A summer camp caretaker is horrifically burned after a prank pulled by teenage boys goes wrong in 1981's The Burning. He leaves the hospital permanently disfigured and decides to take his revenge . . . on a prostitute. For a guy whose life was ruined by boys, he spends a surprising amount of time going after girls. His arch enemy turns out to be a nerdy peeping tom and this might be a good time to mention Harvey Weinstein conceived the story. But a lot of other people were involved, too. The director, Tony Maylam, is competent and cinematographer Harvey Harrison is surprisingly talented. And the performances are all good down the line, much better than the typical '80s slasher.
The Burning marks the film debuts of Jason Alexander and Holly Hunter, though Hunter's barely in the film. Alexander at least accompanies the ill-fated teens canoeing up the river where the killer, Cropsy (Lou David), starts to massacre them with a pair of gardening shears.
He gets around to murdering some boys, too, but he starts out focusing on the girls. This choice is never explained
It's an ensemble cast but by the last act the main protagonist works out to be Alfred (Brian Backer), a teen we're introduced to peeping on one of the girls in the shower. Another character, Glazer (Larry Joshua), is introduced as kind of a bully who threatens to beat Alfred up and I think we're meant to hate him but I found him the most appealing character in the movie. The movie seems to assume we sympathise with Alfred, though, and even if I didn't know Harvey Weinstein came up with this story--and that he's prone to self-pity about his pathetic history with women--I still don't think I'd have liked Alfred. He's "corrupt without being charming" to borrow a phrase from Oscar Wilde.
The makeup effects by Tom Savini are pretty good and there are some good jump scares.
The Burning is available on Shudder until the end of the month.
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