10 Best Films Based On Urban Legends

When Harvey and Bob Weinstein wanted to make their mark in Hollywood, it coincided with the rise in popularity of teen slasher flicks. Harvey, long before he was a notable pervert, and his brother were always on the cynical end of the industry and they were looking to cash in, turn a quick profit to jumpstart their company. Halloween had been the most successful independent film ever made at the time, and the Friday the 13th - a gory cash-in on its own merits - had done surprisingly well just a year before.

The Burning was inspired by the Cropsey legend that Harvey had heard stories about as a young camper. Cropsey is a kind of upstate New York boogeyman figure attributed to the disappearance of numerous children. A later unsuccessful film, Madman, exploited the same legend. There is some merit to Cropsey - not to his existence, but to the bizarre and disturbing history of the woods outside New York City. The grounds of a former mental institution remain in the area, where patients were experimented and mistreated for years. Cropsey, supposedly, is an escapee from said institution who will lay claim to any wayward children.

In the film, Cropsey is the caretaker of a camp who suffers severe burns after a prank gone awry, returning to avenge his scarring with a pair of gardening shears. At first, the film received a lukewarm box office reception, victim to slasher flick oversaturation. Upon rerelease, however, it did exceptionally better, thus playing its part in ushering along Miramax and the film careers of Holly Hunter, Jason Alexander and Fisher Stevens.