Slasher Stop Off - The Burning (1981)

*Because there is a similar fireside scene in "Friday the 13th Part 2", I couldn't help but want to watch "The Burning" in preparation.

You will start seeing a lot of slashers celebrating 40^th anniversaries which just seems outrageous. The Burning (1981) will be next year. A bunch of familiar faces were in their early 20s at that time, which will always be an enduring quality for the film…even if those actors like Fisher Stevens, Jason Alexander, Ned Eisenberg, Brian Backer, etc. might have cleansed their memories of the film. I remember how excited I was to finally get my DVD copy of “The Burning”, having been eye-openingly stunned when seeing the infamous, showstopping raft massacre featured in “Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film” and knowing the the likes of Stevens and Alexander were in it. Knowing that Savini worked on the effects and the setting being ideally a summer camp with a mix of gals and guys, many of them later canoeing to the other side of the lake for a night out under the stars. “The Burning” checks the boxes for what many a slasher fan considers important ingredients in the genre’s success: shocking ultra-violence (fingers lopped off, a forehead gashed, throats impaled, ax to the face, shear blade to the stomach), unnecessary nudity (Carrick Glenn as Sally has a soapy, shower topless scene, Carolyn Houlihan is full frontal when skinny dipping with asshole Eisenberg as the demure, soft-voiced sweetheart, Karen), the big climactic chase and final showdown between the killer and main lead(s), the fireside boogeyman story to scare the kids (lead Brian Matthews as Todd does the honors), camp hi-jinks involving the guys efforts to flirt with the girls, and the misunderstood nerd (Backer) who is often at odds (no surprise) with a muscled bully (Larry Joshua). There are hookups (Joshua’s Glaser spends the film trying to fuck Sally, eventually convincing her to relent, but he’s a quick lay!), dirty magazines (Alexander is the supplier!), girls talking about boys and boys talking about girls, the peeper (Backer) claiming to just wanting to scare Sally, watersports (Glaser dumps Backer in the water knowing he can’t swim, later pushed in the drink by a friend of Sally’s a ramp), wisecracks (Alexander and Stevens are a fun pair), and skinny dipping (Karen unfortunately leaves her clothes behind for Cropsy to lure her to her demise).

Cropsy is such a memorable killer, wielding his shears with great intensity and purpose (Glaser lifted off his feet and stuck into a tree is particularly memorable as is Sally trying to fend off the shears as they are open like scissors moving towards her neck), eventually revealed to be a burn-faced ghoul, a victim of a prank involving a rotted skull with worms and lit with little flames that is accidentally dropped on his bed, setting him afire.

This wasn’t meant to be an official review or anything. I meant for just a brief write-up because I was thinking about a “buffer” between Friday the 13^th (1980) and Friday the 13^th Part 2 (1981). I thought about Todd’s campfire tale of Cropsy to the kids that night before Cropsy would prey upon them all, leaving a raft of victims chopped up, more victims in the woods, and a final act where he wanted Todd dead. One of my favorite visual slasher motifs is the active camera following from a slight distance as a runner tries to get away, feet-to-ground through the woods. Obviously nothing, to me, tops Marilyn Burns fleeing Leatherface through the woods after the infamous dinner scene at the family home, but I love how Maylam shoots Backer trying to get away from Cropsy. Granted, it is really asking us to suspend disbelief that Cropsy could wait for the kids in the canoe as they paddle on their raft to him and get back to the remaining camp to kill some more…he really had to time it really well. The ruins Backer tries to hide in, Cropsy eventually retrieving him, while Todd tries to play catch-up, all set to Rick Wakeman’s catchy score, is really the kind of thrilling conclusion I could invest in. Matthews wasn’t in a lot after this film, while his love interest (a bit older than the girls, the counselor equaling Todd who monitored the males to her females) is played by Leah Ayres (I know her from “Bloodsport” (1988)) did appear in a few memorable parts afterward. My biggest surprise was that Carrick Glenn, as the object of Glaser’s desire, never extended her career past 1982…I still need to get around to seeing “Girls Nite Out”. But that was the way it was in the 80s. A lot of likeable actors that starred in the slasher genre never had careers that took off. For every Kevin Bacon or Jason Alexander, there was a Glenn or Houlihan, getting one or two parts after the slasher film then disappearing altogether. And I can say that one of the main appeals of “The Burning” is that I did like the cast a lot. They just felt natural, not young adults trying to mimic teenagers. And there was a nice diversity of personalities, and what made the raft slaughter so effective was that you feel for the victims (except Eisenberg, who was a douchebag). They are just so happy to find that canoe, not anticipating Cropsy and his shears striking them down quite quickly. 4/5