The Burning is a 1981 MGM slasher horror film directed by Tony Maylam and starring Brian Matthews, Leah Ayres, Brian Backer, Jason Alexander, and Carrick Glenn. This movie was made on the initial cusp of the slasher boom of the 1980s, 1981 was a really big year for the slasher subgenre and most likely the success of the slasher films of 81 was the catalyst for the rest of the films we saw released throughout the 80s in the horror genre. This movie took it one step further and can technically be classified as a subgenre’s subgenre though (if you’re as nerdy about film as me) as it wasn’t just a slasher flick but a summer camp slasher flick, like Sleepaway Camp and Madman and Bloody Murder and of course the king of summer camp slashers, Friday the 13th. My only problem with summer camp slasher movies is they all feel like they’re ripping off the success of the Friday the 13th franchise and this one felt no different to me, especially being released a year after the first Friday film and the same year as the sequel. We have a cool enough concept to go off of here though as they pulled their antagonist for the film from an old New Jersey urban legend told at summer camps back in the day about a horribly burned and disfigured man named ‘Cropsy’ who stalked the woods of Northeast America in search for his vengeance and next victim. Da-da-daaaaa! The movie’s version of Cropsy was a mean, drunk camp counselor who got horribly burned and disfigured from a prank gone bad 5 years ago and is back after being released from the hospital to exact his revenge on the campgrounds the accident happened at 5 years earlier. The character of Cropsy looked pretty neat in this movie though (thanks to Savini’s practical effects on this film as well) and I actually rooted for him over the kids here a majority of the time. That’s not really a credit to the writing team either because the kids were clearly the innocent victims of this attack, but a lot of them were so insufferable and unlikeable that you were just begging they would get knocked off, at least I was. Maybe that says something more about my twisted, desensitized mind when it comes to violence in horror films, but I tend to think most modern audiences would agree if they viewed this movie for the first time now.
This was the Weinstein brothers first producing credit for a feature film as well and the launch pad for what would eventually become their studio ‘Miramax’, and ole creepo Harvey Weinstein even got a writing credit for the film as well. That makes the unlikeable characters within the film all the more cringey and unable to cheer for when you consider Harvey had his hands in the writing team and given his track record of repulsive behavior discovered much later. Harvey Weinstein’s name is unavoidable in Hollywood feature films, him and his studio have been a part of a lot of big budget releases throughout the years and he’s credited on some of my favorite films of all time, but it just seems worth mentioning here specifically as it was his first feature film alongside his brother Bob and the characters in it had behaviors similar to ones that he was exposed of having years later. Almost every male character in the film outside of the camp counselor and main character, Todd, were horned up boys talking dirty with and attempting to hook up with the girls in the movie in an aggressive and pressuring type of way, especially the characters of Eddie and Glaser. The women weren’t written much better either, they came off as meek and air headed and were disgusted by some of the boys’ behavior while simultaneously still being into them and thinking they were cute…huge sigh. The one boy who was supposed the be the sympathetic character of the film, Alfred, came off as a creep as well and completely squandered the opportunity for me to feel any sympathy for him after his introduction to the movie was him being caught spying on a girl in the shower and his excuse basically being “it’s just because I’m lonely and have no friends”. Well gee I wonder why Alfred, maybe start by not being a peeping tom and it could be a bit easier for ya. On top of that, it didn’t feel like there was truly a main character in this film, I guess maybe Todd could be considered or even Cropsy maybe, but it never felt definitive. All the kids at the camp were equally not fleshed out and forgettable, which is common in slasher films specifically, but there’s usually one kid (the final girl or guy) that you can attach yourself to throughout and kind of go on this journey with and root for. I didn’t feel that with any of these characters throughout here.
I don’t want to only trash this movie though as I know there’s plenty of people in the horror community that love this one and there were still plenty of fun and good elements in here. The intro to this movie, going back 5 years and showing the accident taking place and then the procedures and journey that Cropsy went through on his hate filled journey back to the camp was well done and really set up good tension right off the bat and drew you in to the film in a successful way, it’s just too bad we had to spend so much time with these insufferable kids after that. The climax of the film revealing Cropsy’s face and revealing who Todd was and why he was important to Cropsy was good, blood filled, slasher fun as well and the addition of a flamethrower into the final showdown added some badassery to the scene and it was all quite effective in its delivery. The intro and climax of the film were both awesome and drew me right into the action, it was mainly everything in the middle with the camp kids that squandered that. Tom Savini lent his practical effects expertise to this movie as well (like Maniac that I just covered), he’s a God when it comes to gory practical effects in the horror genre, and he didn’t disappoint here either. There’s a specific scene involving a group of kids on a raft floating up next to an abandoned canoe that was very intense and well done and gave us some of the best gore effects in the movie. As I said before, there was still a lot of good here and still a lot of fun to be had with this movie at times. It’s certainly earned its stripes in the slasher genre as an early one that kind of paved the way for the genre moving forward and was given hell by the MPAA upon its release, like many gory horror films in this era (see my Maniac blog) but some of the downright cringey and uncomfortable bad seemed to outweigh the good for me at times in this movie. Look, I get it, I love the Friday the 13th series and they’re known for being kinda cheesy, low-grade, horny, gory, splatter pieces but they’re self-aware and there’s always at least one moral compass character you can lean on in those films that doesn’t partake and is usually fleshed out as the main character of the film as well. The Burning felt like a copycat version of a Friday the 13th film that was more cringey, less fleshed out, and overall not as good in a lot of moments throughout its run time, at least to me. You can check it out for yourself though and formulate your own opinions! Available to stream now for free on Tubi or on Amazon Prime with a subscription!
