Rish Outfield's reviews
Summer camp. Why didn't I ever get to go to summer camp? Especially in the 80's? Especially one of those 80's summer camps with the deformed killers roaming about?
So, years ago, a camp counselor named Cropsy, described as a "real evil bastard," was accidentally burned alive by some of the ‘kids' at the camp. Well, it's years later, and he's back for revenge. In an amazingly unique plotline, he kills teens one by one in cruel and unique ways but his victims are conveniently never missed. This is a very early Miramax release, written by honcho Bob Weinstein and produced by Harvey. At one point, I snickered and told tyranist, "You know, these guys went on to make Shakespeare In Love." It was a good laugh.
Jason Alexander made his feature debut here, and he was really, really good. I was impressed, and it made me like him even more. Somebody told me Holly Hunter was in here too, but I never saw her. While some of these kids were the usual thirty-year-olds in disguise, they actually had a couple who looked like teenagers. Most of the plot was predictable and many of the scares (especially the fake ones) didn't work, but I was shocked to find that I was enjoying myself all the way through. Several great splatter effects by Tom Savini were sloppily cut out, which really frustrated me (but if there were an Unrated version released on DVD, I might buy it). There was a lot of nudity here, which, if you've read any of our reviews, you know we enjoyed. From those great-terrible early 80's fashions, to the occasionally brilliant line of dialogue, to the simple visceral thrill of the T&A slasher film, I thought this was a pretty good movie. Of course, I had low expectations, visions of the awful Sleepaway Camp slow-dancing in my head, and it was late at night.
Best Scare: Well, the killer was horribly ugly, when you finally saw his face.
I'd Recommend It To: If you like this neat-o sub-genre, give The Burning a try.

The tyranist's thoughts
Within seconds of popping this one in the VCR, we knew that we had a classic rip-off on our hands. They didn't even try to disguise the story much. Of course, the fact that Miramax was still a very young company and just needed any boost they could get probably had a lot to do with this. I didn't like it as much as I liked Friday the 13th, but it seems that Rish can't get enough of it. The movie features a badly burned villain named Cropsy, who wields a pair of pruning shears to get vengeance on the camp where he was burned. Of course, the fact that almost none of the kids who originally burned him are around five years later doesn't seem to matter to him. Come on. They could have at least thought up a better reason than that.
Jason Alexander plays an actually enjoyable character in the movie (I'm not a Seinfeld fan so I barely recognize him). They cut most of the cool Tom Savini gore out for some reason. To its credit, while they cut the gore, they left the nudity in. Of course, it was low budget enough that there isn't much reason this should excite you. Of course, Rish and I did have a lot of fun with the slow motion baseball sequence. This is still one of the better treatments of the summer camp theme, but I would recommend the classic Friday the 13th over this. If you must see it, you won't be that disappointed.