The Burning (DVD)

...to play a prank on the caretaker at their summer camp. Sneaking into his cabin, whilst he sleeps, they leave a little surprise for him on the side. Once outside again, they bang loudly on his windows to wake him up, but such is his shock upon waking that a terrible accident occurs and the wretched man is engulfed in fire. Fearing that they will be held accountable, the five teenagers scurry back to their cabins and deny any knowledge of the incident. ...
...try and repair some of the damage, the doctors are unable to do anything and instead the man is discharged onto the streets.

Whilst the original summer camp has since closed down, a nearby camp is in full operation, and is once again packed with teenaged boys and girls. A group of older children embarks on a canoe trip up the river, where they eventually make camp along with their two adult instructors. Around the campfire on their ... more

Five teenagers decide to play a prank on the caretaker at their summer camp. Sneaking into his cabin, whilst he sleeps, they leave a little surprise for him on the side. Once outside again, they bang loudly on his windows to wake him up, but such is his shock upon waking that a terrible accident occurs and the wretched man is engulfed in fire. Fearing that they will be held accountable, the five teenagers scurry back to their cabins and deny any knowledge of the incident. What they don't realise is that the man was never actually killed.

Instead, he spends five long years in a hospital's burns units. Despite their very best attempts to try and repair some of the damage, the doctors are unable to do anything and instead the man is discharged onto the streets.

Whilst the original summer camp has since closed down, a nearby camp is in full operation, and is once again packed with teenaged boys and girls. A group of older children embarks on a canoe trip up the river, where they eventually make camp along with their two adult instructors. Around the campfire on their first night, one of the instructors, Todd, tells them the story of the unfortunate caretaker, which has since become something of an urban legend. He tells the students that the man now stalks the woods in the area, armed with a pair of razor-sharp gardening shears, waiting to exact his terrible revenge on those who disfigured him for life. After a few joke shocks, the students settle down for a night's sleep, albeit in a slightly jumpier mood than normal.

But there is somebody in the woods. Somebody is watching them. Somebody has followed them up from the base camp. If you look carefully, you might just spot the glint of a pair of shears shining in the moonlight…..

For some reason, I'd always thought that The Burning was about witches. It wasn't until I spotted a copy in Vipco's Vaults of Horror (!) that I was actually able to watch the film and realise the error of my ways. The Burning is, of course, a slasher movie, through and through - and a very good one it is too.

Despite the fact that the film was made 23 years ago, it dates extremely well and stands up to a viewing in 2004 just as easily as it did in 1981. Although the premise sounds very familiar - it was always criticised for being yet another Friday the 13th - there are some clear distinctions between those two movies, which (in my opinion) set this one ahead of the competition.

The tone of The Burning is very different to Friday the 13th series. The Friday films have tended to play to the same formula, where we have little sympathy for the unfortunate teens and instead sit back and enjoy a chorus of nudity and slaughter. In The Burning, the nudity and violence is still there, but we actually empathise with the teenagers in peril. This in turn makes the film far more frightening than Friday the 13th could ever have hoped to be. We also believe everything that we see. The camp feels real (unlike the obvious set pieces of Friday the 13th), the teenagers actually feel like teenagers on vacation and there is an absence of silly caricatures (such as an incompetent policeman.) The location settings are also used to great effect in The Burning to make the cast seem even more vulnerable. In every tense scene, you can hear the birds singing and the insects buzzing in a way that genuinely transports you into the middle of the action.

The Burning is also very different because it seems to make more sense. In the Friday films, Jason Vorhees gradually became a caricature of himself, growing in power with every film until he was virtually unstoppable. In The Burning, the killer (Cropsy) has a genuine motive and an obvious reason for being completely deranged. He doesn't do anything spectacular, either. His actions are clearly those of an average man, as opposed to some super-human behemoth. So the audience quickly finds itself much more engaged and much more frightened.

The director cleverly draws us into the film by putting us on the edge of our seats one time after another until we really wonder whether the killer is ever going to turn up. He does, of course, but the tension used to get us there works extremely well. The camerawork does the usual trick of spying through the bushes in a shaky, hazy manner to demonstrate that someone is watching. But it isn't always the killer. So you really do end curling up your toes in anticipation of what might happen next. Added to this, there is the ongoing question of what the killer looks like. You never really see him until the end, you see. But you DO see the reaction he gets from all his victims. So you end up wondering what on earth he will look like. It's all very simple, but it's still an extremely effective way to make a scary movie.

The Burning is also a good example of a slasher movie because it's got a nasty edge to it. Films like Scream, Friday the 13th and Final Destination have all moved the genre away from its roots a little, because they have turned killing people into a sport. With these films, it has become a challenge to be more and more creative in the ways that people are despatched. But, the Burning is deadly and simple. Cropsy kills people with a pair of shears. He stabs them in the throat. He cuts off their fingers. He impales them on trees. But he does all these things quickly, clinically and quite brutally, and the director really works hard to make it like this. The death scenes are therefore quite shocking, notably the infamous "raft" scene, where several characters are despatched simultaneously - a relative unknown in the world of horror films. The make-up is also very effective, given the time of production and the whole spectacle feels very realistic.

The cast is good, but otherwise unknown. The good guy, Todd (Brian Matthews) only really went on to play hunks in soap operas. Cropsy (Lou David) only had one or two other roles. A couple of the teenagers have gone on to do other films, but The Burning clearly wasn't the showcase that similar films turned into (Final Destination for example.)

I was surprised to discover something of a gem in this movie. Its age initially put me off, but once I'd settled into it, I found it to be one of the better horror/slasher movies that I've seen for some time. Definitely one for fans of this stuff - but you might struggle to track down a copy.

Recommended
 

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