After the box-office success ofJohn Carpenter’sHalloweenin 1978 the slasher was a viable subgenre that would see numerous imitations trying to make a similar profit before it dipped in popularity the longer the decade went on. And the best of these imitations that came inHalloween’s wake wasFriday the 13thin 1980.Jason Voorheeswas the king of summer camp slashers, litteringCamp Crystal Lakewith the bodies of horny and oblivious teenage victims; but he isn’t the only killer who left a bloodbath in a campground. Released just one year afterFriday the 13th,The Burningis a bleak and grislysummer camp slasherthat went under the radar probably because it didn’t spawn a franchise like the sequels that returned audiences to Camp Crystal Lake. Even if no one has seen this 1981 horror flick, they probably knowthatscene.
Although the killer mostly stays in the background ofThe Burning, when he does emerge, he commits hyper-violent deaths. The grisly centerpiece is a raft massacre that lays waste to a group of victims in excessive, rapid carnage. But there’s more to the legacy behind this slasher than this sequence. Horror is known for being the first step for young actors to get their careers started, whether it’sTom HanksinHe Knows You’re AloneorMatthew McConaugheyandRenée ZellwegerinTexas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation. In summer camp-themed slashers,Kevin Baconis singled out as the up-and-coming famous actor who had his debut in the originalFriday the 13th, butThe Burningraises that number.It would be the debut of three young actors that have since established highly acclaimed careers: Jason Alexander, Holly Hunter, and Fisher Stevens.
The Burning
Camp Blackfoot’s caretaker, Cropsy, becomes the victim of a prank that leaves him horribly burned and disfigured. After years of recovery and harboring a deep desire for revenge, Cropsy returns to the campgrounds, now filled with new, unsuspecting campers. Equipped with a pair of lethal garden shears, he embarks on a gruesome killing spree, exacting his vengeance on anyone in his path. The narrative follows the campers' desperate attempts to escape the relentless killer, blending classic slasher elements with the eerie setting of a summer camp turned deadly.
‘The Burning’ Is Not Exactly a ‘Friday the 13th’ Ripoff
In a classic slasher, there’s a dark past that sets everything in motion.InThe Burning, this involves a group of campers at Camp Blackfoot who decide one night to prank Cropsy (Lou David), the unpleasant caretaker. A skull with lit candles is put in Cropsy’s hut, but the sight freaks him out so much that he accidentally catches himself on fire. The campers hurry away to hide this secret and, despite the horrific burns, Cropsy survives. He’s left to recover in a hospital, but five years later,the scarred Cropsy is discharged with murderous revenge on his mind as he makes his way to Camp Stonewater, located near the now-abandoned Blackfoot.
No one knows the danger they’re about to be in. Counselors Todd (Brian Matthews) and Michelle (Leah Ayres) are in charge of teen campers who are busy goofing off, bullying each other, or trying to have sex.What makes this slasher unusual is how the campers and counselors are characters rather than caricatures.It doesn’t rush the major kill scenes. Because of this,The Burningholds up pretty well among so many other summer camp slashers where it’s rare to care about the cast, and where the camp is actually in use.Friday the 13thhardly populated Camp Crystal Lake with campers. Look closely at the cast, and you will notice three young actors before they had a career, Fisher Stevens, Jason Alexander, and Holly Hunter, but only one of them gets the honor of dying a memorable slasher death.
The Raft Massacre Killed One Well-Known Actor
While Fisher Stevens may not have gone on to be part of a certain famous sitcom that made Jason Alexander a star, he has made quite a career for himself. Stevens was a producer onThe Cove(2009),an Oscar-winning documentary that looked at the mass killing of dolphins in Japan.Stevens has also been seen in supporting roles in films byWes Anderson, and in big TV shows likeSuccession. Back inThe Burning, Stevens is one of the leads as the lanky camper Woodstock, who is part of the friend group that Dave (Alexander) leads at Stonewater. They do non-fire pranks to get back at bully Glazer (Larry Joshua), but Woodstock has the bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Counselors Todd and Michelle bring a group of campers in canoes to reach a small island. Cropsy has followed and set the canoes adrift, leading to the counselors building a makeshift raft to let a small batch of the campers head back to Stonewater to get help. Woodstock is among those who head back on this raft. Along the way, one of the missing canoes is spotted. Woodstock and the others bring their raft closer and closer, and that’swhen Cropsy pops out with his garden shears for butchering.Everyone on the raft is killed in anunforgettable, painful sequencewhere one girl gets sliced across the head and one guy gets impaled through his chest. Woodstock tries to cover his face for protection, but his fingers are snipped off, the blood spraying onto Stevens’ face where he can only scream in horror. Soon, every one of the campers is killed.
This Accidental Slasher Movie Is ‘Deliverance’ Meets ‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre'
And it’s all because of ‘Friday the 13th.’
The gory effects are created by horror iconTom Savini, who makes sure the kills are bloody and shocking when the movie finally delivers on the mayhem. In a featurette forThe Burning, “Blood ‘n’ Fire Memories,” Savini did an interview where he looked back on the film. He had done the originalFriday the 13th, andhe revealed that he turned downPart 2to work onThe Burning. The effects are all practical,adding to the authenticity that CGI blood can never replicate.What helps is the quick cuts that show enough of the attack, but with a fast energy that catches viewers off-guard. Even though Stevens is the only young actor of the big three who is killed off, Alexander and Hunter’s characters aren’t left unscathed.
Jason Alexander Was Always a Funny Man
Dave couldn’t be more different than Alexander’s famous role asthe insecure, flustered George onSeinfeld. Dave is a cocky jokester that is constantly running his mouth, and the comedic lines in the movie wouldn’t be winning awards, but they get punched up thanks to Alexander’s natural timing. And he’s just as good at portraying the grim shift Dave goes through when he sees the raft’s aftermath. It’s a small moment; the remaining campers turn to him, possibly because he’s older, seeking assurance everything is okay. There is no sign of George’s impulsive panic from that “Fire!” episode ofSeinfeld. Dave offers no quips. His mood grows somber as there is a slow reveal that soon exposes the bodies onboard the raft. Cropsy may not get him, but Dave’s loss of innocence is a grim way to end his place in the story.Alexander shared that he had a great time while filming it,but he didn’t mince words when he described the finished product as a “god-awful film.”
‘The Burning’ Doesn’t Kill off Everyone in the Cast
While Stevens and Alexander had bigger roles in the cast, it’s still fun to spot Holly Hunter when she does appear. She would go on to become an Oscar-winning actress forThe Piano(1993), and her voice is now instantly recognizable from her work onThe Incredibles(2004) and its sequel. In the very early ‘80s, she had a small part as camper Sophie inThe Burning. She has one line (“Hey Todd!”) that can easily go unnoticed. She’s left alive like Dave, but with bad memories of her time at Camp Stonewater when she’s part of the remaining campers who see the raft of corpses. In aninterview withThe New Yorker,the actress happily remembered her time as an extra, “suddenly I was making crazy money, like a thousand a week, so I moved into an apartment in Amsterdam with a guy who was also inThe Burning, Jason Alexander.” The roles Hunter went on to get afterward cemented her as a powerhouse of a performer, but everyone needs to start small, and for her, it was in this slasher flick.
What Makes This Slasher Feel Darker
There is an ugly side toThe Burning’s legacy:It was convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein’s first movie that he produced with his brother for Miramax, the production company that would be involved in numerous horror classics and sequels. Of course, brave women — survivors and reporters alike — have since unmasked Weinstein as a serial predatorwho is even now facing new allegations amidst the overturning of his 2020 conviction.In fact,The Burningis associated with one of the earliest accounts of his decades-long history of sexual offenses, with movie internPaula Wachowiak sharing her storyof sexual harassment in 2017. Knowing Wachowiak’s account, and how long Weinstein’s predatory behavior lasted, certainly darkens the legacy ofThe Burning, but in a different way than, say, the connection between Weinstein andScream 3(2000) in which a producer character who has gotten away with abusive and criminal behavior toward women.
ButThe Burningdidn’t just have Weinstein as a producer. In the featurette, “Blood ‘n’ Fire Memories,” Tom Savini talked about how Weinstein had been involved in writing the treatment for this slasher before the script was finalized. We don’t know exactly what was in the treatment, nor what Weinstein wrote. Still, the film is filled with male characters who are often forceful or aggressive toward the young women at the camp, characters not played by Stevens or Alexander. Separating it from typical slashers at the time is the fact that there isn’t aFinal GirlinThe Burning. This story concentrates mostly on teen boys and young men, with many of them not so innocent.
While other‘80s movies haven’t aged wellafter they are reevaluated nowadays,The Burningis complicated in knowing who was major player in getting it made. Still, it was an early launching pad for three of the best actors working today and a solid entry in the post-Halloweenslasher boom.
