Koston liekit

Carol Clover shed a lot of tears over The Burning. The influential film theorist came up with the now widely used concept of the final girl and established the slasher as a subgenre that positively lends itself to the feminist viewpoint. Subsequent studies, such as Richard Nowell’s work, demonstrate that slasher producers, in response to the market of the time, also absolutely counted on a female audience and thus deliberately populated the genre with active female protagonists and constituent motifs that resonated with the female part of the audience. Opposed to this contemporary context, The Burning presents a fetishistically violent and fiercely misogynistic counterpoint. As such, the film defies causality and internal logic, but it is held together by its disdain for and objectification of women. The girls at the co-ed summer camp are viewed through a voyeur’s lens and emerge from their individual situations primarily as whores who make a lot of fuss and all they think about is sex. The central killer is supposed to be driven by a desire for revenge for the horrific burns inflicted on him by a group of privileged boys, which he satisfies by mainly killing the girls rather than dispatching the macho bullies at the camp. Could all of this somehow be related to the fact that this flick was written and produced by Harvey Weinstein? (04.04.2021)

A routine slasher flick and one of the better-known responses to Friday the 13th. Teenagers are massacred in a summer camp by a burned maniac with gardening shears. The promising start is followed by a boring first half in which practically nothing happens and then a showdown with some enjoyable gore scenes. The film was banned in numerous countries because of those gore scenes, but they don’t make the film anything special overall. The dialogue is dumb and the synth music is second rate. Friday the 13th was more professional in terms of production quality. The Burning is the debut of then still young film enthusiasts Harvey and Bob Weinstein (producer and screenwriter, respectively). Holly Hunter appears in it for two seconds. (30.12.2003)

Slasher is not and have never been my favourite subgenre, I get them all mixed up after some time, but I quite liked this one. In fact, I’m surprised The Burning never got a sequel, it has a decent villain for that. The murders are all committed with garden shears, but I don’t think the result is very good, they all look very similar – with the exception of the scene on the raft – I will remember that one for a long time. The atmosphere is effective, especially at the beginning and by the end, while the first half could have a richer plot, but it’s bearable. The Burning is a decent representative of the camp slashers from the 80s, no more than that. (18.08.2008)

Together with Friday the 13th and Sleepaway Camp, this film might complete the imaginary trilogy of the best early 80s camp slashers. It draws quite a lot of ideas from the former of the aforementioned in particular, but The Burning still follows a distinct path with some really wild scenes in stock. Pretty decent. (22.04.2018)