I love this movie so much

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Just like Friday the 13th 1&2 this is a true Horror classic. Set at a summer camp this is another fun as hell slasher flick & one of the best ever made right at that time 1981 when so many CLASSIC Horror films seemed to come out!!! 80s was a beautiful time for Horror & here is one of the most fun with some Amazing gruesome scenes,the killer looks Awesome & the cast is great fun.No need to go on about story & all as it's simply just a great well made Slasher with beautiful locations & scenes!!! Just enjoy

Tony Waylam's The Burning, the first film to be produced by Bob and Harvey Weinstein's Miramax Films, is but one in what seems like an endless churn of stalk-and-slash movies inspired by the low-budget success of John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) and Sean S. Cunningham's Friday the 13th (1980). It performed moderately at the box-office and was panned by the critics, and did little to disguise its desire to replicate the success of Cunningham's newly- established franchise, merely re-hashing the plot in the process. So why now, 35 years after its release, is The Burning so beloved amongst genre fans?It's difficult to really pinpoint the reason why Waylam's film isn't as insufferable or outright boring as many others from the 'slasher' genre generally are. But for me, I found that the characters, who are little more than your usual horror archetypes, rather enjoyable to be around when they weren't busy getting carved up in the woods. The likes of Jason Alexander, Brian Backer, Fisher Stevens and Holly Hunter appear before they were famous, and are given the job of fleeing from the deformed killer stalking them - here a psychopathic victim of a prank-gone-wrong named Cropsy (Lou David). They are in the woods as part of a canoe trip arranged by Camp Blackfoot leader Todd (Brian Matthews), who is unaware that the camp-fire spook tale he frequently tells is about to become reality.With a rather likable bunch at its core, The Burning doesn't really drag when it isn't dishing out scenes of gore, and the performances feel naturalistic. When the gore does come, special effects maestro Tom Savini, having turned down Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981), delivers some of his finest work, naturally landing the film in trouble with the censors. As one of the first films slapped with the 'video nasty' tag, it was always destined to achieve legendary status amongst fans, and the infamous scene of mass murder on a raft, which really had the right-winger media up-in-arms, is extremely well-executed. I doubt I'll ever take to the slasher genre - I find them generally dull, dated, formulaic and misogynistic - and while The Burning certainly contains those elements, it isn't difficult to see why it is still so popular with fans of the genre.

Any fan of the genre of 80's horror will love this movie, but beneath the norm of gory deaths, naked teens and campfire stories there lies a truly great movie behind the surface. The storytelling is great, the build up and character development is sensational for a slasher movie, and if the wonderfully gruesome special effects aren't enough to keep you hooked the magnificent plot will. Apart from a great story this movie does what many other in it's genre fail to do - scare you! There are many edge-of-your-seat moments and genuinely frightening scenes. Overall it is a great movie which is underrated by many, I would put it up there with the likes of Friday 13th and Halloween, it's a shame it doesn't get recognized in popular culture like the two aforementioned do because it's really a top drawer horror movie. It's refreshing that an 80's slasher movie can have such an original plot and back-story, but it doesn't stray too far from it's roots leaving both hardcore horror fans and casual movie watchers satisfied.

however, it should be noted that the "original" referred to is 'Friday the 13th' from the year before and the word should be used reluctantly as it too recycled the finer parts of many (better) films that came before it (not least Mario Bava's 'Bay of Blood' from 1971). But still, 'Friday the 13th' is the film that, through being a financial success, really established the slasher genre in all its cliché glory and it is clearly this that 'The Burning' was hoping to cash in on.The plot hardly needs detailing: a large group of children, some older and some younger, spend the holidays in a summer camp where a deranged former caretaker, Cropsey, enacts his brutal and gory revenge for the prank-gone-wrong which left him horrendously burned some years before. So far, so predicable slasher…and yet, the film retains a high watch-ability factor from clearly being done by people who knew what they were doing as the film was the first to be written and produced by the Weinsteins, the gory kills are courtesy of maestro Tom Savini (who had actually worked on 'Friday the 13th), the soundtrack was done my prog-rock king Rick Wakeman, and the cast includes good performances from a young Jason Alexander (George from 'Seinfeld') and Fisher Stevens (the Indian guy from 'Short Circuit'). To top this off, Tony Maylam's direction (although he wouldn't go onto to produce anything else of real note) is self-assured and effortlessly builds tension as the kills come in and the horror of the situation dawns on the unwitting children and staff.Comparing 'The Burning' to 'Friday the 13th' (a film which I actually don't rate highly at all), I think that a key difference is that the group of children in 'The Burning' is larger. As a result, the film takes its time at the beginning establishing the personalities of some of the key characters by playing them off against each other in the form of the cliques and bullying that typify these kinds of groups. This makes the characters three-dimensional and means that we care much more about the characters as they die…unlike in 'Friday the 13th' where people are just fodder for imaginative kills. The result? All the gore…but a more engaging film.Unfortunately, because the film was basically self-consciously imitating 'Friday the 13th', it can never escape the comparisons and anyone that hasn't seen it would be forgiven for not wanting to because of that. But those that have seen it can vouch for the fact that, imitation it may be, but the quality of the movie more than stands up for itself and is a must-see for genuine horror fans.