The Burning: For Some Reason I Imagined Much Worse Things Happening When Garden Shears Are Involved.

I hadn't ever heard of this movie until I did a poll on Twitter about your favorite horror movie villain and a few people responded with "Cropsy". Who was this Cropsy fellow and what the hell is The Burning all about? A little researched came up with a film often linked to and regarded as a rip off of Friday the 13th. As it turns out The Burning was written before Friday the 13th came out and it's premises focuses on one of the most told campfire stories in camp history.

Now I don't know what it is with summer camps, and maybe it's just my exposure to horror films taking place at them- but I've never found them a real fun place to be for the summer. Kids are always getting into perverted shenanigans and then dying for it so why would anyone want to go to one? Yeah exactly. Also the shower situation in this movie really really bugged the hell out of me. It was a box in the middle of the camp. A tall camper could easily walk by and peer into every shower. I just didn't buy it. But moving on from the shower problem, The Burning is about a janitor who was horribly burned after a camp prank went horribly wrong. This is Cropsy. Now some odd years later Cropsy has returned ready to reap vengeance on the kids responsible.

Let's talk about this "prank" for a second. Firstly where did they get a skull with worms and bugs crawling out of it? Secondly what kind of prank is that. Thirdly why does Cropsy push it onto his bed in his moment of terror? The whole thing just really bugged me. Personally the Zeke the Plumber story from Salute Your Shorts is much more believable but whatever.

So Cropsy's mad alright and he gets a pair of garden shears and starts going to work. The gore and killings in this movie were very realistic and weren't afraid to show things. Like the garden shears actually cutting into the skin. Then again no one got their penis cut off which I think is a waste of a good garden shear but oh well. The color of the blood was very nice although it sometimes just looked like dyed water- like when it was splashed onto the mirror in the beginning. But other than that the blood flow did have a strangely nice artistic flow to it- which is something that I can always appreciate.

The movie is OK. But I found it was too slow most of the time and Cropsy was a barely there killer. I think the real villain here is the garden shears. Cropsy doesn't speak and then again neither does Jason or Michael Meyers but the difference is that those characters ARE characters. Cropsy is uninteresting and barely even scary. Showing his horribly burned face throughout probably could have been beneficial to his cause but I really felt no fear or remorse at all. He gets released from the Hospital, has a nice little goodbye with the doctor and nurses and then immediately finds a hooker and kills her? It just didn't make sense.

Another problem is that there was only one kid responsible for Cropsy's burning who was still at the camp and was now a counselor. And to top that off the counselor in question only gets a nip to the head? Why not brutally kill him the most if he is your original purpose of doing this Cropsy? Egads.

Overall not one of my highly recommended movies. And although I don't really like Friday the 13th, it's way better than The Burning. Although- The Burning had a better story line and opportunity to make it better than Friday. Maybe a penis getting cut off could have done the trick? Just a thought, just a thought.

Here is the raft massacre.

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