Don’t go in the woods.
Summer camp slashers were everywhere in the early ’80s.
But not all of them had Cropsy.
The Burning takes the familiar campfire-story setup and gives it one hell of a calling card: a horribly scarred former caretaker, a pair of garden shears and absolutely no interest in letting Camp Stonewater enjoy its summer.
It starts with a prank gone spectacularly wrong. Cropsy, the unpopular caretaker at Camp Blackfoot, wakes up to find a rotting skull covered in candles beside his bed. He panics, knocks it over and suddenly the cabin, and Cropsy, are on fire.
Five years later, he’s out of the hospital.
You can probably guess how the rehabilitation went.
Director Tony Maylam spends more time with the campers than you might expect, and that’s one of the things that separates The Burning from a lot of the slashers that followed Friday the 13th. These kids actually hang out. They joke around. They flirt. They annoy each other. Jason Alexander’s Dave somehow seems like Jason Alexander before anybody knew who Jason Alexander was.
Meanwhile, Cropsy is waiting in the woods.
And when the movie finally lets Tom Savini loose, buddy, it lets him loose.
The practical effects are the tape’s big attraction. Savini had just helped turn Friday the 13th into a sensation, and The Burning gives him another summer camp and a completely different set of tools. Cropsy’s garden shears become one of those wonderfully simple slasher weapons that immediately tell you this isn’t going to end well.
Then comes the raft.
If you’ve seen The Burning, you know.
If you haven’t, rent the tape and we’ll leave it at that.
The Burning (1981)
Years after a cruel camp prank leaves him horribly burned, former caretaker Cropsy returns to the woods with a pair of garden shears and a serious problem with summer campers.
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Vault Quick Stats
- Summer Camp Prank Planning: Criminally Poor
- Cropsy’s Forgiveness Level: Zero
- Garden Shear Safety: Please Put Those Down
- Raft Trip Recommendation: Absolutely Not
- Jason Alexander Hair: Magnificent
Fun Fact: Tom Savini had already created the effects for Friday the 13th, but when the sequel came around, he chose The Burning instead. That means while Jason was beginning his killing career over at Crystal Lake, Savini was in another summer camp figuring out what Cropsy could do with a pair of garden shears.
Extra Trivia: Take a close look at the campers. The Burning includes early film appearances from Jason Alexander and Fisher Stevens, while a young Holly Hunter turns up as Sophie. Apparently Camp Stonewater had one hell of a future alumni program.
Legacy: The Burning arrived during the first major wave of summer-camp slashers, but Cropsy, Savini’s effects and that infamous raft sequence helped keep it from disappearing into the woods with dozens of imitators. It never became a sprawling franchise, which almost makes the movie more fun to pull off the shelf today: one camp, one killer, one nasty little 1981 slasher.
Cropsy isn’t the only slasher who deserved more attention. The Burning earned a spot on our list of 5 Underrated Slasher Movies, alongside a few other ’80s killers that got buried beneath the bigger franchises.
“Cropsy survived the fire. Summer camp wasn’t going to survive Cropsy.”
Why The Burning Is Worth Renting
No hockey mask. No supernatural resurrection. No complicated mythology. Cropsy is simply an angry man hiding in the woods with a nasty pair of garden shears, and The Burning understands that sometimes that’s plenty. Keeping him mostly in the shadows also lets the shears become his real calling card.
Tom Savini Came to Camp Ready to Work
There are plenty of reasons to revisit The Burning, but Savini’s practical effects are sitting right near the top. The movie doesn’t constantly throw gore at the screen. It waits. And when Cropsy finally gets close enough to use those shears, the handmade effects give the attacks exactly the kind of nasty physical impact we want from an early-’80s slasher.
Camp Stonewater Actually Feels Like Summer Camp
This might be the movie’s secret weapon. The campers swim, joke around, pair off, irritate one another and generally behave like kids stuck together for the summer. Spending that time with them makes Stonewater feel lived-in before Cropsy starts thinning out the population. It also gives The Burning that loose, slightly scruffy summer-camp atmosphere that fits perfectly on VHS.
Still not ready to leave summer camp? Tom Savini had already helped make another campground very unsafe one year earlier. Head over to our Friday the 13th (1980) VHS Vault and spend another night at Crystal Lake.
Rewind or Fast Forward?
Rewind. If early-’80s slashers are your aisle, The Burning belongs in the cart. Cropsy has the shears, Tom Savini supplies the practical effects, Rick Wakeman brings a wonderfully strange score and the campers actually get enough personality that you don’t spend the whole movie waiting for them to disappear. Then there’s that raft. Yeah. Rewind.
The Burning Official Trailer
For the Collection
The Burning Collector’s Edition
Cropsy deserves better than a forgotten tape at the back of the rental store. If The Burning belongs on your horror shelf, the Collector’s Edition gives this summer-camp slasher a proper home alongside the other early-’80s classics.
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Made it back from Camp Stonewater? Good. Put down the garden shears and grab another tape.
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