The Burning
The Burning is a 1981 Canadian and American slasher film directed by Tony Maylam. It is one of the 72 films on the Director of Public Prosecutions' video nasties list, and it was successfully prosecuted for obscenity.
The best film on the prosecuted list. Savini's raft scene is why it was on it.
Sign in to track what you have survived.
A summer camp, a caretaker burned in a prank, and a five-year wait for him to come back with shears. The formula is Friday the 13th and the release was five months later.
What lifts it: Tom Savini turned down Friday the 13th Part 2 to do this one. Harvey Weinstein co-wrote and produced it, which is now the first thing anybody mentions. And the cast includes Jason Alexander with hair, Holly Hunter, and Fisher Stevens, none of whom knew what they were in.
The raft massacre is the reason it was prosecuted: five kills in about twenty seconds in broad daylight, which is a piece of staging nothing else in the cycle attempted. It was cut in the UK until 2001.
Banned, seized, prosecuted
DPP 72 · successfully prosecuted
The raft massacre, five kills in roughly twenty seconds in broad daylight, is the sequence the case turned on.
UK now Passed 18 uncut in 2001 after nearly two decades cut
Rate this film
No ratings yet. Score it on the five axes and yours will be the first.
Sign in to rate this and add it to your shelf.
Trailer
The sleeves
The same film, sold as a different film in each territory. Click any of them.
Where to watch
Finland
UK
Legal sources only. Availability data from JustWatch via TMDB.
Checked 9 Aug 2026
Written about
- The video nasties list and the law behind it
The video nasties list was a Director of Public Prosecutions circular of 72 titles, 39 of them successfully prosecuted under the 1959 obscenity law.
- Tom Savini
The combat photographer who came home from Vietnam and spent thirty years putting what he saw on screen.
On our lists
Discuss with AI
Open a chatbot with a question about this already typed out. Useful for a second opinion, a plot detail, or working out which cut you are holding.
Adjacent
WATCHcultEvilspeak
Clint Howard, a military academy, a computer and a lot of pigs. Better than it has any right to be.
WATCHobscureTerror Eyes
A motorcycle killer in Boston with a kukri. Rachel Ward's debut and a real giallo influence.
WATCHcultMadhouse
A deaf teacher, a disfigured twin and a rottweiler. Shot in Savannah and better made than most of the list.
WATCHcultNightmares in a Damaged Brain
Its distributor's executives went to prison over this one. The DPP case that ended in jail sentences.
WATCHcanonHalloween
Cost 300,000 dollars, took 70 million, and contains almost no blood at all.
WATCHcanonWrong Turn
Competent, well shot, and exactly what it says. Stan Winston did the mutants.
- Next in Slasher: Absurd (1981) →