THE BURNING (1981)

THE BURNING (1981)

Tagline: Don't look he'll see you. Don't breathe he'll hear you. Don't move you're dead.

(Horror, Slasher, Garden Sheers Of Doom) [R]

Don't worry. Tonight's the night that we scare the shit out of Cropsy. Because when he wakes up, when he sees it, he's gonna have a heart attack.

In this one, a sadistic former camp caretaker at camp Black Foot, named “Cropsy” who liked messing with other people ends up getting more than a taste of his own medicine when a gag involving him goes awry and he is badly burned over his entire body. Five years later he is released from the hospital and decides to go back to the camp (which is now called Camp Stonewater) where his nightmare began to pay back anyone that set foot there. Will anyone make it out alive? 

First off, this movie ends up having a bit of a departure from the usual horror tropes. Yes, we get a killer in the woods. Yes, he wants revenge and yes, he is going after the youth first. However, we don’t get a final girl in this, we don’t get teens hacked to pieces for having sex (in fact in many cases they are actively trying to avoid it) and we don’t have every killing happen with just 1 or 2 people around. 

I gotta say, I skipped this one for a while just due to it looking like it was going to be a bit too gory for me. Fortunately, while the film is atmospheric and there is a good amount of blood in it, it didn’t frighten me the way FRIDAY THE 13TH PART II did. I think I figured out why. It’s because in this movie the role of Dave is played by Jason Alexander from the TV show “Seinfeld”. In fact, he is almost playing George Costanza in this role and I couldn’t help but smile and almost start laughing every time he showed up on screen. Granted, back in the ’80s this was his first feature film, so unless you saw this before “Seinfeld” I am sure it didn’t impact you the same way. He wasn’t the only big star in this, we also had a young Holly Hunter who played Sophie and Fisher Stevens who plays “Woodstock”. If you don’t recognize Stevens, he was famous for SHORT CIRCUIT and more recently “The Blacklist” TV show. We also get the lesser known, but also successful Leah Ayres (BLOODSPORT) as Michelle, and Brian Backer (FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH) as Alfred. We also get Carrick Glenn in this who plays Sally. She is fine in this role, but probably stands out more for having done only 2 feature films and both of them having been horror movies. The other one was GIRLS NITE OUT. 

Kind of like in EDGE OF THE AXE, “Cropsy” is a 1 weapon dude. He sticks to garden sheers like the killer in EDGE OF THE AXE stuck to axes. So in that sense, this one is also an outlier, because we had 80’s slashers killing people with everything from paper clips to microwaves. Dialog wise a lot of the lines in here are just pretty bad. Not all of it, but most of it's pretty forgettable and cringy with the exception of most of Jason Alexander’s lines (note that I said “most” because several of his lines are rough). I will say that I am aware this is a low-budget movie, but with the effects, Tom Savini was able to pull off, it doesn’t feel low budget, at least not any lower budget than FRIDAY THE 13TH PART II did. 

Overall this is considered one of the better slashers ever made and with good reason. It’s shot really well but is missing any sort of iconic score. I also liked that the slasher didn’t go down like a lump of coal after 1 hit. The more well-known slashers know better than to kill off the killer, but if they are going to, you definitely don’t want that guy or gal getting taken out with a ghost punch. If you are doing a Halloween Horror-o-thon, this is a solid addition to that lineup. 

I give THE BURNING a 5 out of 7. It’s pretty solid, but for me not quite at the level FRIDAY THE 13TH PART II was. This one has more well-known actors and actresses, but the spook factor in FRIDAY THE 13TH PART II was a few notches higher and I don’t recall any day-for-night scenes like this one had. 

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF CROPSY VENTURE AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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