The Burning (1981)

A ballsy, entertaining Friday the 13^th knockoff (A mutant looking freak rubs out horny teens at a summer camp) that really kicked my ass. Old Cropsy is an angry old alcoholic groundskeeper at a summer camp who’s always fucking around with the kids. Some dudes plan to pull a trick on him that goes quite wrong when he ends up catching on fire in his bed and burning like a torch before their eyes. Five years later, he’s a melted psychopath lurking the forest with his shears, out for blood. I found a lot to love in this movie with only a few complaints.

First of all, I love a slasher movie that actually makes me care about the cast, and The Burning achieves this for me in spades. I got to mention it features a young Jason Alexander rocking the shit, he’s the cool guy around camp who can hook you up with a pack of condoms or a Hustler and the ladies flock to his cool head of luxurious hair. Frank and Estelle must of been very disappointed with the unemployable shlub he would turn into by the early 90s. The gore delivers to, courtesy of the man himself, Tom Savini. If there is an example of a slasher movie bringing the hammer down supremely, it’s during what could only be described as the raft river massacre scene. Its a pretty ingenious scene, your situation can’t get much more pathetic if you’re on a raft in the middle of a big-ass river with this dude slaughtering everyone in front of you, you literally have no escape. Very itchy, very gory and Savini delivered the red stuff and guts massively. Build up, tension, kills with superb gore payoff, they hit a feature on the slasher pokie machine. I got a big laugh when I saw in the opening credits that the score was by Rick Wakeman. I never heard his music before but my fucking asshole neighbour loves him and whenever he’s bashing my ears with dumb stories he usually chucks in some anecdote about how much he loves the music of Rick Wakeman. Well I think that makes two Wakeman fans in ole Islington because the score on this is fucking great, and I would describe it as being above par for a U.S slasher film, all murky tense synth and dark, ominous tones. I really got into the villain of Cropsy as well, but one of the failings of The Burning is they waste his early, dark presences with too much fish-eyed POV. I was cheering after he kills a prostitute, coming across as an actual demented human rather than a franchise slasher machine. By the time he hits the forest though, it’s gone. Also, with such a large cast of kids I was looking forward to a respectable kill count, and I was disappointed. Those complaints aside, The Burning has become an instant favourite of mine. I watched it twice in the same day and I can think of no better way to start The Ripper List.