Starring Brian Matthews and Leah Ayres

After the awesome success of "Friday the 13th", itself an imitation of "Halloween", it was inevitable that even more imitations would present themselves. Of all the "Friday the 13th" clones out there, this is easily the best. In fact, it's a lot better than most of the entries of the "Friday" series.

The film opens as most slasher films do, with a prank going dreadfully wrong. Teens at "Camp Blackfoot" decide to frighten the camp caretaker, only to end up burning him alive by mistake. The film distinguishes itself from the "Friday" series by then taking us to a big city, where the caretaker undergoes unsuccessful treatment for his burns. When a whore screams at him, he kills her with a pair of scissors.

Eventually he returns to the woods to take his vengeance out on young, nubile and sexually active campers, moving up to shears as his weapon of choice. The cast of characters that co-writers Bob Weinstein (later of Dimension Films) and Peter Lawrence come up with far surpasses that of the normal "Friday" film. There's a sniveling Jewish wimp who's struggling to gain the acceptance of the other campers, a bully, a womanizer with a Brooklyn accent and more. Even without the killings, the film is an entertaining work of "Caddyshack" trash.

The make-up effects by Tom Savini were for the most part cut out of the film so that it could qualify for an R rating. Hiseffects for the burned killer did make the cut, and (for the time this was made) they're great. Uncut bootlegs of the movie, featuring all the excised footage, were floating around the Internet for years. Then, fairly recently, the film became an "Amazon.com Exclusive" VHS release, from MGM/UA which now owns the rights. Amazingly, the Amazon.com edition is the UNCUT version of the film. This isn't the first time MGM/UA has done this. The company also released the R-rated cut of Wes Craven's "Swamp Thing" as the PG U.S. version. Now they've released the unrated cut of "The Burning" as the R-rated version of the film. Of course, they don't market the film as the full uncut version, but that's what it is.