13 Kewlest Kills, #10

#10: Weiner Fingers in The Burning

Why is this movie so little-known? I’m guessing because it came out in Friday the 13th’s shadow and never had a chance, even with decent acting and fabulous gore effects from the master, Tom Savini.

It also features a very young Jason Alexander and Holly Hunter. Too bad their careers peaked so early and they never made another movie as cool as this one.

It’s a summer camp movie. Summer camp movies rule. All movie summer camps can be divided into two categories: 1. Lose Your Virginity Camps, and 2. Get Killed By a Lunatic Slasher Camps. Who cares, they both rule.

Basically, Cropsy, the camp’s mean alcoholic caretaker (is there any other kind?) is sleeping when a bunch of bratty kids (is there any other kind?) play a ‘prank’ that goes awry and catches ol’ Cropsy on fire. Doctors save his life but he’ll spend the rest of it looking like a side of raw beef.

So, in horror movie logic, Cropsy returns to the camp five years later to kill a bunch of kids for revenge, kids who had NOTHING TO DO WITH the original prank. Who cares if it’s logical? We’re talking sweet gore, baby!

So Cropsy follows some ill-fated campers on a 3-day trip and steals their canoes. But hey, these kids are summer campers so they quickly fashion a raft and float on their way. They see one of the lost canoes floating in the water and get off the raft to investigate. Doh, bad idea!

Cropsy leaps out with a huge pair of garden shears and kills all five in a frenzied blood bath! How much damage can a crazed killer do with a giant pair of scissors in sixty seconds? Let’s see…stabbings, slicing, scalping, amputations, castrations, disemboweling…no wonder this is often cited as the best slasher scene in the genre. (Just make sure you watch the unrated version.)

So yes, this infamous raft scene deserves its place on this countdown but there’s one moment that’s especially kewl: teen pranker Woodstock (c’mon, it’s not his fault he was born in the 60s) gets his fingers chopped off. There’s this awesome close-up of the fingertips flipping off and flying through the air. For some reason, the pieces reminded me so much of hot dog bits that you see in frank-n-beans that I dubbed him Weiner Fingers. My cousins and I saw this the summer I was 9, and we’d copy that scene: my cousin Mikey would hold 5 hot dogs in his fist like they were fingers, and I’d chop off the ends with my mom’s sewing scissors. (Mikey was a cool guy. It’s too bad he’s in prison now.)

You should try it. Raw hotdogs work best.