AKA: Burning Revenge

Tag Line : A brutal, horrific act made him kill, and kill, and kill

The kids at Blackfoot summer camp decide to play a prank on the caretaker "Cropsey" (Lou David), who's a bit of a mean old bastard. The joke however goes terribly wrong and Cropsey is rushed to hospital suffering from horrendous burns.

Released 5 years later, healed although horribly disfigured, he returns to the area of the old summer camp, which has since been renamed Camp Stonewater, seeking revenge. Once there, he proceeds to do away with the poor kids and the camp councillors, turning them into mincemeat with his trusty old gardening shears.

Directed by Tony Maylem, who went on to be fired from the Rutger Hauer sci-fi film "Split Second", this is basically a clone of "Friday the 13th" if you hadn't guessed that already. Although that's not to say the film doesn't have its fair share of good gory moments, but then that's not surprising considering these were by the same effects guy, namely Tom Savini (the sultan of splatter himself).

I can really only recommend this film to other slasher movie fans, otherwise you may wish to stick with Friday the 13th. But if you love tacky old 80's horror films, be sure to check this one out.

Overall marks : 5/10.

Other Information.

• Alternate Tag Lines : "Don't look he'll see you, don't breathe he'll hear you, don't move...your dead!", "A legend of terror isn't a campfire story anymore".

• Tom Savini actually passed up the opportunity to work on Friday the 13th part 2 to do this movie.

• The music was by Rick Wakeman, of the seventies rock band "Yes".

• A very young Holly Hunter (of "Crash" fame) and a teenage Jason Alexander (from "Seinfeld") both made their debut appearances in the film, as did US TV actor Fisher Stevens (from Early Edition).

• The success of "The Burning" helped launch "Mirimax" studios, as well as the producing careers of it's founders Bob and Harvey Weinstein.

• Based on an urban legend told to kids at Summer camps accross America about a maniac named "Cropsey" who haunts the woods.

• The UK cinema version had been cut by the BBFC, but when originally released onto video - prior to the introduction of the Video recordings act - distributors Thorn-EMI released the original uncut version by accident. This was quickly replaced with the edited theatrical version after realising their mistake, but unfortunately this still found its way onto the governments "Video Nasties list" and they where prosecuted for obscenity. The 1995 re-issue by "Vipco" was even more heavily cut, though they did release an uncut version in Denmark. They finally managed to get the uncut version passed for a UK release in 2002.

• The uncut print can also be found on German DVD by Dragon Entertainment, and on a special edition DVD from MGM.

Cast & Crew

Theatrical trailer (1.27MB).

Cropsey's "shear" brutality. (683KB)

Buy the UK DVD

Buy the US DVD (spec ed).

Notes on affiliate sites.

Other recommendations

Reviews A-Z.

Reviews index. Home. Menu.