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"This movie could stand to have a lot more burning in it" - overheard during The Burning.
My eyes were drooping, my mind was fading into sleepville, but the Cap'n soldiered on. The promise of early Weinstein brothers Miramax slasher action was too much to pass up on. The Burning needed to be seen!
Or did it? Strangely, summer camp movies rarely make it into the Summerfest lineup. We've yet to watch a Sleepaway Camp film, and Friday the 13th's tend to find their way to Horror Fest, so The Burning provided us with what we assumed would be a happy one-two punch: a summer camp slasher movie from the golden age of slashing (the early 80s) and gore effects from arguably the F/X guy of the era - Tom Savini.
And while the story of Cropsy the groundskeeper was, um, compelling, there's a lot more "summer camp" than slashing in The Burning, and even less burning than you'd assume. Campers decide to pull a prank of Cropsy by sneaking a skull full of maggots into his cabin, which then manages to burn down the entire building and Cropsy in the process.Then, for no good reason, we jump ahead a week (and then five years) while Cropsy (that's his name. nothing else) is healing in a hospital suspiciously close to Time's Square, so that he can roam the seedy streets, find a hooker, and kill her with gardening shears. Or maybe not. He kills most of the campers with garden shears, which he leaves behind (where does one find that many pairs of garden shears, anyway?) when he leaves the city to return to a different camp populated by kids that had nothing to do with "the burning" (oh! I get it... but wait, there's burning at the end to... where did Cropsy get that flame thrower?)
At this point, we abruptly leave the slasher film and move into Meatballs territory for a while. I hope you were looking forward to awkward teenagers wandering around and worrying about pervy Alfred and rape-y Eddy, who tend to get picked on by Glazer, camp counselor Todd and all of the girls. And lest I forget to mention him, Dave, the provider of contraband, is played by Jason Alexander. He's younger, svelte-er, and unfortunately more than willing to moon the camera, so Seinfeld fans get ready.
In fact, I need to take this opportunity to mention that The Burning launched the careers of many A- to B+ list actors. For example, in addition to being the first movie Jason Alexander was in, it's also the first film for Larry Joshua (Dances with Wolves, The X-Files), Fisher Stevens (Short Circuit, Bob Roberts), and Holly Hunter (Raising Arizona, The Piano). Somehow, it managed not to be their last film, which I suppose is a testament to the Weinstein brothers' ability to wrangle up and coming stars into d-grade slasher movies.
I could go on about how this summer camp has a tendency to leave the younger campers behind while the counselors take a rafting trip to an abandoned mine and fight a blowtorch wielding Cropsy (to be fair, he kills most of them before Todd and pervy Alfred use irony to finish what the other campers at THE OTHER CAMP started).
To be fair, the gore is pretty good. I mean, it's no The Prowler (which really only had gore going for it) as Savini-effects go, but he finds just enough to do with a pair of garden shears to keep us interested (which is about all you get, since Cropsy's mangled, melted visage is obscured until the very end of the film). When the body count gets going, Cropsy does a surprising amount of mass murder (the raft assault is rather impressive), but there's the whole first half of the movie where the audience inexplicably needs to be embroiled in the lives of preteens that are far more normal than one would expect in a slasher film.
We were hoping for a twist in this movie, and Nathan was convinced that we were in for a My Bloody Valentine-esque "Cropsy isn't Cropsy but actually Todd," but it was not to be. Scarred, horribly melty-faced Cropsy had an elaborate plan for revenge that he carried out on people who didn't have anything to do with "the burning" and in the mean time there was plenty of softball activity, skinny dipping, and exposed Jason Alexander ass. It's exactly what we needed at 3 in the morning!
Phillippi gives The Burning three severed fingers out of five, while Nathan is pretty sure he won't be watching it again.
Thanks to tonight's Summerfest 3 Groovie Ghoulies: Englund, Phillippi, Nathan, Riannon, Domenic, and Chris. See you tomorrow when we venture into the world of Ghostbusters, Death Beds, and Cook Out Adventures!
Also, stay tuned Saturday for the special McGangbang Challenge!!!
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