Editorials
19 Things We Learned from ‘The Burning’ Commentary
This month marks the 45th anniversary of 1981’s The Burning, a summer camp slasher made to cash in on the previous year’s success of Friday the 13th. The film was critically drubbed but generally well-received by horror fans, and it’s only grown in its reputation since.
The talent roster on the film is pretty remarkable for a slasher, and it’s the feature debut for actors like Holly Hunter, Jason Alexander, Fisher Stevens, and Brian Backer. Tom Savini did the practical gore effects, and editor Jack Sholder would go on to direct his own genre bangers, including Alone in the Dark and The Hidden.
Now keep reading to see what I heard on the commentary for…
The Burning (1981)
Commentators: Tony Maylam (director), Alan Jones (film journalist)
1. There aren’t a lot of American slashers directed by British filmmakers, and Maylam credits his own journey towards that dream to a sexual predator named Harvey Weinstein. The creep saw an early concert film that Maylam made about Genesis and asked if he’d like to make a movie for him. “He was manic,” says Maylam about the prick. (Okay, I got that out of my system.)
2. The initial story idea was called The Cropsey Maniac about a summer camp killer. It was very loosely inspired by an urban legend known around the New York area that’s explored further in 2009’s Cropsey. They don’t mention it here, but the film’s core premise regarding Cropsey and a summer camp was reportedly conceived before the release of Friday the 13th. Also, Madman was heading into production around the same time with a similar Cropsey premise and decided to change it up some to avoid feeling identical.
3. Weinstein’s mother and father were named Mira (Miriam) and Max, respectively. We’ll probably never know if that had any bearing on the name of the Weinsteins’ production company.
4. The early murder of the prostitute doesn’t seem to fit the narrative of Cropsey (Lou David) being fixated on killing folks at a summer camp, but Maylam recalls a certain producer not wanting to wait too long for a kill.
5. Tiger is played by Shelley Bruce, who was starring as Annie on Broadway at the time (possibly as an understudy?) but left the show to do this film. It’s her only feature film credit. She also apparently hung out with Maylam’s fourteen-year-old son and brought him to nightclubs during the film’s production.
6. Cropsey’s choice of garden shears as a weapon was Maylam’s idea.
7. Jones asks why Maylam never worked with the Weinsteins again, especially seeing as this was their first feature, and he helped put them on the road to success. The director says they’re all still friends (as of this recording back in 2007, just over a decade before Harvey Weinstein was arrested for numerous assaults), but the right project never really came along.
8. He says that while the story was conceived by Weinstein, it was Peter Lawrence who wrote the bulk of the actual script, with minor contributions from himself and Bob Weinstein. Maylam doesn’t know why Brad Grey is given a story credit on the film. “Brad was the manager of the camp’s superintendent and was basically a manager of comedians at the time,” and he worked very closely with Weinstein as the man’s gofer. He ultimately went on to become CEO of Paramount Pictures.
9. The story goes that Savini turned down working on Friday the 13th Part 2, “because he was so in love with this script,” but Maylam doesn’t quite confirm that. “We flew to Pittsburgh and went to his home. He liked the script very much, and he was on board, simple as that.”
10. Maylam suggests that the burn makeup effects in 1996’s Academy Award-winning The English Patient are pretty poor. He adds that looking back at The Burning, it would have been “much more sexy” if they had Cropsey’s burnt facial skin peeling off.
11. The original ending was meant to unfold in a big cave, but they discovered it was home to a high number of bats, so they squashed the idea. Cowards. They went with an old copper mine instead, and Maylam spent the next two months coughing up red dust.
12. The mask used to scare campers at the campfire was designed by Savini.
13. The “massacre on the raft” scene is the main one that caused the film issues with censors, particularly in the UK. Maylam considers it one of the best scenes in the film, and he giddily recalls handling the blood pump for the finger-cutting beat.
14. Maylam’s also standing in as the silhouetted Cropsey with the shears and is even the one holding the shears for 90 percent of the killer’s POV shots. He says it’s because he couldn’t get anyone in the crew to do it exactly right.
15. There are two times where the film fades to red, and Maylam thinks he maybe used the gag two times too many.
16. This is the slightly uncommon slasher that eschews the traditional “final girl” ending and has male characters defeat Cropsey instead. Jones references that as if to ask why they went that route, but Maylam says only that female characters give you “more vulnerability” before going silent for ten seconds.
17. He’s not aware of any thoughts on rebooting The Burning, but Maylam says there was brief interest in a possible sequel that ultimately went nowhere. He seems okay with that, in part because a sequel would have to go the supernatural route if they wanted to bring back Cropsey.
18. There’s a weird stinger at 1:21:45 where one of our final boys, Todd (Brian Matthews), sees a dead woman with a neck impalement. The camera seems to zoom in on a still photograph instead of being an actual filmed moment, and Maylam says the Weinsteins added it on their own in the editing room. “I don’t know why it was put in.”
19. There’s an end credit listing nine people as Special Business Advisors, and Maylam adds that they were all “Harvey’s friends.”
Quotes Without Context
“You bump into Bob or Harvey [Weinstein] in a hotel room, and we have a chat.”
“There’s nothing particularly innovative about this film at all.”
“Here’s Brad Grey’s plant again. I’ve never seen him since.”
“Look darling, we’ve all seen naked women for goodness sake, just get on with it.”
“The superhuman strength of these maniacs is always quite amazing.”
“You really hate this guy.”
Keep up with more horror commentary breakdowns here.
College kids, strippers and vampires—those were Donald P. Borchers’ only requirements when he approached Richard Wenk about writing and directing a movie for New World Pictures. As requested, Wenk cooked up Vamp (1986), a tailor-made blend of the decade’s teen movie craze as well as its horror boom.
Grim and earnest stories were still very much a part of the ’80s horror landscape, yet Vamp is something of a comedy. One difference between it and, say, Saturday the 14th, though, is the former avoids using schtick. Wenk’s movie proves that horror comedies also don’t have to subtract thrills from their recipes. Of course, it takes a minute before reaching that point; college antics and culture shocks preface this one macabre misadventure.
Vamp‘s initial setup is apt for a typical college-set, sex-driven comedy; to bribe their way into a fraternity house, two pledges (Chris Makepeace, Robert Rusler) go looking for some adult entertainment. Without wasting time on any further exposition, the characters embark on an all-in-one-night trip that quickly detours into terror.
To procure their elusive MacGuffin—a stripper willing to gyrate for some frat boys—Keith (Makepeace) and AJ (Rusler), plus a third wheel named Duncan (Gedee Watanabe), trade the safety of their remote college campus for the seediness of some unnamed city. The setting is recognizably L.A. by day, but as soon as night falls, downtown, along with the characters, slips into a kind of surreal universe. Director of photography Elliot Davis gave this early entry on his prolific résumé an unusual yet distinctive look; that Mario Bava-esque, magenta-green lighting is omnipresent, so much so that it’s almost its own character.
Chris Makepeace and Robert Rusler in Vamp
The faint comparisons to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours are merited, although not just because of Vamp’s distinguishing nighttime aesthetic. Save for the primary characters, the supporting roles in Wenk’s movie are also quite colorful and transactional in their behavior. The difference here, though, is the additional urge to ruin Keith and his friends at every turn. Some of that harm is humorous and tolerable enough, whereas the moment Vamp dishes out its first fatality, it’s abundantly clear how this movie qualifies as horror.
Vamp falls into that category of horror movie that reveals its genre with a scream rather than a series of whispers. The opening scene can function as a hint of what lies ahead—things are not at all what they appear to be—but otherwise, Wenk is more than happy to hold off on the horror. When that time does come, though, it catches the viewer off guard. In addition to the pure shock value is that sudden decision to upend the movie’s foremost feature. Or so it would seem.
If afraid of major spoilage, those new to Vamp would be wise to stop reading here. There’s just no skirting around the fact that the central fellowship in this buddy movie hits a serious snag when AJ is killed. That development causes the story to become more of a “long, bad night” journey for Keith and his romantic interest. So while Wenk scores points for subverting expectations, there is also a touch of sadness in his decision. Because if Vamp does anything well, it’s making the characters likable.
Something that comes easily to Vamp—and other teen horror movies from this same era—is its ability to invent young characters worth caring about, or at the very least, are interesting and not so immediately off-putting. More impressive is how Wenk did all this without actually fleshing out those characters. Still and all, Keith and his kind are a grade above cookie-cutter, and in some cases, aren’t completely devoid of growth.
Grace Jones in Vamp
Vamp appeals with an assorted cast of characters. No two are the same, nor are they operating on the same wavelength. The cinematically extroverted AJ, whose actor conveyed charm and vulnerability in near equal amounts, comes alive when he’s at his most undead. Makepeace then makes the chronically cautious Keith a sympathetic fellow, even as he’s more and more affected by the night’s bizarre events. Meanwhile, Duncan is indeed the designated loser of the whole bunch, but Watanabe still manages to humanize him. As a bonus, the role didn’t require him to pull a Long Duk Dong.
As for Dedee Pfeiffer, she is plain adorable as the mysterious After Dark server nicknamed “Amaretto”. She spends all night fixing her dress strap while at the same time trying to get Keith to remember how he knows her. As their offbeat romance grows, it becomes another highlight of this movie. Whether or not Pfeiffer’s character is really a vampire also creates some welcome tension in the story.
Like a lot of its contemporaries, Vamp went on to become a bit of a cult classic. That current status is determined by several factors, but without a doubt, the casting of Grace Jones is the most considerable. The image of her writhing on that unique-looking chair, a Keith Haring original, springs to mind whenever this movie is brought up.
Chris Makepeace, Billy Drago and Paunita Nichols in Vamp
Prior to that first display of unequivocal horror, local vampire queen Katrina (Jones) took to the stage and delivered a strip show like no other. One would expect nothing less from that renowned model and performance artist. By now reports of Jones’ tardiness on set are no secret, yet it’s also hard to deny her commitment to the part of Katrina. It was, in fact, Jones who took charge of her character’s appearance—on top of Haring painting her body and that now-iconic chair, she had Andy Warhol handle her costuming. And not too many actors could seize a room’s attention without saying a single line of dialogue.
In 2022, Vamp received a retrospective novelization from Encyclopocalypse. This literary union of preexisting source material—Wenk’s original screenplay—and new ideas from author Christian Francis amounts to a more comprehensive visit to the After Dark Club. The basic story there is no different than what’s shown on screen; however, Francis gets creative with the characters’ origins and designs, and he enhances a number of key scenes.
The novelization expands on the urban and social decay of the main setting, and supplies a background for the After Dark Club. Sandy Baron’s character, Katrina’s emcee and familiar, is given ample motivation for sticking around; up until the fiery end, he is loyal to his friend and former business partner “Squeak”, who looks like he was “fed through a combine harvester, and left as nothing more than a heap of mangled remains”. Then there is Billy Drago’s character Snow, the leader of a street gang called The Dragons. His reason for menacing Keith and AJ is more altruistic than in the movie; he and his peers act tough to scare off any potential food for the vampires.
Lisa Lyon in Vamp
If not for all the backstories, Francis’ Vamp would be a hell of a lot shorter. Instead, this tie-in read dives into how AJ met Keith—the orphaned Anthony Joseph hailed from a broken home back in Brooklyn—and how their friendship flourished over the years. Keith’s archership is no longer just an assumed part of his entire being; it’s a confidence-building extracurricular for a boy who got picked on before coming into the protection of the new kid in town. These supplemental, in-depth looks at the protagonists, plus their close connection, are maybe unnecessary. The movie already did a fair and concise job of addressing their platonic intimacy without the need for flashbacks and insights, specifically in that scene where AJ lays it all out as he sacrifices himself.
Where the novelization gets off course is its approach to the minor characters. Intermittently backstorying the likes of Katrina’s indentured servants, Seko (Leila Hee Olsen) and Vlad (Brad Logan), ends up disturbing the flow of the writing. Was it absolutely essential that readers know Vlad was the Grand Duke of the House of Romanov, or how Snow’s accomplice Maven (Paunita Nichols) became so dentally challenged? No, not really. However, one’s mileage with these random biographies may vary.
The novelization is a more substantial experience, but for a movie like Vamp, less is more. And as plentiful as they are, it never simply coasts on its campy charms, either. The character work sits comfortably in that realm between cursory and meticulous, the script is sharper than first realized, and Greg Cannom’s vampire makeup is straightforward yet effective. Most of all, the movie didn’t squander its out-of-the-box concept. Richard Wenk made his vision of a “comic nightmare in which just about anything that can go wrong does” come true, and it is very enjoyable.
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