The Burning

A summer-camp slasher elevated by two things: Tom Savini's effects and the raft massacre, one of the best-staged kills in the entire cycle, in which a caretaker with garden shears dispatches a canoe of teenagers in broad daylight in seconds. The rest is standard, but that sequence is a genre high point.

Produced by a young Harvey Weinstein and featuring early roles for Jason Alexander and Holly Hunter, it rode the post-Friday-the-13th wave with more craft than most. The revenge-of-the-disfigured setup is by-the-numbers; the payoff is not.

Worth it for the raft scene alone.