Editorials
Happy 35th Anniversary to ‘The Burning!’
35 years ago, Tony Maylam’s not-so-classic slasher film The Burning was unleashed upon the world. Released exactly one year after Sean S. Cunningham’s blockbuster Friday the 13th and just one week after Friday the 13th Part 2, The Burning took in a measly $707,770 at the box office (and that includes the box office returns for the re-release in November of 1982). With a reported budget of $1.5 million, it was considered a flop. Audiences just weren’t that interested in The Burning when they could flock to the established Friday the 13th franchise (well, soon-to-be franchise anyway). In recent years, The Burning has gained a cult following and a reexamination from critics. While it doesn’t reinvent the wheel in any way, The Burning is still a respectable genre effort with a likable cast and top-notch make-up effects from the master himself: Tom Savini.
The Burning is technically Miramax’s first movie. Co-written by Peter Lawrence and Bob Weinstein, the film was also produced by Harvey Weinstein in his first gig as a film producer. Harvey was desperate to get into the movie business at the time, so after seeing the success of low budget horror films (slashers, specifically) he began brainstorming ideas for a similarly-budgeted film. He remembered the Cropsey legend from campfire tales he heard at summer camp when he was born and The Burning (and Cropsy, sans Cropsey’s “e”) was born.
The script was written in six weeks and Tony Maylam was brought on as director. Since the film was set in the summer time and Weinstein wanted to get the film released before the slasher craze ended, The Burning was rushed into production. While many may see it as a ripoff of Friday the 13th, the film actually started production (meaning a treatment written by Weinstein) a whole year before that film was even released. It just had the misfortune of coming out a year later. Who’s to say what would have happened if The Burning had been released first. Maybe Cropsy would have been an even bigger slasher giant than Jason Voorhees himself.
The film is also famous for being the first on-screen appearances for now-famous actors Holly Hunter and Jason Alexander. Alexander has the most to do in the film as lovable camper Dave and Hunter gets maybe two lines of dialogue as random camper Sophie, but it’s still fun to watch her. Fisher Stevens has the most fun as the goofy Woodstock before getting killed in the outstanding raft massacre set piece.
Speaking of the raft massacre, one can’t discuss The Burning without mentioning it’s top-notch make-up effects from Tom Savini. Interestingly enough, he turned down working on Friday the 13th Part 2 because he didn’t buy the logic that Jason would be the villain in the film. Thinking that the script for The Burning was superior, Savini chose to lend his talents to that film. He even lent his legs to the film (his legs are the ones getting burned in the opening sequence that gives the film its namesake). The Burning is filled with great kills (in the latter half of the film anyway, but more on that in a bit), but the pièce de résistance comes in the form of the film’s raft sequence, in which Cropsy dispatches a group of campers in the middle of the lake (though it takes a laughably long time for them to make it to the raft after they see it).
Not surprisingly, the film suffered many cuts in order to avoid an X rating from the MPAA. Many of the kills are even more graphic versions of similar kills in Friday the 13th (Karen’s death is a bloodier version of Annie’s death and Cropsy’s death is a much more graphic version of Marcie’s death), showing that Savini was willing to improve upon his previous efforts.
Unlike many slasher films of the time, The Burning takes a good while to get going. It isn’t until the 49-minute mark when the first camper (poor, nude Karen) meets her demise. And before that the only death was a prostitute that Cropsy picked up after his release from the hospital. While this may seem like slasher sacrilege, it actually works in favor of the film. There’s only one or two truly unlikable characters in the film (Glazer and arguably Todd), but the rest of the cast is filled with likable characters. While it would be a stretch to say it’s “fun” to spend time with these characters, their likability at least makes The Burning’s slow beginning bearable. Plus, it’s really sad to see Karen bite it. She didn’t even get to have sex!
The Burning also boasts a lot of effective jump scares. I admit that even though I had seen the film before, there were several moments that had me jumping off my couch (Glazer’s death being the most memorable example). Of course this is mostly thanks to Rick Wakeman’s (of the band Yes) creepy score, but it’s still incredibly effective even by today’s standards.
What are your thoughts on The Burning? Do you think it’s an under-appreciated film? Or do you think it’s just another run-of-the-mill copycat of films like Halloween and Friday the 13th? Let us know in the comments below and share your thoughts and memories of the film.
There’s been a lot of talk about how Christopher Nolan snuck in some horror elements into his epic adaptation of The Odyssey. However, even before the Cyclops began to eat Ithican soldiers and Circe subjected them to magical body-horror, cinemagoers were already witnessing supernatural terror through a certain trailer that was attached to most IMAX screenings of Nolan’s film.
It turns out that this trailer was for Rob Savage’s Other Mommy, an adaptation of Bird Box author Josh Malerman’s horror novel, Incidents Around the House. With the teaser now available online and revealing that the award-winning Jessica Chastain is playing the titular antagonist (as well as her ill-fated human counterpart), not to mention the fact that the picture is being helmed by the director of hits like Host and The Boogeyman, genre fans are understandably hyped for this upcoming thriller.
That’s why I’ve decided to take a closer look at the trailer and share four things we learned from this sneak peek at Other Mommy!
4. Rob Savage is Going Back to His Supernatural Horror Roots
I know I’m in the minority when I admit that Dashcam is my favorite Rob Savage movie, but even I understand why the filmmakers’ fans have been waiting a while for the director to get back to telling more grounded paranormal stories as he did with 2020’s Host.
Other Mommy obviously isn’t a found footage movie, but moments like the poltergeist activity on the kitchen table combined with the nature of the source material, which actually features a full-on exorcism, indicate that this adaptation is more than a simple creature feature. That’s why I think Savage is once again going to borrow from the same ghostly narratives that made his debut film such a viral hit.
3. Other Mommy is a More Convincing Doppelganger in the Adaptation
Part of the horror from Malerman’s original novel came from the fact that the entity taking on the form of Bela’s (Arabella Olivia Clark) mother wasn’t very good at passing itself off as human. This resulted in several uncanny moments where other characters began to notice that there was something visibly wrong with the family and decided to keep their distance.
Savage’s film appears to be taking a different route, with the trailer showing a version of the entity that can, at least physically, imitate Chastain’s character perfectly. This change is likely the result of the filmmakers wanting to incorporate more paranoid scenes where Bela and her father, played by Jay Duplass, are confused about which Mommy is safe to interact with.
2. The Family is Also Better Off This Time Around
Incidents Around the House featured some interesting subtext about how poverty can negatively affect American family dynamics. After all, the main characters were already feeling scared and isolated before the entity emerged from Bela’s closet and began scratching at their emotional wounds. The trailer for the movie, however, depicts the family as being relatively well off before these incidents begin to occur.
I can only imagine that this part of the story was changed so that the family’s fall from grace can be even more dramatic as the mom and dad’s pasts are revealed and Bela falls further into the clutches of the demonic antagonist.
1. Jessica Chastain is Embodying Evil Dead Rise’s Alyssa Sutherland
Mothers turning against their children is one of the most disturbing horror tropes out there (just check out classics like Hereditary and Carrie if you need proof), but it takes a remarkably skilled actress to pull off such a monstrous transformation. This is especially true when both a regular, loving mother and the Other share the screen in the same film.
That’s why I appreciate how Chastain appears to be channeling another evil redhead mother that recently traumatized audiences with her performance. It’s too early to be sure, but I’m fairly confident that Chastain’s character has at least some amount of Ellie in her cinematic DNA – Ellie being the iconic deadite brought to life by Australian actress Alyssa Sutherland in 2023’s Evil Dead Rise.
Let us know in the comments if you think we missed any important details from the trailer, and don’t forget to check out Other Mommy when it hits theaters on October 9!
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