Apologies if this is a bit of a trite analogy, but it’s hard not to note clear parallels between slasher movies and punk rock. Both genres emerged more or less at the same time, in the downbeat days of the mid-to-late 70s, and tapped into a similar vein of youthful discontent and rage. There was a back to basics ethic, an emphasis on being loud and outrageous, a deliberate flip of the bird to the conventions of good taste, and much of this was the handiwork of young, largely inexperienced artists out to make a name for themselves. A great many punk rockers and slasher filmmakers enjoyed a brief day in the sun and were never seen again, but for an illustrious few it was merely the first step toward a hugely successful career.
One particularly noteworthy filmmaking duo whose beginnings in the slasher genre tend to be forgotten are Harvey and Bob Weinstein. To carry on the punk analogy, these guys would surely be the U2 of slashers; started out small, went on to pretty much conquer the world. Knowing their legacy of selling awards-friendly indie cinema to the masses with Miramax (though few would argue their subsequent Weinstein Company has had anything like the same impact), in some ways it’s hard to believe the Weinsteins made their debut with this rather tawdry, downmarket tits and gore film with a plot you could fit on the back of a postcard, which wound up making the Video Nasties blacklist. But as we saw with punk, there were those who could manage to play those same three chords as everyone else, yet do so with enough flair to stand apart from the rest. This, I think, is a feat managed by the Weinsteins (Bob as co-screenwriter, Harvey as ‘creator and producer’ – that’s his official credit), in conjunction director Tony Maylam, on 1981’s The Burning.
Arriving a year after Friday the 13th (and famously pilfering its special make-up effects artist Tom Savini, who turned down Friday the 13th Part 2 to work on this film), The Burning takes the essentials of that same campfire story monomyth, but plays the set-up even simpler, directly adapting one of the key urban legends which inspired the slashers; the story of Cropsey, the creepy old janitor hated by the kids at the summer camp who is horribly burned beyond all recognition when a prank goes wrong. But of course, this doesn’t kill Cropsey; all it does is leave him in a homicidal rage which he can’t wait to vent on the new kids at camp. After five years in the hospital (and an opening twenty-odd minutes which feels almost as long), Cropsey heads back to his old stomping ground, just in time to find this year’s batch of campers making their way up river on a weekend canoe trip – a trip which will turn out to be one of those “who will survive and what will be left of them” deals.
Plot-wise, then, The Burning is almost willful in its lack of invention, but as is well established this was never the key concern with slashers, wherein the principle motivation was to splash as much flesh and blood on the screen as possible, in the most attention-grabbing way. It’s here that The Burning excels, particularly in direct comparison with some of its peers. Seeing it beautifully cleaned up in HD as it is here goes some way to underlining how much more aesthetically pleasing a film The Burning is than many of the other first wave slashers, Tony Maylam displaying more visual invention than Sean S Cunningham and Steve Miner did with very similar material. And The Burning wins out in the blood, thunder and titillation stakes too; Savini’s work here is arguably better than anything he did in either the first or fourth Friday (although again, the fact that this edition is fully uncut obviously doesn’t hurt), the notable highlight being the notorious raft massacre sequence. They also up the ante on the nudity, with a topless shower scene from Carrick Glenn, and a pretty lengthy full frontal nude skinny dip scene from Carolyn Houlihan. They even balance things out with a bunch of naked man-ass shots, among them future Seinfeld star Jason Alexander, and future Short Circuit shocking racial caricaturist Fisher Stevens, both making their film debut here – alongside future Oscar winner Holly Hunter, who believe it or not doesn’t look too embarrassed to be there.
There’s always a temptation when revisiting horror films from a bygone era to look for hints of underlying social commentary on the time it was made, but I doubt such efforts will prove fruitful with The Burning. We might note there are a couple of sexually aggressive males who bluntly pressure their respective partners into doing the deed, and as such their subsequent bloody deaths might be deemed punishment; but then, the girls they pressure into sex also end up dead, as do a whole bunch of other kids who don’t put a single foot wrong. The Burning actually deviates from slasher convention in one very notable way in that there’s no final girl here, that essential role instead passing to Brian Backer’s insecure teen Alfred, a character who certainly isn’t without sin given his peeping tom antics early on. So, is The Burning saying that voyeurism isn’t that bad? Is the kinship that grows between Alfred and the manly good guy camp counselor Todd (Brian Matthews) a fraternal bond, or homoerotic? Or… could this literally just be a movie about a maniac who kills kids just because he’s a maniac who wants to kill kids? Is a pair of garden shears ever just a pair of garden shears? (That’s The Burning’s only other semi-innovation; Cropsey’s weapon of choice.)
It is surprising in some senses that The Burning proved to be a one-and-done slasher; it’s not hard to envisage Cropsey coming back in just as many sequels as his peers, particularly given the Weinsteins produced their share of horror sequels (notably the Halloween, Hellraiser and Scream franchises). On a closely related note, it’s also surprising that nobody’s remade it yet. All this being the case, though, The Burning almost feels like a time capsule of the first wave slasher era, a film whose personality has not been watered down by decades of rehashes and rip-offs… then again, that’s not to imply that it wasn’t already ripping off every other film made in its subgenre at the time. But let’s not go running in frenzied mental circles over this one, as it’s ultimately very simple. The Burning is the slasher played out at its simplest and most effective, delivering pretty much everything we can expect from a film of this nature, so if you’re a fan of the subgenre this is one you really need to see.
And, as ever, it’s a great edition from Arrow Video. The film itself looks and sounds terrific, and there’s no shortage of enjoyable extras, although the bulk of these can already be found on the earlier US release from Scream Factory: we have interviews with Tom Savini, editor Jack Sholder, Cropsey actor Lou David and actress Leah Ayres. One new feature is an interview with composer Rick Wakeman. There’s also some behind the scenes footage, the trailer, some stills galleries, and three commentary tracks.
The Burning is out on dual format Blu-ray and DVD on 19th December, from Arrow Video; pre-order here. (They also released a limited edition steelbook in October which sold out almost immediately and is now going for CRAZY prices online.)