The Fictional Horror Franchise Camp Miasma Gets a Real-world History

The franchise, which started with the original Camp Miasma in 1980, went on to have a long life with multiple sequels, spinoffs in the form of arcade cabinets and board games, and just about every kind of merchandise you can think of, from alarm clocks and lunch boxes to Halloween costumes and action figures. It got so popular there were even knockoff costumes at party stores. For several decades the franchise exerted a powerful, albeit dwindling, impact on the world of horror.

But if you haven't heard of Camp Miasma, that's okay, because it doesn't really exist. It's a fictional franchise at the heart of Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, the latest film from I Saw the TV Glow director Jane Schoenbrun. In order to convince audiences that Camp Miasma — an ongoing saga about a character called Little Death who terrorizes a summer camp — could be real, the production designers had to create a whole lot of objects that detailed the movie franchise's fake history. We probably could've spent three years only making stuff for Camp Miasma if those were the marching orders, says production designer Matt Hyland.