THE BURNING (1981)

Director: Tony Maylam

Writers: Harvey Weinstein, Tony Maylam, Brad Grey, Peter Lawrence, Bob Weinstein

Producer: Harvey Weinstein

Cast: Leah Ayres, Brian Matthews, Jason Alexander, Brian Backer, Larry Joshua, Lou David, Ned Eisenberg, Fisher Stevens, J.R. McKechnie, Carrick Glenn, Carolyn Houlihan, Sarah Chodoff, Shelley Bruce, Bonnie Deroski, K.C. Townsend, Mansoor Najee-ullah, Jerry McGee, Jeff De Hart, Holly Hunter, Kevi Kendall, George Parry, Ame Segull, Bruce Kluger, Keith Mandell, Willie Reale, John Tripp, John Roach, James Van Verth, (and uncredited cast members) Greg Hinaman, Timothy Klein, Robert O’Neill 

At Camp Blackfoot, a group of kids spending their summer at the camp decide to get their revenge on the sadistic camp groundskeeper called Cropsy (Lou David). Their practical joke results in Cropsy being accidentally set on fire. After five years of hospitalization and failed skin grafts, the horribly disfigured and vengeful Cropsy reenters society. Returning to the area where he suffered his burning, Cropsy lurks around another summer camp to find victims to kill. 

The Flashback Fanatic movie review

As soon as Halloween (1978) struck box office gold, murdering maniacs became the low-budget moviemakers’ best bet to strike it rich. Thus, the genre that would become known as the slasher film was established with the massive success of Friday the 13th (1980). That film became the template that most others in the genre would imitate or try to distinguish their selves from. Apparently, the zeitgeist of the New York State area in 1979 and 1980 was such that summer camp killers occurred to at least three different filmmakers at the same time. The local Cropsy maniac legend inspired two productions to base their stories on it. Madman (1982) had its script altered once that film’s makers found out that another film in production called The Burning was also based on the Cropsy legend. The Burning was supposed to have been conceived and registered before that most iconic summer camp slasher film Friday the 13th debuted on movie screens.

Once Friday the 13th made gory payoffs a fixture in the slasher genre, that film’s Tom Savini became a much sought make-up effects artist. The Burning managed to secure his services because Savini preferred its script over that of Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981). 

Savini's work for The Burning’s raft kill scene was not seen in its entirety for many years. Just at the time that The Burning was trying to get released, the MPAA was coming down hard on screen violence and insisted on cuts for the film to get an R rating. Fortunately, recent releases on DVD have restored the cropped out bits of Cropsy carnage. Not only is that raft kill sequence a brutal highlight, the Cropsy maniac’s disfigurement is a fine and grotesque character creation by Savini. 

This film is often most noted as being the jumping off point for a lot of talents. Featured In the young cast is Fisher Stevens and a blink-and-you-miss-her appearance by Holly Hunter. Jason Alexander is a favorite that demonstrates his humor and likability as a kid much more well adjusted than his classic neurotic George Costanza character in the '90s television sitcom Seinfeld. 

The Burning was the debut production of Miramax Films founded by the now notorious Harvey Weinstein. This film seems to have been a victim of bad timing at the box office. It was probably seen as just a rip-off of Friday the 13th summer camp horror, and it was released at about the same time as Friday the 13th Part 2. 

There is a curious structure to The Burning. After the opening practical joke makes a monstrous maniac out of Cropsy, there is a scene that establishes how dangerous he is. Then we spend the rest of the film at a present day summer camp where Cropsy will vent his murderous rage. Over half an hour will pass before the kills start to drive up the body count. During that recess from the violence, we are immersed in the hi-jinx and petty conflicts of the summer camp kids and their counselors. This may seem like an odd way to pace a slasher film, yet I find it effective. We relax and are diverted by other matters that settle us into the summer camp environment before the horror starts to build again. Gore hounds may get impatient during the lull between kills, but it also may have more of an impact once Cropsy really lets loose. 

Unlike many slasher films, The Burning has no whodunit aspect to it. We witness the tragedy that motivates the killer, and we are never in doubt about his identity. Instead, the film has a surprise revelation at its conclusion about one of its other characters. This presents a bit of a moral ambiguity that reminds us that seemingly decent people can also be responsible for awful and unintended consequences.

GRIZZLY (1976)

Director: William Girdler

Writers: Harvey Flaxman, David Sheldon, Andrew Prine (uncredited)

Producers: Harvey Flaxman, David Sheldon

Cast: Christopher George, Andrew Prine, Richard Jaeckel, Joan McCall, Joe Dorsey, Tom Arcuragi, Vicki Johnson, Kathy Rickman, Mary Ann Hearn, Charles Kissinger, Kermit Echols, Harvey Flaxman, Susan Orpin, Brian Robinson, Sandra Dorsey, Gene Witham, Mike Clifford, David Newton, Mike Gerschefski, David Holt, Brian Robinson, Amos Gillespie (uncredited), Lee S. Jones, Jr. (uncredited) 

An enormous man-eating grizzly bear is attacking campers in a national wilderness park surrounded by forests. The head forest ranger Michael Kelly (Christopher George) clashes with his park supervisor Charley Kittridge (Joe Dorsey) about how to deal with the deadly beast. Kelly is joined by the park’s expert naturalist Arthur Scott (Richard Jaeckel) and helicopter pilot Don Stober (Andrew Prine) in his hunt for the bear. Arthur Scott deduces that the creature they are pursuing is of a prehistoric bear species that stands at least 15-feet tall. 

The Flashback Fanatic movie review

1975’s Jaws was an absolute blockbuster of a movie. Great film successes start trends and inspire rip-offs. Without a doubt, the following year’s Grizzly is a rip-off. Although producer David Sheldon claims to have conceived this film before Jaws debuted on movie screens, and his co-writer Harvey Flaxman was inspired to initiate the story by an actual bear attack incident he had been warned about during a trip to Yellowstone National Park, this completed film’s story structure and characters seem too similar to that other man-eater movie to be entirely coincidental. Nevertheless, Grizzly is a lot of fun. It is Jaws on land, which for the animal-attack movie fans, is just enough of a variation to sate their appetite for more bloodthirsty, bestial thrills.

Like Jaws, this is pretty brutal for a PG rated film. Kids are not safe in this flick, either. The giant bear is a worthy successor to the great white shark for making mincemeat out of human beings. This beastie also has the interesting habit of storing leftovers for later.

Christopher George, as the forest ranger hero Michael Kelly, begins the string of horror film appearances that would cap off his career. He is handsome and likable and never better than when getting completely pissed off at his supervisor. Frankly, this contention he has with the authority figure that just won’t cooperate with him is the most forced Jaws-inspired aspect to this story, but without it we wouldn’t get Christopher George at full-boil yelling, “Bullshit!” I love that scene. 

While George’s character of Kelly is the stand-in here for Chief Brody of Jaws, Richard Jaeckel, as naturalist “Scotty,” is the Hooper substitute, and Andrew Prine, as Don Stober, fills in for Quint. Like Quint, Don is a war veteran who owns and pilots the transportation used to chase the beast. He also gets his own old and scary tale to tell about the nasty sort of critter they are after. Andrew Prine actually improvised this short yarn himself. 

This trio of George, Jaeckel, and Prine has a good chemistry going among them. Despite the absolutely Jaws-derived nature of most of this film, including these three actor’s characters, they still play it with energy and sincerity. 

Rip-off or not, when one knows about the effort that went into making this film on a pretty low budget, you really have to appreciate that moviemaking requires a lot of work, adaptability, and ingenuity. Having the largest Kodiak bear in captivity shipped clear across the country to be the title star is quite a feat. Then trying to control this behemoth to get the necessary shots while keeping cast and crew safe during a fast shooting schedule seems like a recipe for disaster. I was amazed to find out that the bear “Teddy” had been trained to avoid an electrified wire separating him from humans, but when on the actual shooting location that wire was not electrified. Teddy just assumed that it was and stayed on his side of it. I wonder if this film’s completion bond guarantors were aware of that risky bluff. Maybe these filmmakers were so ballsy they thought they don’t need no stinkin’ bonds.

DAY OF THE ANIMALS (1977)

Director: William Girdler

Writers: William W. Norton, Eleanor E. Norton, Edward L. Montoro

Producers: Edward L. Montoro, David Sheldon (uncredited)

Cast: Christopher George, Lynda Day George, Leslie Nielsen, Michael Ansara, Paul Mantee, John Cedar, Susan Backlinie, Richard Jaeckel, Ruth Roman, Bobby Porter, Andrew Stevens, Kathleen Bracken, Walter Barnes, Michelle Stacy, Michael Andreas, Gil Lamb, Jan Andrew Scott, Gertrude Lee, Garrison True, Walt Gorney (uncredited), Mike Clifford (uncredited) 

Depletion of Earth’s ozone layer is allowing unfiltered ultraviolet radiation to affect the behavior of animals and turning them aggressive. The radiation levels have the most extreme effects at higher altitudes. The many beasts in the California mountains menace a group of hikers trying to get back to civilization. 

The Flashback Fanatic movie review

1954’s film The Naked Jungle climaxed with Charlton Heston’s South American plantation owner character trying to defend his property against an approaching wave of army ants. Then Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 classic The Birds probably set the standard for the nature attacks movies. It was not until the ecology conscious '70s that the animal vs. man theme became the impetus for many a fright flick. Aside from the individual animal freaks of Jaws (1975) and Grizzly (1976), there were the animal armies united to wipe out humans in films such as Frogs (1972) and Piranha (1978). Director William Girdler dealt with both forms of this horror sub-genre; first in the aforementioned Grizzly, and then the following year in Day of the Animals.

Some of the animals-attack-man movies had no specific reason for the beasts’ homicidal behavior. Others had a man use his animals as murder weapons. More, however, had the animals become a menace due to the unforeseen consequences of man’s environmental contamination. Day of the Animals is dealing with this latter situation. 

The film opens with another '70s habit of the grim expositional text appearing on screen to lend a bit of gravitas and truth to the subject matter of the story. This film does not pretend to be based on a true story, but wants us to believe it is possible in the near future due to the very real and contemporary concern about depletion of Earth’s ozone layer by man-made fluorocarbons used in so many aerosol products. Like the radiation fears of the '50s justifying the mutated menaces of so many movie monsters in that era, ozone layer depletion is the unlikely culprit that drives animals crazy. Once again, a very real worldwide threat is used to justify the creation of a movie menace to thrill and chill the audience. For horror junkies, like myself, that’s making the best of a bad situation. 

This film also seems to be a variation on that other '70s film genre: the disaster film. We have here a diverse cast of characters stuck in a dangerous situation. Most of them are given just enough of a back-story to maintain their individuality. In the course of the ongoing dangers they face, conflicts arise between them. 

Heading up this cast of unfortunate characters are two of the stars from William Girdler’s previous film Grizzly: Christopher George and Richard Jaeckel. George’s wife and frequent co-star Lynda Day George joins him. Susan Backlinie, the shapely first victim in Jaws, is on the receiving end of more animal aggression here. Behind the scenes, Backlinie also assisted her husband wrangling some of the animals used in this film. John Cedar plays her character’s nearly estranged husband. Ruth Roman, from Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (1951), plays the nagging single mother of her young son (Bobby Porter). Andrew Stevens appears here in an early role with Kathleen Bracken as his girlfriend. Two familiar faces from television, Michael Ansara and Paul Mantee, are also in this group of hikers. 

Speaking of familiar faces from television, in the '70s Leslie Nielsen frequently appeared as the guest star heavy in network crime dramas. No matter how despicable he may have been in those roles, they were only warm-up acts for his awesome assholism in Day of the Animals. With him around, hiking is never boring. As advertising executive Paul Jenson, Nielsen is the perfect example of the character you love to hate. He is arrogant, insensitive, opinionated, snide, and hilarious. That’s all before his character takes a turn for the worst and he devolves into a caveman. When burly Leslie Nielsen grabs a small boy by the collar and roars into his face calling him a “little cockroach,” a new pedestal in the Movie Villains Hall of Fame has to be furnished for him. 

Aside from the animal menace to the hikers, the conflict between Christopher George’s hiking guide Steve Bruckner and Leslie Nielsen’s Paul Jenson is the other main point of interest in this film. Despite the fact that Jenson is a jerk, he does not seem completely unreasonable when he displays increasing criticism of Bruckner’s leadership. Of course, all of this seems a bit suspect because Jenson is a conceited blowhard that is completely out of his element in the great outdoors. His ego is driving his attempt to take command. Yet there is the very real concern that Bruckner’s hiking plan seems to keep running into unforeseen disasters. This results in a division in the hiking group between those still being led by Bruckner and those choosing a different direction to be led by Jenson. To find out which leader is most capable you’ll have to watch the film, but Leslie Nielsen’s Paul Jenson led march is certainly the most entertaining.

THE NIGHT EVELYN CAME OUT OF THE GRAVE (1971)

Director: Emilio P. Miraglia

Writers: Fabio Pittorru, Massimo Felisatti, Emilio P. Miraglia

Producer: Antonio Sarno

Cast: Anthony Steffen, Marina Malfatti, Enzo Tarascio, Erika Blanc, Maria Teresa Toffano, Giacomo Rossi Stuart, Joan C. Davis, Roberto Maldera, Umberto Raho, Paola Natale, Ettore Bevilacqua, Brizio Montinaro 

Widower Lord Alan Cunningham (Anthony Steffen) is obsessed by the memory of his late wife Evelyn (Paola Natale). She had been unfaithful to him before she died during childbirth trying to give him an heir. A mix of grief, guilt, and anger over Evelyn caused Alan to have a mental breakdown. Once released from the psychiatric ward, Alan picks up redheaded prostitutes that remind him of Evelyn. He brings them back to his rundown country estate to abuse and kill them. Alan’s deadly Evelyn obsession seems to be brought under control once he meets and impulsively marries Gladys (Marina Malfatti). However, strange manifestations of Evelyn continue to torment Alan and threaten his sanity again. 

The Flashback Fanatic movie review

Lord Alan Cunningham isn’t the only one with a redhead obsession. I’ve been hopelessly infatuated with Euro-film goddess Erika Blanc ever since I first beheld her sexy playfulness as a stripper that pops out of a coffin in The Night Evelyn Came out of the Grave.

Undoubtedly her routine has been an influence on the fine art of exotic dancing the world over. Decades later in a favorite strip club of mine, I thrilled to a voluptuous Amazon named Debbie. Her Halloween performance began with the same ritual of the dancer inside of a black coffin being carried out onto the dance floor from which she would emerge and begin to strut her stuff. Erika Blanc has continued to make the world a better place with just one striptease.

Believe it or not, The Night Evelyn Came out of the Grave is about other stuff than Erika Blanc’s dancing. It's hard to believe that any director would be brave enough to even attempt to carry on with the rest of the film after showcasing such a spectacle that is bound to outshine all cinema achievements past, present, and future. However, Emilio P. Miraglia, being the professional that he is, does carry on and direct over an hour and a half of other scenes and situations, some of which don’t even involve Erika Blanc. I will now toast the man’s fortitude with a J&B Scotch cocktail before moving on… 

Like most giallo films, this one features characters of the upper class living posh lives full of parties and easy sex. They dress in flamboyant fashions, drive luxury automobiles, and live in swanky and comfortable quarters. However, the reason I can’t really root for any of the characters here is not due to wealth-envy; it is because we know next to nothing about anyone except Alan. This is the guy that is the closest thing to a sympathetic character in this flick, and he’s a psychotic sadist and murderer! 

This movie confounds expectations and keeps one wondering what are its genre goals. Madness and murder are introduced early on. The “hero” Lord Alan Cunningham tries to move on from his obsession that has institutionalized him once and now led to his current crimes. Just when he seems to be on the path to normalcy and happiness, things get even stranger when his dead wife Evelyn starts haunting him. 

All of the main characters in this movie are corrupt or ineffectual, and many of them are also victimized. Ultimately, this is a very pessimistic film that seems to be criticizing the morality of well-to-do people while showing how some of them never pay for their sins. 

Offbeat even by giallo standards, The Night Evelyn Came out of the Grave keeps you guessing as only Euro-horror can. Its mix of the kinky, psychotic, murderous, gothic, and supernatural is made even more outré by the slippery morality at work here. Once the story is over, you will probably think that you must have missed something, but you haven’t; it simply refuses to give us the comfort of justice dealt to all the perpetrators of nastiness. That omission is almost as remarkable a distinction for this movie as Erika Blanc’s out-of-the-coffin striptease routine.

THE BEAST WITHIN (1982)

Director: Philippe Mora

Writers: Tom Holland, Danilo Bach (uncredited), adapted from the novel by Edward Levy

Producers: Harvey Bernhard, Gabriel Katzka

Cast: Ronny Cox, Bibi Besch, Paul Clemens, Katherine Moffat, L.Q. Jones, R.G. Armstrong, Don Gordon, John Dennis Johnston, Ron Soble, Logan Ramsey, Luke Askew, Meshach Taylor, Boyce Holleman, Malcolm McMillin, Natalie Nolan Howard, Fred D. Meyer 

One night in 1964, newlyweds Caroline and Eli MacCleary (Bibi Besch and Ronny Cox) get their car stuck in a ditch on a lonely country road in Nioba, Mississippi. While Eli walks back to the nearby gas station for help, Caroline is raped by a bestial assailant and left unconscious in the woods. Seventeen years later, the MacCleary couple’s son Michael (Paul Clemens) is afflicted with an unknown medical condition affecting his pituitary gland that seems to be slowly killing him. Knowing that their son was conceived by Caroline’s rape, the MacCleary couple head back to Nioba to find out the identity of the boy’s biological father to help in their son’s diagnosis. Meanwhile, Michael is haunted by strange dreams that also draw him to Nioba. Once he arrives there, Michael seems driven to stalk members of the Curwin family. 

The Flashback Fanatic movie review

The early '80s was an era of unfettered possibilities for genre films. Star Wars (1977) proved that effects-heavy sci-fi and fantasy could be the basis for mainstream blockbuster success, and Halloween (1978) proved that low-budget horror could generate a big profit on a modest investment. With the audience primed to want more extremes of sensational situations in the movies and the permissiveness of the R rating, a film like The Beast Within may have been inevitable.

This movie establishes its nasty tone early with the rape situation that is a focal point for the plot. There seemed to be a sub-genre of rape-centric horror films around this time. A lot of people want to attribute this to a trend of misogyny. I think that judgment is much too pointed and assumes a deliberately negative message being made by the filmmakers. 

One can decry the depiction of rape in a film as an unnecessary element in entertainment, but, usually, it is just a matter of reaching for a more graphic extreme. It is a long tradition in horror that was being allowed a more explicit presentation due to less censorship. A lot of the primal appeal in horror is the contrasts of sex and death or beauty and the beast. The lovely heroine being carried off by the monster was a staple of horror that resonated because of the implicit threat of violation. That theme rouses a deep and immediate reaction in an audience. Such an extreme is meant to have an impact and horror is a genre always striving to have impact. Rape was the culmination of the terror tease dangled for generations before the film audience, just as graphic gore was the culmination of the sanguinary suggestion of earlier films. One can argue whether depictions this explicit are appropriate, but they are merely elaborations upon what had gone before.

This film’s other claim to infamy is a grueling transformation sequence that was another graphic extreme made popular by the recent 1981 hits The Howling and An American Werewolf in London. In addition to this, make-up effects master Tom Burman also supplied the gory kills to satisfy the horror hounds. Again, this was a sign of the times in the more permissive film market of the early '80s. This was also an attention-getting ingredient in a film that was competing with a ton of product in theaters catering to sensation-seeking viewers. 

Ronnie Cox and Bibi Besch as the MacCleary couple are the very decent and long suffering parents of their strangely afflicted son Michael. They interest us, as they have to dig back into a painful past they would rather forget to help their child. 

Paul Clemens as Michael gets the most attention in this film when he is overcome by the monstrous influence of his rapist father. However, I think his performance is at its best when he is just being a normal teenager trying to talk the pretty girl (Katherine Moffat) he has recently met into taking a walk with him. This is a very important scene that makes us relate to him as something more than just a horror plot device. 

The Beast Within has a lot going for it. Its atmospheric small town and rural settings, eccentric characters, and sympathetic leads maintain interest. It also has a plot that keeps you guessing just where the hell it is going. 

This film’s one problem is that the cicada connection to the monstrous phenomenon is not very clearly worked out. It seems that some material that would have made this much more understandable and satisfying was edited out. The supernatural needs some rules or reason given when it is something as unprecedented as this movie’s menace. As was often the case, distributors didn’t give a damn about their movie making sense; cuts would speed up the pace and shorten it to possibly squeeze in one extra showing per day.

The film we are left with is a moody and intense story with intrigue and nasty payoffs. Both director Philippe Mora and composer Les Baxter create a lot of dread that helps the film immensely. One can only hope that a more complete edition of the film will be made available with the edited footage restored to help justify the unique menace of The Beast Within.