The Burning (1981)

THE BURNING (1981) Two stars
The late, great director Howard Hawks (1896-1977) once said that a good movie is “three great scenes and no bad ones.”

No way that Hawks could have possibly had a movie like THE BURNING in mind, since he died a few years before the release of the 1981 slasher and even before the boom of that genre. John Carpenter paid Hawks tribute in HALLOWEEN with characters watching THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD on TV.

THE BURNING does have three great scenes but also several bad ones.

Let’s get the three great scenes out of the way first.

There’s an effective jump scare in an early hospital scene, before the opening credits. It makes up for a couple clunker false alarms later on in the picture.

Several early period slasher films include a scene where one character would regale both the rest of the characters and the audience with an origin story of the killer. THE BURNING, FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2, and MADMAN all have a similar campfire story. These scenes are fun, because most of us can remember at least once being enthralled and freaked out by somebody’s ghastly yarn around the fire. Cropsy is based on a real-life New York urban legend, the Cropsey Maniac, a genuine campfire tale which obviously had a major impact on the creative forces, including Bob and Harvey Weinstein and Brad Grey (later three of the most powerful men in Hollywood), behind THE BURNING.

The “infamous raft massacre” scene, when Cropsy takes out five teenagers with his garden shears. This is the pièce de résistance of THE BURNING and the one scene when the film deserves its reappraised “classic” status. Splatter effect maestro Tom Savini earned his paycheck for this sequence alone and it can stand side-by-side with his best work.

In some quarters, THE BURNING has been called one of the best slasher films and a classic that flew under the radar.

Truth be told, I’ve always been underwhelmed and sometimes even disgusted by it, except for the three great scenes. I first watched it on late night Cinemax in the early 2000s and a few years later, I taped it off IFC.

The three great scenes probably make up less than 10 percent of the running time. Some of the camp scenes also work on a basic level.

Most often, though, THE BURNING alternates a jeering, leering tone with moments of brutal violence, a juxtaposition that makes for strange bedfellows.

We especially find that leering tone in the nude scenes of Carrick Glenn and Carolyn Houlihan. Houlihan, who won Miss Ohio in 1979, reportedly felt very uncomfortable with her nude scene and it only gets much worse for her Karen character as she receives first a temper tantrum from her would-be boyfriend after she changes her mind about sex and then Cropsy’s garden shears as she looks for her clothes scattered in the woods. Houlihan only appeared in two features, her second and final role “Bathing suit model” in A LITTLE SEX.

Ned Eisenberg and Larry Joshua play jerks in Eddy and Glazer, respectively. Joshua makes undoubtedly one of the oldest summer campers in screen history, as he turned 29 years old three months before the May 1981 release of the film. We just have absolutely no idea what Glenn’s Sally even sees in the first place in a creep like Glazer. Eddy, he’s not quite as bad as Glazer, but his scene with Karen leaves us liking the guy appreciably less.

Guess it goes to show what kind of movie we’re dealing with when Brian Matthews’ Todd and Brian Backer’s Alfred (possible nod to Hitchcock) take on Cropsy at the end. We find out Todd was one of the campers who participated in the fiery prank on Cropsy that horribly backfired during the prologue and we first see Alfred peeping on Sally in the shower. Alfred does grow on us, especially as he becomes friends with four of his fellow male campers.

Cropsy’s first murder, naturally of a prostitute, represents one of the worst aspects of the slasher film: a self-contained murder sequence that wastes precious time (sometimes minutes on end) and contributes nothing of virtue to the film.

THE BURNING holds interest today predominantly as a time capsule film.

It was part of a wave of low-budget horror films that attempted to cash in on the runaway success of HALLOWEEN. There proved to be a glut of these films in 1981.

Several famous performers and behind-the-scenes figures got their start with THE BURNING. Holly Hunter, Jason Alexander (with a head of hair), and Fisher Stevens made their screen debuts. THE BURNING marked one of the first productions of Miramax, known for their film production and distribution; Miramax (named after the Weinsteins’ parents Miriam and Max) started in 1979 in Buffalo, New York, close to where they filmed THE BURNING.

Maybe that leering, jeering tone should come of no surprise considering Harvey Weinstein’s role in THE BURNING as writer and producer.

Former production assistant Paula Wachowiak recounted her worst experience on THE BURNING with the Buffalo News in October 2017. She went to Harvey Weinstein’s hotel room, because she needed him to sign checks, and he greeted her at the door wearing nothing but a towel, which he naturally dropped when she entered his room. He wanted a massage. Wachiowiak spurned him. The Buffalo News article features the headline, “’You disgust me’: Buffalo woman tells of 1980 encounter with Weinstein.”