Philippa Lowthorpe's 2016 version, however, moves the action forward six years in time and has the Swallow-owning Walkers discover that the Amazon Blacketts have beaten them to the best camping spot when they land their dinghy on a remote island.

A night around a fire is the closest 12 year-olds Gordie Lachance (Will Wheaton), Chris Chambers (River Phoenix), Teddy Duchamp (Corey Feldman) and Vern Tessio (Jerry O'Connell) get to camping in Rob Reiner's Stand By Me (1986), which was adapted by the Stephen King story, 'The Body'. But the campfire tale told by Gordie about the 'barf-o-Rama' helps make this one of cinema's most iconic coming-of-age sagas. The storyline was lampooned in the 'Three Kings' episode of Family Guy (1999-), which has set numerous incidents in the great outdoors, with Stewie Griffin memorably telling ghost stories to One Direction in 'Run, Chris, Run'.

Seven year-old Junior (Michael Oliver) could give Stewie a run for his money in Dennis Dugan's Problem Child (1990), as he spoils a camping trip with father Ben (John Ritter) and neighbour Roy (Peter Jurasik) by widdling on the campfire and luring a bear out of the woods. No such antics would be tolerated, however, at the Quidditch World Cup campsite in Mike Newell's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005). As non-Muggles will know, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint) would spend another night out in the open in David Yates's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part One (2010).

The Washington Cascades provide the spectacular backdrop to Michael Apted's Lawrence Kasdan-scripted Continental Divide (1981), which sees Chicago journalist John Belushi share a moment of canvas intimacy with bald eagle researcher Blair Brown. This was the first film produced by Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment company. However, the brush with Nature has more alarming consequences in Fred Schepisi's A Cry in the Dark (aka Evil Angels, 1988).

While having a barbecue with friends camping in the Australian Outback near Uluru, Lindy Chamberlain (Meryl Streep) claims that a dingo has carried off her nine week-old daughter, Azaria. However, her stoic response to the tragedy turns public opinion against her. Having won the Best Actress prize at Cannes, Streep received an Oscar nomination for her performance and Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal would also be recognised for their work as Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist in Ang Lee's adaptation of E. Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain (2005). Set in Wyoming in 1963, this story of sheep herders who become lovers after a night of heavy drinking is included here (when other trail tales are omitted) because the pivotal scene takes place in a tent on the high pasture.

We're also bending our own rules to remind Cinema Paradiso users of Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man (2005), which chronicles the 13 summers that Timothy Treadwell spent with the brown bears of Alaska. In one sequence inside his tent, Treadwell loses his patience with the world's various deities for not sending down enough rain. There's also a left-field feel to the banter between old pals Kurt (Will Oldham) and Mark (Daniel London), as they reunite in Kelly Reichardt's Old Joy (2006) for a camping trip to the Cascade mountains in Oregon and the nearby Bagby Hot Springs.

Although some old camping gear changes hands when Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch) meets Ron Franz (Hal Holbrook) towards the end of Sean Penn's Into the Wild (2007), he spends most of his transamerican hike sleeping wherever he can lay his head, until he makes camp in an abandoned bus. Another true-life trek inspired Jean-Marc Vallée's Wild (2014), as Cheryl Strayed (Reese Witherspoon) hits the Pacific Crest Trail in order to deal with the baggage of a traumatic past. Initially, she can barely put up a tent, but learns survival craft as she goes along, with a little help from her friends.

A very different kind of life crisis sends middle-aged buddies John Travolta, Tim Allen, Martin Lawrence and William H. Macy on a motorbike jaunt in Walt Becker's Wild Hogs (2007). At one point, they crash on a mattress in a woodland clearing and gay cop John C. McGinley finds it deeply moving that they are close enough friends to spoon together. Another quartet takes to the road in Hattie Dalton's Third Star, as 29 year-old James (Benedict Cumberbatch) faces his terminal cancer diagnosis with a hike with his pals (Tom Burke, J.J.Field and Adam Robertson) to the stunning Barafundle Bay on the Pemrokeshire coast. And we stay in Wales for Lloyd Eyre-Morgan's Dream On (both 2012), which the director adapted from his own stage play about a bashful Rochdale teen falling for a cocky Londoner at Norman's Cozy campsite in the 1980s.

Two more Welsh sites crop up in the contrasting comedies, Chris Green's Me, Myself and Di (2021) and Kevin Allen's La Cha Cha (both 2021). Katy Clayton gives an endearing performance in the former, as a Bolton supermarket stacker who pretends to be French while holidaying in Rhyl with best friend Lucy Pinder. Andy Serkis's children, Ruby and Sonny, are to the fore in the latter, which was filmed in a Covid bubble during lockdown and centres on a campsite on the Gower Peninsula that is threatened with closure, despite being a haven for several eccentrics.

Teenager Vi (Emilia Jones) hopes that a weekend stay in her late father's caravan will jolt mother Aisha (Samantha Morton) out of a depression in Tom Beard's Two For Joy (2018). But the trip to the seaside brings more woes when Vi meets the rebellious Miranda (Bella Ramsey), who is staying with her mother, Lillah (Billie Piper), who is the sister of the affable site manager, Lias (Daniel Mays).

British caravan parks also feature in a pair of first love tales. It's out of season at the site in the Cornish resort of St Ives in Claire Oakley's Make Up (2019), as Molly Windsor lands a clearing job with boyfriend Joseph Quinn, only to become besotted with co-worker Stefanie Martini. If the deserted venue takes on a spectral aspect in this acclaimed debut, the Dorset holiday park in Marley Morrison's Sweetheart (2021) feels like a gulag to AJ (Nell Barlow), who simply doesn't want to be holidaying with her overbearing mother (Jo Hartley) and two sisters. But things look up when she befriends swimming pool lifeguard, Isla (Ella-Rae Smith).

Travel writer Bill Bryson (Robert Redford) gets a hankering to hike the Appalachian Trail in Ken Kwapis's A Walk in the Woods (2015). However, while putting up his old pup tent, he is persuaded by wife Catherine (Emma Thompson) to take old buddy Stephen Katz (Nick Nolte) along for company and protection. A familiar setting is also viewed with fresh eyes in Lucas Santa Ana's Bromance (2016), as three Argentinians return to the surfing beach where they used to camp as kids, only for one to be revisited by some long-suppressed desires.

Finally, director Mitch Davis draws on his own near-death experience in The Stray (2017), which sees a father (Michael Cassidy) take his young son, two of his friends and the family dog on a camping trip into the Colorado mountains. However, they are struck by lightning and Pluto, the stray who had earlier adopted the Davises, rises to the challenge of getting them home safely.

If You Go Down to the Woods

Call it an inkling, but from the first time we see Nottingham nurses Jane (Pamela Franklin) and Cathy (Michele Dotrice) cycling through the French countryside in Robert Fuest's And Soon the Darkness (1970), it's clear that something sinister will eventually lurk around a corner. As in Schoolgirl Hitchhikers (1973), Jean Rollin's softcore account of Gilda Arancio and Joëlle Coeur's encounter with some jewel thieves, the camping element isn't exactly paramount (although Fuest does stage his denouement in an abandoned caravan park). But, then, tent pegs and guy ropes rarely merit a mention in reviews of John Boorman's Deliverance (1972).

Lewis Medlock (Burt Reynolds) may be an experienced outdoorsman, while Ed Gentry (Jon Voight) knows the camping basics. But fellow Atlanta businessmen Drew Ballinger (Ronnie Cox) and Bobby Trippe (Ned Beatty) are novices and a canoe trip down the Cahulawassee River might, in retrospect, have seemed like an ambitious place to start becoming acquainted with the Georgia backwoods and their far from hospitable residents.

Hostile locals aren't the only threat to unsuspecting campers, however, with giant bears going on the rampage in William Girdler's Grizzly (1976), Adam MacDonald's Blackfoot Trail (aka Backcountry, 2014) and David Hackl's Into the Grizzly Maze (2015). Bigfoot also becomes curious when it spots a tent on its territory, as a group of poachers discover in Karl Kazak's Clawed: The Legend of Sasquatch (2005). A stranded father and son also come a cropper in John Portanova's Valley of the Sasquatch (aka Hunting Grounds, 2015), while an investigation into a doomed camping trip turns into a fight for survival in Matt Allen's Bigfoot (aka Hoax, 2019). The pick of the Bigfoot pictures. however, is Bobcat Goldthwaite's Willow Creek (2013), which follows documentary makers Alexie Gilmore and Bryce Johnson into California's Six Rivers National Forest. Take Cinema Paradiso's word for it, the sequences in which the pair sit in their tent trying to discern the sounds piercing the nocturnal stillness are genuinely terrifying!

Relations between John Hargreaves and Bryony Behets are already strained before they embark upon their camping trip in Colin Eggleston's Long Weekend (1978). But, when these city slickers start taking liberties with their environment, the natural world strikes back. The Aussie duo only have themselves to blame for their ordeal and the same is true of the five friends who ignore park ranger George Kennedy's warning that a knife-wielding maniac is on the loose in the woods in which they plan to camp in Jeff Lieberman's Just Before Dawn (1981).

Despite being forewarned, six friends head out for North Point in the Colorado Rockies in Edwin Brown's The Prey (1983), without being aware that it was the site of a tragic wildfire back in 1948. Another sextet come to regret their decision to holiday in Rainbow Valley, when they stray into the lair of a spectral Viking warrior clad in a bear skin in Jefferson Richard's Berserker (1987). Iceland-born horror icon Gunnar Larsen proves himself to be a natural-born storyteller in William Cooke and Paul Talbot's anthology, Campfire Tales (1991), which opens with campers daring each other to spin a bone-chilling yarn.

With its bold marketing campaign making it a must-see, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez's The Blair Witch Project (1999) made much of its meagre budget and helped launch a vogue for 'found footage' horrors. It also sent the image of camping into a downward spiral, as it showed student film-makers Joshua Leonard, Michael C. Williams and Heather Donahue head into the Black Hills and become far too conscious of the sound of snapping twigs outside their tent.

Joe Berlinger's Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows (2000) was followed by Adam Wingard's Blair Witch (2016), but neither generated the same buzz as the original. Another sleeper worth checking out is Craig Strachan's Wild Country (2005), which joins a group of Glaswegians on a hiking trip to the Highlands that audaciously coaxes the audience into shifting its allegiance after a lupine monster is killed in a remote castle. Martin Compston and Peter Capaldi are the most familiar faces in this low-budget outing, while Sean Pertwee is the most recognisable member of the group dispatched from a juvenile facility to a remote island in order to learn some team-building skills in Michael J. Bassett's Wilderness (2006).

The woods surrounding a long-deserted Irish children's home provide the place for Jack Huston to take five American pals on a camping hunt for some magic mushrooms in Paddy Breathnach's Shrooms. Determining what's real and what's a figment of an overactive imagination also proves a problem for plumber Trevor Matthews (who is still disturbed by the memory of a childhood camping trip) after he tries to clear a blocked pipe for professor Robert Englund and winds up unleashing an evil force in Jon Knaut's Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer (both 2007).

Steve (Michael Fassbender) intends to propose to girlfriend Jenny (Kelly Reilly) during a romantic camping trip in James Watkins's Eden Lake (2008). But things go wrong from the moment they find the idyllic spot cordoned off and Steve gets into an argument with Brett (Jack O'Connell) and his hoodie cohorts. This parable on Broken Britain has far more subtext than Richard Parry's A Night in the Woods (2011). But this found footage trek across Dartmoor is just as tense, as Brody (Scoot McNairy) takes exception to Leo (Andrew Hawley), the cousin of his girlfriend, Kerry (Anna Skellern), and all three start to feel uneasy about the local legend of a murderous huntsman.

A stop-off en route to a family reunion turns into a nocturnal nightmare when a party of four is attacked by six masked maniacs in Gabriel Carrer's If a Tree Falls. In Shaun Troke's Camp Massacre (aka Deep Rooted Evil), it's six friends who come to regret ignoring the warnings about a demented park ranger, when they pitch their tents at Camp Happy Dream. The stalker in Dean Francis's Road Train is a driverless locomotive that pursues a band of Australian teens across the Outback, while a marine biologist and her boyfriend discover in Bill Bennett's Uninhabited (all 2010) that the Great Barrier Reef coral island on which they are camping was the scene of a sordid crime back in the 1920s.

Already scarred after seeing her boyfriend killed in Afghanistan, soldier Zara Phythian goes camping with friends in Rupert Byran's The Hike (2011). However, when one of the group goes missing at Sunset Point, they have to put their faith in three hunky climbers. Another girls' weekend goes awry in Katie Aselton's Black Rock (2012), as Aselton, Kate Bosworth and Lake Bell wish they hadn't decided to pal up with combat veterans Will Bouvier, Jay Paulson and Anselm Richardson on an isolated island off the coast of Maine. The New Jersey Pine Barrens provide the unsettling setting for Darren Lynn Bousman's Devil in the Woods (aka The Barrens, 2012), which follows Stephen Moyer's family on a camping trip to a locale that has supposedly been haunted since the 18th century by the Jersey Devil.

The murderous threat in Ben Wheatley's Sightseers (2012) comes from caravan fan Chris (Steve Oram) and his new girlfriend, Tina (Alice Lowe), as they go on a slaying spree between the National Tram Museum in Derbyshire and Ribblehead Viaduct in North Yorkshire. A similarly nasty edge informs Philip Escott and Craig Newman's fact-based Cruel Summer (2016), as autistic teenager Richard Pawulski is subjected to a gruesome ordeal at the hands of Danny Miller, who blames him for the break up of his relationship.

Clint James isn't quite sure what has happened to him, when he is found in the forest after going camping with his buddies in Robert Conway's The Encounter. But spare a thought for park ranger Eliza Kiss, as she's the one who bears the brunt of an alien invasion. A mishap at a research facility makes it more difficult for eager beaver Joey Morgan to get his Condor Patch by camping overnight in Christopher Landon's Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (both 2015). But he's not one to quit.

Sarah Dumont co-stars as a plucky cocktail waitress and the lore of the horror genre relating to young women is wittily debunked in Todd Strauss-Schulson's The Final Girls (2015), which sees Taissa Farmiga and her friends get sucked into the screen at an anniversary showing of Camp Bloodbath, the 80s schlocker that had starred her late 'scream queen' mother (Malin Akerman). The premise is as equally unlikely in Patrick Rea's Enclosure (aka Arbor Demon, 2016), in which Fiona Dourif's bid to break some news to husband Kevin Ryan is interrupted when a wounded Jake Busey comes to share their tent and they are beset by arboreal creatures.

The horror is all too real in both Paul Greengrass's 22 July and Erik Poppe's Utøya: July 22 (both 2018), which recreate the massacre perpetrated by Norwegian fascist Anders Breivik at a Workers' Youth League summer camp in 2011. However, we end on a less tragic note, as Leif Edlund and Ylva Gallon set off on a camping trip in Johannes Nyholm's Koko-di Koko-da (2019), which they hope will salvage a marriage that has been crumbling since the death of their daughter three years earlier. However, their getaway is sabotaged by a sadist in a boater, his Staffordshire Bull Terrier and three nursery rhyme characters from their dead child's musical box.