The Burning (

1981

)

Camp, means campfires, and usually involves a bunch of kids and teens sitting around a fire surrounded by miles and miles of unfamiliar, shadow-cloaked wilderness. There are few venues left in modern America more conducive to the creation of impromptu lore than that (though the whole Slender Man mythology shows that our children will not want for creepy second-hand stories). Cropsey is perhaps the most famous product of these long Summer nights, a story told with a thousand different variations about a deformed homicidal maniac who (of course) preys on campers. In the wake of Friday the 13th (1980) massive success, such a story was perfect fodder for a knock-off horror movie, and so the campfire story made the jump to the big screen.

Here Cropsey becomes Cropsy, a repellent groundskeeper at Camp Blackfoot, who five years ago was horrifically burned as the unintended consequence of a prank. Modern medicine could do nothing for Cropsy, and when the skin graphs fail the hospital discharges him to live out his life as a deformed freak. The doctors come across as callous in the voice-over narration here, I'm surprised they don't recommend him a nice circus he could join up with. Already misanthropic, the experience is enough to push Cropsy over the edge, and after pausing to eviscerate a prostitute in the urban wasteland of Time Square, he heads off to the literal wilderness of upstate New York, to take up a new career as a boogyman (the pay sucks, but at least you get to make your own hours). His target is of course campers, who Cropsy blames for his horrific disfigurement. Naturally, he stalks off to the site of his accident, but Camp Blackfoot has long ago been abandoned. Fortunately, a new camp, called Camp Stonewater, has been set up just across the water. Cropsy won't want for potential victims, that much is certain.

The teenage denizens are totally oblivious to the sword hanging over their head, being instead much more interested in the possible romantic conquests available to them in a co-ed overnight camp. It's all pretty mundane stuff, so I'll glance over the players just to give you a bird's eye view of the soon to be eviscerated cast. There's conservative good girl Karen, whose partnered off with playboy Eddie; jock/bully Glazer (actually his name) who's pursuing mean girl Sally with an ardor that borders on sexual assault, and goofball Dave who flirts with every girl but mostly keeps himself occupied with dirty magazines. All these are under the watchful eye of their counselors, Michelle and Todd who for convenience sake, are themselves dating. Finally, there's the closet thing to a protagonist in the film, Alfred: a scuzzy little pervert who splits his time between peeking on girls in the shower and whining about how misunderstood he is.

Cropsy is a deranged homicidal maniac, but he's no fool. Slicing up these teens while they are still at camp Stonewater might be his idea of a good time but there are way too many people around and the police are just a phone call and (a presumably long) drive away. Instead, he bides his time, stalking and menacing a bit from the obligatory PoV shots until all the older kids set sail in their canoes for a weekend trip into the wilderness. Once this batch has been safely isolated from the rest, Cropsy can begin his gruesome work. Starting, unusually enough for the genre, with conservative good girl Karen. Lest the others beat a hasty retreat back to civilization once his handiwork is discovered, Cropsy makes off with their canoes. Nobody is going anywhere.

The gore effects here are, unsurprisingly top-notch work. Smashed skulls and slit abdomens are par for course for Tom Savini's work in this era, and he delivers expertly here. Yet it's the smaller effects that leap out in my mind, the way Cropsy slices off fingers with his garden sheers is particularly striking. It's this attention to detail that sets the work of a master apart from all the journeyman gore artists that were springing up in the wake of the success of Friday the 13th (1980). The brilliant practical effects are also accompanied by able direction though, and the suspense for each grisly murder builds effectively. The best example being the sequence where the makeshift raft comes upon one of the missing canoes. Naturally, the campers are excited to find a better vessel so they let out a cheer and begin paddling towards the boat chattering excitedly. Then slowly, a synthetic tone begins to play so softly that you can't even be sure you're hearing it at first, but then louder and louder till it drowns out the chattering of the actors. At the same time, the camera pans closer and closer to the canoe, till you can almost but not quite see what might be lying on the floor. Then, just as the raft is right alongside the canoe Cropsy leaps up and massacres the poor campers, cutting a swath of red through the teens until the screen fade, not to black is traditional but to red. What a scene! Too bad the rest of the film isn't this good.

A 1980s slasher movie with great practical effects is a given, but one with genuinely amusing comic relief is almost unheard of. Usually, the comic relief figure is at best mildly amusing, and at worst so annoying that the audience spends the whole runtime longing for his death. The Burning bucks the trend, by casting Jason Alexander, better known as George Costanza as their clown. The jokes are no funnier than normal, but Alexander's pitch, timing, and delivery are all flawless. Moreover, there's an added benefit for any fan of Seinfeld. The role Alexander plays here is a swaggering macho braggart. You couldn't imagine a more different role from the neurotic George, and yet Alexander's style and voice are so distinct that I have trouble differentiating the two roles. I'm forced to wonder what string of absurd lies George told that lead him to impersonate a teenage camper in upstate New York.

Being written and produced by Harvey Weinstein, The Burning sheds an interesting light on his crimes and mentality. When a powerful man like Harvey Weinstein misuses his power cruelly or viciously, I always wonder: What came first, the power or the abuse? Were Weinstein a mid-level insurance agent in Sheboygan Wisconsin instead of a powerful movie mogul in Hollywood California, would he have the same urge to terrorize women? Or was it the power and the opportunities it presented him with that brought out his sinister tendencies? Does power corrupt or does it merely draw corrupted men? Now, I'm not a psychologist, or a mind reader, or an expert (on anything really, aside 1950s American sci-fi movies) but I think I've found the answer to this question in today's film. Because before Weinstein was the poster boy for sexual harassment, and before he was an industry juggernaut, he was a young man trying desperately to break into the movie business. One of his many attempts was to make a low-budget slasher film, a transparent rip-off of Friday the 13th (1980).

Now, this was in and of itself nothing special circa 1981. Friday the 13th (1980) had made a great deal of money, roughly an 8000% return on the original investment. This was an absurd success story even in the world of low-budget horror movies, and everyone with a shred of ambition wanted a Friday the 13th (1980) of their own. Where Weinstein's effort differs is in the specifics, not the general thrust. Like all films of this strata, The Burning contains a good deal of sex and nudity. I'm no prude, and I expect a certain amount of bare breasts and leering camera shots in my slasher films. Yet, the sexuality on display in The Burning is more than a little troubling. Nearly every male character is in some way a pervert, no joke we're nearing Phantom Killer (1998) or The New York Ripper (1982) density of sexual degenerates here. They run the gamut from peeping toms to full-fledged date rapists. Many of the mundane interactions between male and female characters are charged with the threat of sexual violence, like the scene where Glazer pins Sally against a tree when she teases him with the prospect of sex for the hundredth time. It's not a reflection of a healthy understanding of human sexuality. The fact that Alfred, who we meet mid-way through peeking on a girl in the shower is the closest thing we get to a protagonist, is in-and-of-itself telling.

Some will undoubtedly say this is just par for course for the slasher genre because these films are inherently misogynistic and hostile to women. After all, they may argue, this is the sub-genre of films that famously has promiscuous girls sliced for the audacity of having sex. While I'm inclined to dispute this entire worldview, such a complete rejection is unnecessary here as The Burning itself, along with most of it's contemporaries do not match the popular conception of slasher movies; in 1981 there was no requirement that the final girl had to be a virgin. Take for instance Black Christmas (1974) when the final girl was not only not a virgin but had recently had an abortion. Likewise in Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and Friday the 13th (1980), the purity of the final girls goes completely uncommented. Just based on the world around them it seems more than a little bit likely that they have some experience. Only Halloween (1978) among The Burning's key influences has a virgin lone survivor. The trope of sex = death would develop later on in slasher history, but in 1981 it was hardly a given. Moreover, even if we anachronistically judge The Burning in light of its successors, it still doesn't add up because The Burning shows a girl stridently refuse to have sex and then be butchered all the same.

The sexual violence of The Burning thus does not reflect upon its genre (either circa 1981 or even later on), and instead reflects some of the uglier notions at work in the mind of its creator. While Weinstein was not alone in creating this film, he was aided by a few different writers and director Tony Maylam, but given the recent revelations about his actions, I am confident in assigning most of the blame for the film's less savory aspects to him. Thus we can tell, Weinstein was not corrupted by power (in 1981 he had none), but instead had twisted ideas about power and sex all along. Weinstein is certainly despicable, yet along with the blame he also deserves most of the credit for The Burning. After all, it was his story that forms the spine of the film, his fund-raising that financed most of the operation, and his marshaling of talent that makes this one of the best “before they were famous” films of all time. It's a fine film, made by a repellent man, those who cannot (or refuse to) separate the art from the artist should take note.