Editorials
[Butcher Block] Tom Savini Delivers More Summer Camp Brutality in ‘The Burning’
Butcher Block is a weekly series celebrating horror’s most extreme films and the minds behind them. Dedicated to graphic gore and splatter, each week will explore the dark, the disturbed, and the depraved in horror, and the blood and guts involved. For the films that use special effects of gore as an art form, and the fans that revel in the carnage, this series is for you.
Released only a week after Friday the 13th Part 2 in theaters, The Burning didn’t fare well at all. It didn’t help that the plot was similar, or that 1981 was a year in which the slasher boom was riding high in popularity. Within the roughly same month as The Burning’s release, slashers Final Exam, Graduation Day, and Happy Birthday to Me also dropped into theaters, crowding the market. All of this to say, The Burning slipped through the cracks and took many years to earn its reputation as a brutal, obscure gem thanks to home re-release.
Like Friday the 13th Part 2, this slasher also saw a lumbering killer that slaughtered teens at a summer camp in the name of revenge. Unlike Friday the 13th Part 2, The Burning was a fully running camp full of kids, which meant this slasher broke one of the biggest taboos- killing children and teens in the most gruesome fashion. The killer wasn’t some undead entity from the grave, either, but a seriously angry camp caretaker five years removed from the catastrophic prank at the hands of campers that left him severely disfigured from being set on fire. Had it not been for the timing of release, Cropsy’s memorable and unique appearance had the potential to launch another slasher franchise.
His look, as well as the gory kills, were handled by a talented artist well versed in slaughtering teens at the time; special makeup and effects artist Tom Savini. Having already worked on Friday the 13th and Maniac, and work on The Prowler and Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter still to come, Savini was seasoned at creating effects that delivered believable, brutal death sequences in slashers. He very nearly worked on Friday the 13th Part 2, but chose The Burning instead.
Had he not taken this project, it’s difficult to imagine what this slasher would be without the shocking event that sets off the final act; the bloody raft massacre. When the counselors and their campers notice their canoes are missing after an overnight stay at Devil’s Creek, they build a raft. Five of the young campers paddle away to seek help and find one of their abandoned canoes. Their moment of elation is quickly deflated by the appearance of Cropsy, who pops up and brings his garden shears down upon each one again and again.
That raft scene further set The Burning apart from the Friday the 13th sequel by earning the film a spot on the Video Nasties list. The gore was heavily trimmed down to an R-rating for decades in both the U.K. and the U.S., which also played a major role in the slasher only gaining popularity when DVD releases in the early 2000s reinstated the uncut gore.
On a basic plot level, The Burning falls in line with many slashers of its era. Summer camp was a popular killing ground for rampaging maniacs with a vendetta. But The Burning is better acted than most, having a number of notable actors making their debut like Fisher Stevens (the most brutalized of the kids on that raft), Holly Hunter, and Jason Alexander. Cropsy isn’t a masked killer, but a disfigured one with a very recent trigger for revenge. But the reason we love slashers so much is for the kills, and The Burning delivers in a satisfying way thanks to Savini’s uncanny talent for gore.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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