The Burning (1981)
In the ludicrously lucrative wake of John Carpenter’s Halloween—the Cadillac of slashers, as Bruce Campbell puts it, which was released by Compass International to bank-busting business, and hastily chased up by Sean S. Cunningham’s pioneering 1980 indie megasmash, Friday the 13th, which was shrewdly snatched-up by Paramount, the majors found their shelves bare in terms of competitive pictures, and so began a free for all feeding frenzy, and the accompanying bidding wars for just about any trope-ticking finished negatives going with teens in peril, a masked antagonist, and no pricey, attached movie stars required. Cue a shitload of slasher samesies, and due to Cunningham’s summer camp-set, sub-subgenre trope codifier, the onslaught of counselor carnage copycats continued.
Notable things of which there are three: The Three Little Pigs, Three Blind Mice… Three Amigos. My three HalloRe’ewind picks this year are bookended by Cropsey maniac-inspired horror tales, so let’s begin with an impromptu visit to the burn unit—aided by a very unprofessional porter, as we take a gander at a freak in 1981’s The Burning. Perhaps you’ve seen the 2009 true-crime doc, Cropsey, or caught wind of New York’s foremost boogeyman and spiralling urban legend, in which a disfigured or wronged local man—be he an ex-janitor, funny farm fugitive, or bereaved dad—stalks the woods surrounding sleepaway camps, seeking vicious revenge against his perpetrators or any slasher substitutes who may stand in his vengeful path with an axe, or maybe man door hand hook car door. These real-life, opportunistic counselors, of course, shrewdly utilised the Cropsey myth to bond their groups, warn wayward ankle-biters against unwise solo excursions, and to lay down the law in terms of following their camp guidelines.
We’re leaving for a three-day canoe trip to Devil’s Creek, so our first “Cropsy venture” takes us to Camp Blackfoot with the inaugural Miramax film—Corky Burger (nice name… not) presents The Burning—aka Cropsy (without the “e”), aka Carnage, which was created and produced by the debauched, porcine, towel-dropping, massage-obsessed, cooking pot (and Hollywood actress) defiler, and all-round dressing gown grotesque, Harvey Weinstein. I try to absolve myself of any responsibility when it comes to these lascivious pigs, and the way they conduct their sleazy selves behind the scenes of movies we happen to enjoy. Unfortunately, the direct creative Weinstein association means nobody’s really pushing this picture anymore, but think yourselves lucky I didn’t pick 1984’s Sleepaway Camp—a similar slasher with a hot potato reveal so problematic, even De Palma would put on his very white shoes, and book.
As if that creepy context wasn’t enough, The Burning sets out its sordid stall with a particularly nasty, Peeping Tom-esque, prostitute stabbing with a geet big pair of scissors, which seems to trigger former camp caretaker, Cropsy’s preference for pruning juveniles with gardening shears—he loyally persists with this edged weapon of choice throughout, alongside a rinky-dink, crudely-fashioned flamethrower.
Shady and skeevy? You bet. Some of the disreputable dialogue in The Burning actively oozes, as if Harvey “plant pot perv” Weinstein copied it directly from his bumper book of male chauvinist chat-up lines, and pasted ’em into the script—particularly Eddie’s more desperate, nastier sexual advances. Not to mention elderly teenager, Jason Alexander, refers to a girl’s derrière as “prime meat,” whilst still somehow looking forty years old—even with all his own hair. The Burning is also curious in the sense that it has no final girl to speak of, and perhaps that’s why it palpably veers into a meaner lane of misogyny. There isn’t even a loose argument for a feminist slasher statement here. The ladies are all either starkly starkers (see Sally’s drawn-out, soapy shower scene, and Karen’s superfluous skinny-dip) and explicitly slaughtered, or simply have no real relevance to the plot.
There are several naked glutei maximi—unforgivably, one belongs to the definitely not-Indian guy from Short Circuit 2, who directed the Beckham doc, and another is George Costanza’s. The aforementioned Fisher Stevens plays a character called Woodstock, and participates in what is surely the hairiest, most hideously revealing mooning scene I’ve ever had the misfortune to witness. Truly grim.
As an interesting wrinkle for Italian horror fanatics, the necessity to mask Cropsy’s distorting burns means he doubles as somewhat of a giallo killer in appearance—signature fedora, leather gloves, and black jacket. Disappointingly, to a degree, in spite of clocking in quickly at a mere 91 minutes, The Burning still drags here and there, and is certainly clunkily-directed at intervals—perhaps partly due to the fact that From Dusk Till Dawn Sex Machine, Tom Savini “designed” the horror sequences. Typically, the director will work with an effects technician to achieve the magic trick photography of these splattery killin’s, but here Tom was evidently trying his hardest on his lonesome.
