Horror Movie Watch: The Burning

This October, I’m attempting an ill-advised viewing of (at least) thirty-one horror movies. I’ll watch (on average) one movie a day, after which I’ll write some things about said movies on this website. Be forewarned that all such write-ups will contain spoilers! Today’s film is early ’80s slasher gem The Burning (1981), directed by Tony Maylam (Split Second), and co-written by Harvey and Bob Weinstein (yes, really – this was apparently the first Miramax film!). It was suggested by friend and YA author Suzanne Sutherland, who mentioned it featured ‘a young, and strangely handsome Jason Alexander.’ Sold! Sutherland is a very talented author of young adult books, including the stellar When We Were Good (which is the first book I ever blurbed!) and the forthcoming Something Wiki.

I returned to my ‘summer girlfriend,’ Bay Street Video, for a DVD of The Burning. The friendly clerk was very enthusiastic about my Halloween movie selection. Trigger warning issued for Jian Ghomeshi talk.

What happens:

The Burning begins with a cold open (look at me with the film lingo) on Camp Blackfoot (cultural appropriation at its finest), where in the boys’ cabin, a group conspires in the dark. They all hate Cropsey, the camp’s caretaker, so they plan to – and I quote – ‘scare the shit out of him.’ This involves lighting candles inside a wormy human skull and leaving it at his bedside (or cot side – Cropsey’s sleeping arrangements are fairly depressing). The old wormy skull trick works like a charm and Cropsey, when woken by the boys, freaks out, kicking the skull off the side table, setting his sheets and clothes on fire. The flames spread to a gas tank in the utility shed Cropsey in which sleeps, and the boys watch in horror as their caretaker falls out of the shed and stumbles into the nearby creek.

Next we see a jive-talking orderly showing the ropes to a new doctor at the local hospital. As some sort of weird initiation – or to scare the new guy – he insists the doctor take a look at a recent burn victim. ‘This guy’s burned so bad, he’s cooked. A fuckin’ Big Mac,’ he says. (Because what’s cooked more than a Big Mac?) He opens up the oxygen tent to show the doctor the burn victim when a skinless, shredded hand shoots out and grabs the orderly’s arm. Then the credits roll. (What an opening!)

Five years later, doctors and therapists are about to release Cropsey from the hospital. They tell him it was just an accident, and he should try to let his anger about the whole incident that left him horribly burned roll off him like the summer rain. (To be fair, I can’t imagine the campers would be criminally responsible for anything. I don’t want to victim-blame, but you really shouldn’t be sleeping beside open gasoline drums anyway.) First thing Cropsey does upon release is visit seedy 1980s Times Square, where he immediately picks up a sex worker. Once in her bedroom, she gets full view of his face (though we, the audience, don’t yet), and panics. ‘Please just go,’ she begs. But he doesn’t, and instead chokes her and stabs her in the stomach with her own sewing shears – she was an amateur seamstress! – spraying blood everywhere. (The scene is totally out of nowhere, and seems inserted just to tide gorehounds over until the real killing begins.)

Viewers then travel to Camp Shearwater, where the campers and counsellors are playing some good ol’ American baseball. But, like, imagine a baseball game filtered through the slow-mo, male-gazey lens of Baywatch. Dave (Jason Alexander, who is, as advertised, strangely handsome) and Eddie (Ned Eisenberg) are checking out the ladies when the ball flies out of bounds in the woods, and the improbably named Tiger bounds into the forest to retrieve it. As she searches for the ball, the silhouette of a man holding garden shears traces her movements, but backs away at the last minute. Eddie has been putting the moves on Karen (Carolyn Houlihan), but Karen confides with senior counsellor, Michelle (Leah Ayres) that Eddie sometimes scares her. She’s avoided going on overnight trips because he’ll be there, but then again, sometimes she really likes him.

The next morning, camper Sally heads to the outdoor shower. While washing, she hears noises, and when she steps out, she finds camper Alfred (Brian Backer) – who most people feel is kind of a creep – standing there and screams. Alfred runs, but is stopped by a couple of the guys. Michelle wants Alfred punished, but other senior counsellor Todd (Brian Matthews) makes all sorts of excuses, like ‘He’s just a kid. Kids do that.’ And ‘If I think he’s going to be a problem, I’ll kick him out.’ Todd has a heart-to-heart with Alfred, who says that he’s being bullied at the camp, especially by alpha male Glazer (Larry Joshua). His claims have some validity, as when first we see Glazer, he’s threatening Alfred to stay away from ‘his girl,’ Sally. Todd tells the muscled Glazer to pick on someone his own size, basically, and things cool down for a little while.

Soon, everyone is swimming in the lake. Everyone except Alfred, as he can’t swim. (Many of the boys seem to have body issues, though, as a significant portion of them go swimming with shirts on.) Glazer, proponent of tough love, shoves Alfred into the lake, leaving Dave and friends to rescue him. ‘Don’t worry,’ Alfred says menacingly. ‘He’ll get his.’ Glazer swims out to the dock where a bunch of the girls are lounging. He tries to flirt with them, but one of the nerds, Woodstock, takes out his BB gun and shoots him directly in the butt. His friends cheer him on, then collectively moon Glazer. (So if you’ve ever wanted to see Jason Alexander’s ass, here’s your chance.)

That night, Dave, who’s kind of a procurer at Camp Shearwater, hands out pornography to the various male campers, then gives Glazer the condoms he ordered (which he refuses because they’re not lubricated, so at least he cares somewhat about his partner’s pleasure). Alfred thinks he sees something in the cabin window – a hideous burned face – but when they look outside, they find nothing. Everyone goes to dinner, anxious and buzzing about the upcoming canoe trip. Woodstock forgets his Vitamin E and has to return to the cabin for it. A mysterious figure follows him into the cabin, and for a while, it looks like Woodstock will be our next victim. However, the shadowy person just turns out to be Todd. (Phew!)

The campers head off on their canoe trip, and it starts out all fun and laughter and bluegrass music, but things are about to turn really sour. Around the campfire, they tell ghost stories, and Todd tells the urban legend of Cropsey and Camp Blackfoot, with some additional editorializing about how Cropsey was an alcoholic. Apparently, some kid from Brooklyn (demonization of Brooklynites, I see) planned a gag, but it all went wrong. Nobody found a body, though, and Todd says Crospey is still out there. That’s when Eddie, with a mask and fake knife, leaps into the circle, making everyone jump.

A while after the scare, Eddie and Karen talk on their own. Eddie tries to pressure her into sex, and when she declines, he suggests they go skinny-dipping. Again, he tries to have sex with Karen, and she asks him to stop. ‘Why’d you come out here, then?!’ Eddie – early men’s rights activist – shouts, then stalks off upset. Karen swims back to shore, but finds her clothing has been taken. She sees the various clothing articles have been scattered all over the forest, so she starts her hunt, slowly getting dressed as she goes deeper into the woods. Just as she’s about to pick up her jacket, someone cuts her throat with an open pair of garden shears. Eddie, meanwhile, has sulked away to sleep on another part of the shore. He’s woken by Michelle and Todd, who want to know where Karen’s gone. Eddie has no idea. That’s when Tiger and Marty announce that the canoes are missing.

The campers split up: many of them search for the missing canoes while Todd and Michelle work on building a new raft out of … scrap wood, I guess? Glazer doesn’t do much searching before he begins to fondle his search partner, Sally. All the while, creeper Alfred hides in the bushes, watching them engage in some heavy petting. Meanwhile, some of the more responsible campers spot a canoe out on the lake, so they take the newly-made makeshift raft and paddle out to it. In a real shock, just as they reach the canoe, a figure rises up with garden shears in hand and makes short work of them: Eddie is stabbed in the throat, Woodstock has his fingers cut off, and another camper, Barbara, is slashed across the forehead. None of the rafters are left alive.

Glazer and Sally, meanwhile have sex overnight, and it’s not quite what Sally expected: ‘That’s all? Is that it?’ Glazer then leaves to pick up some matches and firewood, and our killer arrives while he’s gone and attacks Sally. When Glazer returns, he thinks she’s asleep, hiding under the sleeping bag. Alfred finds the spot where they’re staying and watches from his secret hiding spot. When he pulls back the bag’s cover, Glazer is immediately stabbed through the neck with garden shears and forcibly lifted backward and pinned to a tree. Alfred first has a visible ‘yes’ reaction to Glazer’s murder, then runs back to Todd and Michelle to tell them a killer is on the loose. He says it’s the guy he saw in the window last night. Todd, highly skeptical and grumpy about being woken, follows Alfred back to the murder spot. Once he sees Sally and Glazer’s bodies, though, he becomes a whole lot less skeptical. Even less so when the killer leaps out at him and grazes him across the head with his shears. Alfred runs for it and the killer follows after him.

Meanwhile, the others see the raft out on the water, and assume the campers on it are playing some sort of weird joke. Michelle dives into the lake and swims out to the raft, only to discover every one on it is dead! Soon, the other campers are screaming and crying. Todd, not too badly injured, returns to Michelle and the others and instructs them to take the raft back to camp and call for help. He takes an axe and runs back to find Alfred. The raft team soon arrive back at the camp and Michelle asks her supervisor for two things: (a) a call to the police, and (b) a boat with an outboard motor.

Aflred has come across a shell of a building where some sort of mining operation once took place. Eventually, he drops his guard, and that’s when the killer grabs him and drags him inside. He then gags Alfred and pins his arm to the wall with the shears. Todd, however, has followed close behind, and he creeps inside the mine opening, looking for Alfred. He’s surprised by a coal cart that comes barreling down the track, and falls and hits his head. When he gets to his feet, he finds Karen’s dead body. The killer, across the room, lights a blowtorch. That’s when the film flashes back to five years ago at Camp Blackfoot, and we see that senior counsellor Todd was one of the people involved in the prank that resulted in Cropsey’s sixth degree burns. Back in the present, Cropsey’s hideously burned face is revealed to the audience, and he and Todd engage in a rare axe/blowtorch battle. Alfred, still pinned to the wall, watches and writhes in pain.

Alfred frees himself and stabs Cropsey in the back with his own garden shears, and Cropsey falls to the floor. Police helicopters arrive on the scene and begin barking directions. However, Cropsey isn’t dead yet. He comes up from behind and grabs Alfred, so Todd – always watching out for Alfred – takes the axe and splits his head. Then Alfred, adding insult to injury (but also making sure the dude is dead) lights him up with the blowtorch. They leave the building, with what now looks like a burning cross (eep) in the background. The film ends with another group of campers telling the story of Cropsey around the campfire.

Takeaway points:

• The Burning was a particularly and painfully relevant movie to watch in light of recent events in Canadian media regarding the criminal sexual assaults committed by CBC host Jian Ghomeshi. That is, many of the male campers – though not the actual murderer, for what that’s worth – engage in that favourite of male bonding experiences: rape culture. It was like the lines of dialogue in The Burning were lifted directly from the comments sections of articles on the Ghomeshi case. When Karen refuses to have sex with Eddie, he says things like ‘Why’d you come out here then?’ And, ‘She’s scared of me? Then why did she go with me last night?’ (I think we all heard far too much of that from our least favourite Facebook friends this past week.) Likewise, Todd, the male authority at the camp, consistently defends and protects his boys when they cross boundaries and make the girls feel uncomfortable. When Alfred spies on Sally in the shower, he’s all like, ‘boys will be boys,’ and when Michelle is reaming Eddie out for how Sally feared him, Todd undermines her. Basically, Eddie being a nerd and Alfred being bullied outweigh how terribly they treat the girls at the camp. And whatever horrible thing they do, Todd will always say that the girls are overreacting. Exchanges like those made me think a lot about how often women will put up with degradation out of fear, just get past a certain situation. Neither Eddie, nor Alfred, or Glazer for that matter, seem that much into enthusiastic consent. Cropsey certainly isn’t the only monster at Camp Shearwater.
• From the opening scene, I was thinking, ‘Is this supposed to be that Cropsey?’ Cropsey is an urban legend of the New York area, a crazed killer who lurks in the woods and kills campers. A few years ago a very spooky documentary about this urban legend was made. Apparently, The Burning is a fictionalized account of the urban legend (the origins of which are mysterious), with the garden shears being an added touch to a story that usually involves an axe or hook.
• The Burning is strange because, like in a Columbo episode, we know the killer from the get-go. It’s very straightforward: Cropsey gets burned in a prank gone wrong, he gets released from the hospital and goes on a killing spree. There is no mystery; just a slow process of our campers realizing who is killing them But strangely, the filmmakers keep Cropsey’s face hidden until the very end, and throw out hints that one of the campers – maybe angry young Alfred or sexually aggressive Eddie – could be a killer. But why add this false mystery? Likewise, Cropsey’s motivation for his murders is inexplicable – he kills the sex worker because she doesn’t like his face, and kills multiple campers for reasons unknown. The only person he has some motive to kill is Todd (the only camper involved in the original), and Cropsey saves him for last. I guess the accident affected his brain and he just wanted to kill everyone, so how he made it out of the hospital without, say, murdering the orderly who treated him like a carnival display is beyond me.
• The film also features my favourite kind of horror movie score: electronic weirdness. In this case, it’s prog-rocker Rick Wakeman from Yes, and it’s all sorts of unsettling.

Truly terrifying or truly terrible?: Ah, it’s terrible, but it’s too much fun to be truly terrible. The Burning is great trash – probably my favourite category of film – and not without its scares. The makeup and gore (done by horror movie guru Tom Savini) really adds to its effectiveness, as does the really bizarre and unsettling musical score by Rick Wakeman.

Best outfit: Only a few horror movies showcase a finer array of that overlap between the late ’70s and early ’80s than The Burning. (The original Sleepaway Camp springs to mind.) But if I had to choose just one outfit, it would be senior counsellor Michelle’s madras-patterned collared shirt over a dark royal blue one-piece bathing suit. That’s how you battle a slasher in style.

Best line: ‘This is where it’s at!’ – orderly, with a very unusual definition of fun, enthusiastically displaying burn victim to new doctor.

Best kill: Watching Glazer lifted off his feet with a pair of garden shears through the neck provoked a real visceral reaction in me. Glazer was a big guy, so the aggressiveness of that murder was icky to the max.

Unexpected cameo: Jason Alexander is a big ‘get,’ and you probably know Alfred (Brian Backer) from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, but would you believe me if I told you there are at least two other surprise appearances from future stars? A very, very young Fisher Stevens plays Woodstock here, a few years before he donned brownface for Short Circuit, and Holly Hunter has her first major role was one of the less developed campers, Sophie.

Unexpected lesson learned: If you insist on pulling a prank on the caretaker, don’t use an open flame. Also, that creep who looks in on you while you shower may not turn out to be a murderer. I mean, he’s still a terrible person, but there’s a good chance he won’t grow up to be a serial killer.

Most suitable band name derived from the movie: Cropsey. Or maybe Tiger & Marty.

Next up (my final movie): Slumber Party Massacre 2 (1987).