great movie. fortuanate enough to have seen the uncut version. Wouldnt say it was the best but i will be buyin it when they release it in the U.S. (assuming they will)

Was there quite a bit cut out?

from what i understand it was released edited (not sure how much) for a short time then completly pulled from shelves. I had to download it (which i rarely do maybe 1 every 2 months and only films not available in the U.S.)

I still have it on VHS just to see Tom Savini's work (I got it years ago since I was a big fan). I heard that it will be released on DVD in the very near future on another chatboard.
CK

Well...not really. It's just walking throught woods, walking around the lake and lame teen hijinks.

Not much happens in "Halloween" for the most part...but there is a film that does build up suspense.
"The Burning" just bores with unfunny teen cliches and people pushing each other into the lake. Oh what terror!

There was so much time wasted that could have been used to build up some real suspense, peppered with a couple of killings, but instead was spent on the 'National Lampoon' antics of boring characters.

The best way to build suspense is to develope characters so that you have an emotional involvement with them, so that you actually fear FOR them and care if they live or not.

Unfortunately there are few directors/writers in the horror genre that understand this, and even if they do they are too inept to handle such subtleties and pull it off correctly.
It's either done in a hamfisted manner, or not at all.

The Burning was more the Ham Fisted approach i guess.
Most of the Fri 13 movies don't bother. Just a bunch of teenage machette fodder.

Or you can go 180% and serve up Franklin from the origional TCM and give you a character that you pray will be killed.

Seriously - character developement is the hardest thing to do in cinema. A drama will give you 120 minutes to do it but in horror you have about 20 before the typical audience wants to bail.
Generally not known to be a patient demographic.

Well... not really.

Too many films - particularly slashers - are tiresome and predictable for this very reason; if audience expectation is challenged by The Burning not launching straight into the usual murders every 10 minutes or so then good for it - and of course the patient viewer is then rewarded with some splendid scenes including the oft-mentioned boat/fingers sequence.

The lampooning around of the teens prior to Cropsy getting down to business is hardly that deflating for the movie, and not even that unexpected; after the nasty calamity of the opening death scene there's nothing wrong with a chunk of character building, and if The Burning's victims are to be goofy teens then I'm afraid teens goofing around is what we must see.

I agree...But don't call the 40 minutes of boredom (leaving only about 35 minutes of the film left!) spent with cardboard teen cliche non-entities 'character building'.

Of course it is - what else does the writer have in mind for these 40-odd minutes?

The characters might not be all that interesting, but gormless chicks, alpha-males and pervy Porkies-style adolescents are essential to any 80's summer-camp slasher.

Few horror movies make us actually care about the demise of the victims, but it was nice to see that dweeb (whoever he was) survive at the end.

The Burning is out of DVD but it's Region 2. Raptor put it out as a Special Edition limited to 3000 pieces. We've got some in stock. If anyone is interested shoot me a PM as I don't know if supplying promotional links is allowed here.