The Burning (1981)

One of my very first horror-related memories is completely owned by The Burning.

In some of my earlier reviews, I talk very briefly about a small mom-and-pop video store that was located in Reedley, California in the early eighties. This place was very small, but housed a lot of the horror I would come to know and love in the future. It was one of the very few video rental places in the little city we lived in and my parents frequented it quite regularly so it was the very first exposure I had to the home video revolution that was just beginning. Writing that last sentence just made me homesick for the 1980’s, when large, bulky VCR’s (like my parent’s Quasar model) were the only things available and little independent shops lined with mahogany shelves filled with videocassettes in random order and smelling of popcorn started popping up slowly in every town.  The days of membership and rewind fees…they’re all gone. It makes me sad that all of that is just a distant memory now, what with the advent of DVD, and the death of the video rental stores altogether (Thank you, Redbox and Netflix). Let’s stop there, because I’ll get all soft. And I know if you read those last few sentences, you may be feeling the same way now.

 Since the last time I was active on this blog, I met a woman that lived in the apartment below me after just having moved into a new building in 2010. A good gal, she became interested in my horror film collection and one night while helping her cook dinner, we got into a deep conversation about how my fascination with said horror began and I started telling her about the little video shop that I still hold onto for dear life and as I went on and on, she stopped in her tracks. She turned around and said, “Are you talking about the video store that used to be downtown next to the old ice cream parlor?”  I froze. How did she know that? I’d mentioned it to so many people who had no clue to what I was talking about to the point to where I’d already convinced myself that I’d possibly dreamed (or at least semi-fabricated) its existence. About ten years ago, I even went as far as to contact the local chamber of commerce to see if any record of the video store was available for viewing so I could at least rest knowing that it wasn’t a figment of my imagination, with no answer from them, of course.

The hour that followed was life-changing. Not only did she know about the store and its name, but it turns out that her grandfather and father owned and ran it! My lifelong search was finally over! Ernie’s Video – as it was known – was opened at the beginning of the 80’s and closed sometime before 1989. I couldn’t even begin to tell her all the fond memories I had of that place and it turns out that I remembered more of the store than she did. Everything from the store’s layout, the color and style of the front door with the little bell that hung around the doorknob to the way the shelves were set up (and the exact direction in which the videocassettes were placed and how they faced). I went on and on about the clear casings that housed some of the more “forbidden titles” that were under the store’s countertops, and the five posters that hung in the store that forever stand out in my memory: Altered States hung in the front window facing the sidewalk. Maniac hung next to the interior door that led into the back area. The half-sized standee of Zombie that sat on the counter on the right side of the store. And the most memorable one of all, the full-sized one sheet of The Burning that was taped to a mirror that overlooked the entire store. That was the one I never forgot.

I was lucky enough to meet her father later on and reminisce with him about the store. What was strange was that I had more recollection of it than he did, which he found very amusing. Don’t get me wrong, he did remember its existence and was tickled pink to hear how much of it I still remembered. I asked him if he had any pictures of the store or anything that was saved from it, just to finally prove to myself that I didn’t concoct the entire thing in my head, because believe me, I was already convincing myself that I’d either made it all up or had dreamt it while I was a kid.  He was nice enough to give me an original Ernie’s Video baseball cap that had managed to survive all these years and a small roll of the silver decals that went on the sides of the VHS cassettes that had the original address, phone number and logo of the store. I was ecstatic. I couldn’t even express how happy I was that I could finally rest knowing that I wasn’t crazy! Right now the cap and decals are in storage so as soon as I can get them out, I will post pictures of them so you all can see. Hallelujah, I’m not sick after all! Oh, wait….

So the first “re-introducing” of this film came in the early 1990’s by means of the book Don’t Look In The Shower! that I picked up one afternoon at the local library – during the period that I was on the cusp of becoming the extreme die-hard that I am now. There was a short essay in which The Burning was named and quickly reviewed and I will never forget that once sentence that pretty much summed it up for me: [Cropsy] jumps out of an abandoned canoe and kills six of them at once. I don’t remember anything that came before or after those words but it stuck. With that permanently etched into my brain, I started my search for this one…with no luck. Most of the mom and pop video stores in the area were already starting to close their doors, losing out to the larger “discount” video houses that were part of and attached to major grocery store chains, so those more obscure horror titles were getting harder and harder to find. This one was one of them, to the point where I had to stop searching for it.

Everything would change the summer of 2001 – the time when my collecting hobby had just gotten its start - when one night I was browsing through what was on cable and I came across a commercial on HBO announcing that they would be showing this on a night I’d be working. Really? HBO was going to actually broadcast this?  I didn’t hesitate and I immediately set both my cable box and my VCR to record this and could not be more excited that I was finally going to get to see this in its entirety (along with The Stendhal Syndrome, which was to come out right after). A few nights later, I finally had the time to grab the popcorn, turn off my telephone and put this in the player. I couldn’t have been more thrilled.

So finally (after all the banter above), I’ll get to the film itself: At first viewing, I have to be honest when I say that I was wasn’t at all impressed with the film and immediately dismissed it as being just another run-of-the-mill Friday the 13^th doppelgänger. Sure, it had Holly Hunter, Fisher Stevens and Jason Alexander…but for me, there was nothing more to it than another backwoods I’ve-seen-it-all-before slasher.  And the scene where Cropsy does six of them at once? That one scene I’d been waiting to finally lay eyes on? All I could hear in my mind was the voice of Edina Monsoon: What, this?  I took the tape out of the VCR, placed it alongside the other cassettes in my collection at the time, and proceeded to forget that I’d even seen it.  Don’t gasp too hard yet, though. Allow me to present my defense: Before I pushed play on the VCR that night, I have to admit, I had no clue that not only was this a Weinstein production and that Mr. Tom Savini had worked on this film (and that he’d passed on Friday the 13^th – part 2 to do so), I was ignorant of the fact that I was watching a censored (cut) version. Yes, one of the rare times that Linus didn’t do his homework! Sacre bleu! So with the internet being somewhat available to me during my overnight work house, I started to do my research on this, albeit slowly.

I finally was able to get my hands on the U.S. Thorn/EMI white clamshell case version of this – the one I remember seeing at Ernie’s Video when I was a kid – about a year and half later on eBay while living in the Kansas City, Missouri area. By this time, I had learned everything I needed to know about this film: that it was loosely based on a New England urban legend of a murderer known as “The Cropsy Killer”, that the version I owned that had been released in the U.S. was incomplete, the whole “video nasty” scandal overseas, how Britain’s Thorn/EMI had accidentally released the uncensored cut of the film resulting in a slap on the hand by the BBFC only to make the same mistake twice (there’s no such thing as bad publicity, right?), and thanks to a website known as Hysteria Lives!, I finally was able to behold the beauty of the infamous “raft scene” (the one where Cropsy kills six kids in less than two minutes?) in its complete, uncensored bitchin’ glory.  So at second viewing, I got much more out of it, aside from the “raft scene” having been mutilated and left for dead, of course. I was able to enjoy it in its follow-up run and was able to sit back and be able to actually see it as the above-than-average slasher that it is, contrary to what I’d first thought. The cast was well put together (I loved that Leah Ayres, who was in Bloodsport, was in this), some of the photography is excellent, and both the opening and closing scenes are classic scenes of classic camp slasher.

When it was first made known that it was finally going to be released on DVD, I can recall reading on countless forums about it – whether or not we were going to see an uncut print, curiosity if the original poster art was going to be used? When it was released in 2007, die-hard fans were given the long-awaited treat of the film being released complete and uncensored – regardless of the fact that MGM released it with an “R” rating on the sleeve (I want to say that they did so because they don’t release movies unrated? I could be wrong – I may be thinking of Paramount. I think they did it intentionally to give us what they knew we wanted, which if that is true, was a great move on their part). I’m not sure if a complete print had been ever available in the U.S. (aside from an Amazon-only exclusive VHS) so I wonder to myself if there was a fan of film (or an executive, maybe?) “on the inside” that pushed in some way to have an uncut version released to us (or at least knew where to obtain one). Believe me when I say that for that, we are very thankful – or at least I am, regardless if the DVD sleeve was missing the original poster art. MGM were also nice enough to not only give us the original trailer, but a must-see on-camera interview with Tom Savini. Just this one bonus feature is well worth the price of the disc as he goes into a very loving retrospect of his time working on the film and even goes into the behind-the-scenes of how he did the “raft-scene”, which has to be, hands down, one of the most amazing scenes in slasher history. Nothing can beat the shot of Cropsy shearing off Fisher Stevens’ fingers and how he holds them up as blood squirts out of them! If any of you all were here with me, I’d do the chest bump of triumph with you.

Though this film isn’t honestly relevant to slasher history here in the U.S. (Halloween and Friday the 13^th hold those top spots here), because of the reputation The Burning has gained over the years due to what it went through overseas and its problems with the BBFC – and just for the complete “raft scene”! – it is imperative that this find its way into your collection, especially now that it is readily available – and very inexpensive – to own.   Essential viewing? Yes. But you’re reading this, so I know you already have. 

The New York Ripper (1982)

I wish that I had the kind of memories of my first encounter with this film as I do the others that are on this blog. Usually I break into an immediate fondness and start recalling the many who-and-whatzits of where I was in life when I first held the video box to most of these titles because I like to share the manners in which I got to know some of these bad boys and girls. Now that I think back on all those mom-and-pop shops (and the not-so-mom-and-pops) I walked through during my teenage years, I don’t ever remember seeing this on any shelf – believe me, I’d remember that fantastic poster art! (I loved it so much it’s the banner of this blog!) Hmmm, why didn’t I ever see this one if I can recall boxes for Superstition and The Seven Doors of Death? I didn’t get into Italian sleaze cinema until the mid-to-late nineties, after I’d both discovered and then ridden the Suspiria train a few hundred-or-so times. By the time I did enough reading on this to go actually out and look for it, it was readily available on DVD so I apologize for not getting that warm-and-toasty feeling when I talk about The New York Ripper – though I honestly wish I could.

I started taking time to research titles and directors and slowly started to become more and more interested in films coming from that other end of the world. I wasn’t even aware at that time that horror films came out of any other country but the U.S. – as ridiculous as that sounds - and little did I know that a great deal of these films I was discovering would top most of the stuff I’d seen that was being home-brewed here. I came across this entry about two years after I’d already seen Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond and after reading about this particular one - and other films of his - on countless message boards over the internet and learning about its infamous reputation overseas, I couldn’t resist in tracking/picking up a copy of Blue Underground’s release at the local Rapsutin’s for under ten bucks just to see what the big deal was about. I won’t go into how it was one of the original (and more infamous) “Video Nasties” in Britain, how copies of it were famously escorted out of the country, and how it was banned outfight for many years, because if you’re a die-hard as I am, you already know everything there is to know about Lo Squartatore de New York.  I already knew who was in it before even sitting down to watch it: Andrea Occhipinti (A Blade In the Dark), Zora Kerova (who was in Cannibal Ferox) so with the experience I’ve had with horror films, I pretty much thought I had figured out how this was going to play out. If you’ve seen this (which you have – why else would you be reading this?), you know that I was completely wrong.

I won’t give away the details of the plot because somehow I have this pre-conceived notion that you’ve either already seen it or know enough about it to be interested in this post. And this is one of those films that I wouldn’t even think of giving away scene-by-scene because I want you, the reader, to be able to watch a film as this and form your own opinion (If you’ve read my review for “The Hazing” – you’ll note that I gave away the entire film, which actually caused someone who hadn’t seen it yet to send me a very nasty email). I do have to admit that I get such a laugh out of the film’s opening sequence and how it flawlessly breaks into a “CHiPS” kind of theme, musically. Many Italian-produced horror films (and their respective trailers) begin with (or shamelessly contain) this kind of cheesy disco-tinged track (Can you say, “Cannibal Ferox”, “The House on the Edge of the Park”?)

After a bizarre scene of a dog finding a random severed hand in a bush, we get introduced to the film’s premise: Someone in a [lousy] Donald Duck voice is killing people across New York City and the police force – complete with a closeted homosexual college psychoanalyst and a chief with a penchant for prostitutes - tries their best to solve the mystery. What ensues is nothing but trash and sleaze and still, after multiple viewings – as I’m doing now for purposes of this essay – manages to make me both cringe and howl in laughter, sometimes simultaneously. One of the film’s overall highlights, for me, is the photographing of the wonderfulness that is/was the old 42^nd Street, lovingly portrayed in gorgeous colors before the camera takes us to a live sex show and the extremely brutal murder of its actress by a broken bottle right-bloody-smack in the vajay-jay. I don’t think I’ve seen a murder executed anywhere else in horror history in that same manner. There is a cold darkness and feeling of hopelessness to the film that has to be experienced to be believed. This is no happy movie and that’s something I must stress. There is nothing redeemable about sitting through this piece of horror history. I sometimes try to figure out if the intention from the beginning was to prove a point by purposely making the film in an over-the-top fashion or if it just ended up that way once things were edited and put together. There are images so darky constructed that it does give a feeling of impending doom and for brief moments, we are watching a genuine horror film whose sole motive is to offend – and that it does. Then, just as one begins to get comfortable (or not so, depending on your taste), scenes such as the infamous “toe job” scene in the tavern interrupt and become perfect halfway-points between titillating and outright revolting but yet still manage to make me burst out loud in hysterics crying out, “What the f@#* was that?!”.

Conversely, there are moments such as the scene in the theater (the dream sequence) that are absolutely gorgeous. The poor girl alone having being chased by someone who just brutally attacked her and there is a deep helplessness in her eyes, as she looks around to see if he, the assaulter, can see her. Then, in a blinding light, she sees a familiar face and it suddenly slashes her with a razor point-blank. She screams over and over again until she wakes up only to find the familiar face [her boyfriend, Andrea Occhipinti] in the room with her. She slowly tells him her nightmare in detail, and then reveals to him that he was the one that assaulted her. That one scene is fantastic and probably my favorite scene in the entire film. Did I mention that I have a slight crush on Mr. Occhipinti?  His chiseled good looks, his brooding eyes, those amazing lips. Ever since my first viewing of A Blade in the Dark…and for the sake of this blog, I’ll stop there. 

One scene that drives me into fits of uncontrollable laughter is the scene when one of the detectives (the homosexual college psychoanalyst) is seen at a corner newsstand looking through porn magazines - gay porn magazines. I giggle because maybe I, myself, remember that part of the 80’s? It cracks me up how the cashier plays it off, stuffing an issue of Blueboy into a copy of the New York Times for him ever so discreetly. Suddenly, for a few brief moments, I’m a curious teenage boy again remembering…well, (pause) just remembering. The first time I watched this scene I admittedly had to rewind it and see it a few times on repeat. As I’m writing I wonder to myself if Mr. Fulci made this movie in the manner that he did to make a political statement or maybe, a disguised social commentary? Was he trying to make a point by being grossly misogynistic? The constant shots of New York’s seedy underground sex shops and neon lights (along with a theater marquee displaying a banner for Final Exam!) pave the way for scenes such as the slashing of the girl bound to the bed. The killer, as he caresses her body slowly with a razorblade, dancing along her skin as he laughs running it down her torso, opening her up and tearing her flesh apart. The slashing of her nipple and eyeball painted vividly and in such a grotesque and realistic fashion that you can’t help but scream as you’re watching.  On the imdb boards, someone even claims that this particular scene is cut and that it goes even further by having the girl get her crotch gruesomely slashed – which would make sense seeing that once the scene is over, the long shot once the cops are there shows her nether region mutilated.  

The climax of the film is fantastic, which I won’t give away and though it leaves the film overwhelmingly ambiguous, it’s still great. It’s one of those downbeat endings that leave you thinking, although you really don’t want to. It will leave you confused – as it is pretty far-fetched - and wanting more but yet in its own right it does the job. The final scene will leave you guessing but I’ll leave it at that.

In actuality, this film isn’t as graphic as it’s made out to be, but you do have to take into consideration the time in which it was released. For the 1980’s it was pretty brutal (the first murder in the car, that broken bottle to the vag, the sliced nipple and slice across the eyeball). Even by today’s standards some of the murders are pretty intense. The film does deliver a dank and putrid atmosphere but somehow doesn’t do it enough to drag you into its gaping jaws the way you’re expecting it to. Some of the sexuality in the film is more explicit than most were used to then (a toe job anyone? LOL!) and its tinged with enough sleaze and coarseness to fill a stew pot and feed a homeless shelter. That last sentence should tell you everything.

I really can’t say that this would be “essential” viewing, per se, but only because it’s one of the more notorious works by Mr. Fulci do I even recommend it. Just with its history and track record in Europe (and I believe, Australia) it’s one to look at, at least once. Fulci has plenty of hits and misses in his filmography but if you’re even the slightest bit curious, seek this one out. It’s available to rent via Netflix in both DVD form and instant streaming. Your jaw will drop and you’ll gasp out loud a few times without even knowing it. The rest of the time you’ll be laughing at the utterly ridiculous dialogue and at the ultra-random WTF moments scattered throughout – three fingered red herrings and all. I would , though, probably also recommend getting a warm bath (with a good antibacterial soap) ready just before pressing play on this evil little nasty, because with the filth and stench you’re going to have to endure, you will want to wash and scrub yourself down as hard as you can over and over again after you finish this!