What I Watched for Halloween: The Burning (1981) - time to overthink the characters!

 

So MANY SPOILERS...

 

I have a very long history with this film, as a longtime horror fan. I first watched it in the living room with my dad when I was 12 - with my mum hovering nervously by the door, saying (as she did so many times), "Sid, do you really think she should be watching this?" To which he replied (as he did so many times), "Woman, sit down if you're staying, and stop worrying." Cue, mum looking very worried for my mental health - and immortal soul - and leaving quietly. 

 

So dad and I would carry on my unexpurgated exploration of all the dodgy 70's and 80's titles from the video shop.  The rule was, I could watch whatever, as long as he was there for the first viewing to make sure...I don't know.  That it wasn't porn? (Though I am strongly convinced after seeing 70's and 80's porn later in life that horror and porn are so linked up as to be close sister genres, in many ways; the low budget kinds of both, at any rate.)

So I saw lots of films I probably shouldn't have seen at this age because dad loved it when I thought for myself (except when I disagreed with him, when of course, it was disliked intensely!). I was fascinated with horror, and still am.  It's partly because I'm deeply woo, and convinced there's more here (in the world) than meets the eye and so far recognised science, and supernatural horror was around a lot at that time and was one of the few places to feed my need for more.  Since then there are many more books, documentaries and other sources for my speculative ideas on life.  But it was too late.  My love of horror, supernatural and otherwise, stayed with me when it's initial function was over.  I stayed with the countryside camp slashers (Friday the 13th [1980] being the classic there), because...I loved the scenery.  I know that sounds weird - but sometimes I'd be looking straight past the characters and slight plots and be wandering off mentally into the woods/fields myself. American countryside is beautiful. The Burning was a favourite of this sub-genre from the first time I saw it.

 

I've seen it off and on again over the years, always having new ideas and opinions about it, mostly about how I'm relating to the characters.  Sometimes I hate it - so many unlikeable characters; the time I forgot about Cropsy killing the sex worker near the beginning (so cruel, she was nice to him, and she wasn't representative of those who hurt him, so why her other than opportunity?); the orderly in the hospital being needlessly voyeuristic at Cropsy's suffering (more cruelty, casual and unnecessary)...so many unlikeable people. 

 

And then sometimes my mind focusses on the better natured parts of it - Fisher Stevens and Jason Alexander's characters sarcastically sticking up for the hapless and odd Alfred - who can't seem to express in words his fascination for the Sally character, creeping about after her and trying to scare her instead. The constant joking about, the sinking kayak scene.  As an English person and an introvert, the very idea of American summer camp seems hellish - you can't get away from people if you need to! - but these films often make it look like chaotic lighthearted fun. Fiction is great. Then there's Glaser - what a weird boy: strangely childlike all the time, sweet and insecure with Sally, but a bully and a thug with everyone else.  All the teens are much more childlike than we are used to now in our horror.  Not even the self awareness of the original Scream (1996) teens; and have you watched the series remake of I Know What You Did Last Summer (2020)? Oh my god, could you squash any more unlikeable, selfish and shallow Insta TikTokers into one series?  Why do TV execs have this idea of millenials as like this? They are a much more varied lot of people than this constant stereotyping as vicious overgrown children. I had to stop watching an episode before the end as I only liked 2 people and one of them got killed in a very early episode.  I just didn't care what happened next.

Yes, I am complaining about character development and portrayal in horror, be it in film or TV.  There's no reason why you can't paint a shorthand character and have it be interesting and sympathetic, even when you don't like that character. Everyone in Final Exam [1982], for example - tiny portraits, you get who they are, what 'types' and it works. Though, teen slasher horrors specialise in teens you don't like much.  It started off with the 'if you have sex you die' trope, but then just became about general spoiled youth, overprivileged and 'getting what was coming to them' in the eyes of...? I'm not sure who, middle aged white men most probably, since they are to blame for more or less everything in Western society (I'm not kidding).

 

Back to The Burning. I always used to remember Alfred as the strange little hero – but it’s Todd, denim shirted Bruce Campbell lookalike, just oozing responsibility and grown-upness who actually saves the day.  Yet…Todd, in a twist I totally forgot, is to blame for the whole thing, by being one of the people who originally burnt Cropsy and caused him to stop being grumpy and start being psychotic in the first place.  He seems so nice and reliable and responsible – because of what he did before?  Trying to make up for it?  But…how could he tell the Camp Blackfoot story with such relish round the campfire, knowing he was a part of it?  That Cropsy may have survived, in agony, because of what he’d done?  On the other hand – they 'pranked' Cropsy in the first place because he was a bully, from what they said (beating a child for no reason was mentioned); so here is Todd again, sticking up for bullied (and now killed) children.  So maybe not all bad?  Complicated.  (And where could they have possibly gotten a skull with worms in it that looked so realistic?! Far too realistic for ...Stanley just walked past and told me to let it go.  Tsk.)

 

My relationship with the film is further complicated by realising Harvey Weinstein wrote the main story idea – the film is full of men trying to have sex with women – the women get killed either way – Karen for not doing it; Sally for doing it.  There’s prominent bullying entitled men here – and they die too: Glaser and Eddie.  When Jason David was asked what his best memories of filming The Burning were, he answered, “looking at Carrick Glenn” (actress playing Sally – naked shower scene comes to mind, lots of gratuitous and at the time expected boob action). In the context of a Harvey Weinstein stink laying over the production, which until all the stories broke years later with Rose McGowan in particular, I had no clue about because I follow films, characters and actors, not directors or producers; it makes the playful comment seem sad. But Jason Alexander distanced himself from The Burning many years ago, and in the same Twitter exchange too, see below. One of many actors making a film on the way up that is looked at differently later, the film a bit damned by association with an actual predator. The past is a different country. I've always liked Jason Alexander too.  I'm a sucker for the socially awkward characters he so often plays.

As a feminist (among other labels), I've spent years a bit conflicted as to why I love male made horror films, full of the male gaze, killing women.  The Italian and Spanish 70's directors in particular, enjoy it too much. The answer is complicated, and inconclusive.  There's the usual strong final woman protagonist who triumphs over the 'killer' - which is always cathartic.  Though I used to worry the women would be in mental hospitals for the rest of their lives as a result of the events, whatever they were. (Halloween Kills [2021] tried to riff on trauma caused to a final woman, and her town.  Sorry to say they botched that film almost unimaginably badly, but I see where they were trying to go with the idea of longterm and repeated trauma and how it haunts and warps you as a person, family, town, culture; abused becoming abusers etc.) The subject of why I like horror is a seperate post another time, I think. It's a lot about the characters, a lot about the psychology of being afraid and how to get past it. I'm a massive wuss as a person, usually - horror makes me feel braver.

 

Interestingly, in The Burning, there is no final girl - just two final boys.  Which is fair, as boys were the ones who hurt Cropsy to begin with. This is a film less about violence and a reckoning with pretty young women than many other slashers of the era. There's more male victims than usual.  It seems to me more about lost opportunities and the generalised rage that makes in a person. Coupled with the pain of a disfiguring and life-changing full body injury: five years in hospital is a long time to agonise and brood, and decide revenge against cruel children is a great idea. I often wondered if the weirdness of the Alfred character was meant to show that he was a sort of unfortunate Cropsy in waiting type of person, and the fact he had to fight him with Todd at the end, and that he was the one who burned Cropsy again showed that he would not be following on the path of the lonely embittered caretaker, that his life would go a different way now.  Not through a show of strength (defeating Cropsy), but because Todd came back for him and helped him, showing Alfred a different way of relating to people.  A more healthy way. But then, as you see, I can overthink for England.

 

Speaking of actors making long ago films reinterpreted later, this is one of those horror films containing early appearences by later stars, here the already mentioned Jason David; but Fisher Stevens and Holly Hunter too – Fisher Stevens gets more air time though, being the finger chopped of the wonderfully infamous and too short raft scene - which is always way longer in memory. I don't know why more pleople don't remember Tom Hanks' small but memorable part in He Knows You're Alone [1980] - another low key gem. Astonishing how many later stars began in horror.

Lastly, the Rick Wakeman soundtrack is the final word in horror themes: as iconic as Halloween, in a different sort of way. Music is a big reason why horrors are great.  Now, as usual, after having re-viewed this, I've got it earworming my head, probably for a week or so before its supplanted by something else. You hear too - this is the main theme:

That's enough overthinking for now. Till next time :-)

 

 

When I think I'm reading one thing, and realise I'm NOT reading another - and it bugs me

Every now and again I fancy a story about implausibly wealthy people living their sparkly lives with constantly name dropped clothing brands.  Mostly I like them for the faraway places they visit and describe. I'm not going to really review this one or name it, as it's one of many like this out there, I just happened to remind myself of my annoyance by picking this one to read. 

 I was very bothered by this one because it visited South Africa, and I really wasn’t sure whether these white people should be living “in such glory” as the main male character put it. They have a female black servant called Anxious. There’s an episode of home invasion, dogs slaughtered, main male character shot, heroine and Anxious bound on the kitchen floor -- and the black men carrying out the crimes are complete afterthoughts in the story. They turn up, from poverty, that has been touched on, as his the prevalence of crime in Johannesburg, and the white man views it as the “price we pay” for the vast estates and beauty in which they live. The way there was no contextualising of the vicious crimes at all, committed by “bulging eyes” and somebody called “Somebody” – it was just something that happened. As if it was weather. That’s wrong. 

And if that was glided over in this way, it makes you remember what else was glossed over back at home, with the heroine’s husband a banker, and the financial crisis in full swing – the story is set in 2008. But it’s all just weather. None of it is grounded. The weather of the financial crisis stops the women spending so much, and they worry that their husbands are worrying; and out in South Africa a lovely interlude of passion is destroyed by violence that is never properly (or even a bit) explained. There is no explanation or suggestion of responsibility for either thing.  The empty gloss over is jarring.

I understand that this wasn’t a political story and didn’t want to grind those axes, but leaving such important parts of the story bare, not explaining even the smallest background information, perhaps assuming the reader just knows and has strong opinions already – which actually may be the case, in that there were several odd parts of the story where characters referred to themselves as having “British grit” or “British” stubbornness or stiff upper lippedness. A certain view of themselves as Britons. 

It’s not only Brexit that has soured me to ‘British’ as a chest beating qualification for anything other than my irritation; it’s when characters say things like this and we know they usually mean ‘British is Better’. An otherwise interesting, well-written and escapist novel, marred by areas of evasion and emptiness. A cake with nothing inside. Hopefully I'll pick my rest reading better next time.

'Three Women' by Lisa Taddeo - absorbing, very sad, very familiar

 

SPOILERS!!!

This had much hype, which didn’t affect my enjoyment, but from reading the comments on the book itself and the comments of those in the BTM reading group, this book was very mixed in reception.  I found it very sad, and very true and oddly silent in places. 

Lina was gang-raped while still in school after being drugged, and seemed to idolise and stay stuck on an earlier crush from that era when she grew up, becoming obsessed with the perfect sexual experience and it’s meaning emotionally filling her life, for her to not be ‘disgusting’ , to be loved and seen – sex and desire were all mixed up with identity and absence.  She has an affair that becomes far more transactional than she can see it to be, with that same man, when they are both married to other people later.  He…treats her as a pet, an afterthought.  I wanted her to do better, but she was so obsessed with how he made her feel – I worried how she would feel when the affair eventually stopped – what scaffolding would support all the outward need she had to feel then? She had no good mirror reflecting back at her what was her own strength, only refractions of the past she played out in lurid emotion.  I really felt her.

Maggie had alcoholic parents and an early sexual experience that she was crucified in school about, followed by an affair with a teacher - at which point she got totally stuck and could not move on: it had been so intense and real and unfinished and then it was a court case and no one believed her [except a little old man, and a reporter, but after the fact].  We see her lose hope near the end, and her father has also killed himself; but not about this…that is a big silence in the book – Maggie’s reaction to her father’s death.  I hope she does ok.

And Sloane.  A rich girl who knew how it all should look on the outside and went to great lengths to make it look right, swinging when suggested by her husband, being the right level of agreeable – ‘optimal’ as the protagonist of Harrow Lake would have said.  An eating disorder to be prettily slender.  In many ways her story was the least interesting because we got to hear the least of it, and because she had/has perfected outward appearance – she’s preserved in amber for however long: the thinnest, prettiest, most agreeable wife sexually.  I felt Sloane needed friends. That you don’t compete with; just friends.

The book was supposed to be about the desires of women, how we feel it and what it does in our lives.  What I read, more than anything, was how empty we seem to be, how small and delicate our sense of self-worth, how we constantly seek to optimise, change, manipulate it for love and a sense of wellness or joy of LIFE of being AWAKE AND HERE!  It was very very sad, to read so many different lives and to see them all come down to the same basic thing: we feel unloved or unheard or unworthy, we are never enough, we must always change for others, our self is always mirrored from without, never self-sustaining.  We’re fossil fuel; we need to get renewable!

All the women seemed totally formed by the school age years and in Sloane’s case, a bit before, regarding sexual experience as formative for personality.  The early years are so important; so many of us get stuck with the identity we feel then, and subsequent change or layering is very much from that point, it felt. We don’t seem to realise we are stuck with the teen or tween we were, and a lot of our thinking about love and sex comes direct from feelings and experience of that era, not now. Stunted growth; sometimes poison, tumourous growth around incidents that happened then. Arrested emotional development.

This is only one of many facets of women’s lives.  You don’t worry about emotional voids when you’re trying to pay the rent or you just lost your job, or your living situation is unsafe…But these are portrayals of states of mind and resulting actions that made sense, and felt familiar; done some, seen some. It makes me want, more than ever, to be more self-sustaining myself. The weird thing is, you ask people who are, and they can’t explain to you how it’s done, they just do it.  I’m not sure how much of the changing behaviour can be learned from books either.  But I keep looking.  

 Lisa Taddeo