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Today we mark our first foray into the wide wilderness that is old school horror. On the chopping block is the oft whispered about slasher flick, The Burning. There is a lot of history tied to this film, and was one of many films banned by the British Board of Film Classification in the mid-1980's. It was the first film produced by Harvey Weinstein whom would go on to create Miramax and The Weinstein Company. It starred then unknown talent Jason Alexander, Fisher Stevens, and Holly Hunter. The special effects were done by industry great Tom Savini, just following his work on the original Friday the 13th.

The film has garnered a bit of notoriety over the years, thanks to an especially brutal raft massacre scene that takes place in broad daylight. The notoriety has no doubt doubled for the simple reason that the movie has long been out of print, rarely even playing on late night TV horror fests. As such, although I've heard great things about this film, I'd never been able to view it for myself. However, thanks to Anchor Bay and the glorious technological advances afforded us by DVD, The Burning is available for consumption once more.

The film takes place at a common 80's slasher setting, a summer camp in the middle of the woods. We meet a group of young boys that wish to seek revenge against the crusty old camp caretaker, Cropsy. Okay, so the caretaker isn't that old or crusty, but I like the ring of it. At any rate, the revenge prank goes severely south and old Cropsy ends up severely burned, hence the title of the flick.

Cut to 5 years later and the horribly disfigured, shadow dwelling, trench coat wearing Cropsy is released from the hospital. We're not exactly sure why the hospital is releasing this particular patient as there appear to be some unresolved psychotic tendencies. In fact, the doctors can clearly be heard saying via voice-over "We know you still resent those kids for what happened, but try not to think about tracking them down one by one and murdering the little bastards." Okay, so that's not the line word for word, but it might as well be. At any rate, Cropsy gets out of the hospital and kills a hooker. Not exactly sure why, but hey, that's show business for ya.

Next we jump to the summer camp and get acquainted with a new group of kids, one of which is Jason Alexander (with HAIR!). Also, one of the kids responsible for burning the caretaker five years before is now a counselor at the camp. More importantly, the camp is apparently now co-ed because there is a lot of old fashioned 80's T&A on display. Cropsy quickly find his way to the camp and gets with the dispatching of these wicked, sex crazed young folk. The first set of boobs (Not the prostitute's. Go figure) make their entrance around twenty minutes into the film, concurring with the film's first red herring.

From there, we have approximatey forty more red herrings in a row. Seriously. The first death (not counting the prostitute) occurs about 45 minutes in. In this scene, we're treated to several sequences of full frontal nudity as teenage girl wanders the forest looking for her clothes which were stolen while she was skinny dipping. Whew. Do not try such long and convoluted sentences at home, kids. This sequence deserves some recognition as it contains more nudity than most other films from this era. Props.

The next thing of interest that occurs is the aforementioned raft massacre scene. A group of 6 or so kids attempting to escape via raft are cut to ribbons by the shear-wielding maniac. Again, some recognition is deserved as no other 80's slasher with a scene containing this level of unflinching brutality comes to mind. Also, the fact that this attack happens in broad daylight, with a group of character that hasn't done something stupid like split up, shows smart, inventive writing on the part of the screenwriter.

The third defining moment of this film is the climax, which consists of a fairly boring, overly-prolonged chase sequence. The reason this is a defining moment is because the character is peril is not your slasher standard teenage girl. No, there are two characters in peril and they are both male. I'm not sure if the writer was consciously avoiding genre cliches or not, as I'm not sure a strong genre formula had been established at the time this film was made. Either way, again, props.

That's not to say the movie is above criticism. The film takes too long to get to the killing. There's an abundance of day-for-night shots so you can never tell what time of day it's supposed to be in the film. Some of the kills could be call repetitive (not by me though). None of the characters are particularly likable. You only see the horribly burned caretaker for a grand total of 30 seconds. The climactic chase is boring. Etc.

All that said, if you're a gore hound or a slasher junkie, it's worth checking out. There's a lot of history, some real smart scripting, and the raft scene is something no horror fan should go without seeing (although, in retrospect, it's not all that gory). Anchor Bay has done good in resurrecting this film. I can only hope some other wayside fallen gems can get the same treatment in the future.

The Bottomline: If you're a genre fan, consider this film mandatory viewing. For casuals, you might be better served rewatching Friday the 13th. Either way, recommended.

Four stars.

The Tripper is the directorial debut of David Arquette, husband of Courtney Cox, star of several fun horror b-movies movies including the Scream Trilogy and Eight Legged Freaks, and former WCW Heavy Weight Champion (really). Considering his involvement in the independent film scene I figured he'd have a good handle on how to make a fun, low budget slasher flick.

Boy was I wrong.

The movie is pretty much a train wreck from start to finish. The biggest problem turns out to be Arquette himself. I don't have many complaints about his direction. Arquette seems to do a passable job, keeping the camera moving and composing interesting shots and angles. My biggest issue is the writing.

The story surely sounds interesting. A young boy, Gus, growing up in the late 1960's has the Reagan pro-war rhetoric bombarded into his little brain until an incident involving a pack of (literally) tree hugging hippies ends with bloodshed. Cut to 40 years later and a group of drugged up hippies are heading out into the middle of nowhere to attend a Woodstock-like music festival. The young boy has grown into mentally disturbed man and the presence of all these hippies drives him over the egde. Donning a nice, pressed suit and casting a striking resemblance to the late former President, Gus takes to the woods to make those hippy bastards pay, spouting clever Reagan-esque quips along the way.

Like I said, it sounds good. I, for one, love a little socio-politcal commentary in my horror flicks from time to time. George Romero was a genius at this game. David Arquette, not so much. The first problem? None of the characters are likable. The drugged up hippies are one dimensional stereotypes in the worst possible way. They literally have no purpose in the film other than show up, do drugs, and die. All of the non-hippy characters are portrayed as deep south red neck hicks who do nothing but make life miserable for the hippies. Even the sheriff assigned to provide protection at the event doesn't believe the hippies when the shit hits the fan because he dismisses them as drugged up idiots. Simply put, there isn't a single intelligent, likable character in the movie.

The other problem I have is that the killer's motives just don't make any sense. He's clearly supposed to be a caricature of Ronald Reagan. This being the case, you would expect the character to carry some heavy ideological ideals. You know, kill with a purpose. Myself, I expected that the killer would focus on killing hippies and he'd make a point of leaving the conservatives alone. Not so. The killer is surrounded by the liberal hippies and the conservative red necks and kills each indiscriminately. In fact, he kills a rather large number of red necks around the midpoint of the film, without any rhyme or reason. Later in the film, the sheriff is asked "What do you think [the killer] is after?" The reply, delivered with what I suppose was supposed to be stylized action bravado, is, "Hippies." Apparently David Arquette didn't watch the movie he was writing because, for this line to make any sense, the killer would have to of followed a basic rule set up to this point in the movie, which he hasn't.

So as not to sound all negative, the movie does have a pretty massive massacre scene towards the end where old Reagan goes postal on a huge crowd of hippies. The body count throughout the entire movie is pretty high too, although almost all are dispatched via an ax. The massacre would be more impressive if the special effects weren't so plain jane. I've seen better gore in movies shot by a bunch of teenagers on 16mm celluloid.

Tie all of this together and you're left with a real yawner of a film. The kills are repetitive, there's no suspense, and the characters are all annoying. To top it all off, despite the premise, there's not even a cohesive socio-political message delivered by the film other than "Reagan was the bad." Sorry Dave, you're just going to have to try harder next time.

The Bottomline: David Arquette has crafted a pretty average slasher flick. The sheer novelty of watching a Ronald Reagan look-alike dispatch hippies is worth an extra star, but that's about all the film has going for it. The Tripper isn't unwatchable, it's just not very good.

Two stars.

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