Campfire Stories Year: 2001 Director: Rob Cea, Andrzej Krakowski, Jeff Mazzola Written by: Rob Cea Threat: Psychopath, Indian Shaman, Psychopath Weapon of Choice: The Club Based upon: comic book - "Campfire Stories" IMDb page:

Other movies in this series:
None

The tyranist's thoughts
If you were lost in the woods, would you talk to a crazed scout leader who looked like Buster Poindexter? Me neither. Rish and I picked this one up primarily because Rish loves anthology movies and because we couldn't find a copy of Cronos to rent.
The wrapper story involves a couple guys hitting a tree on a back road. They meet up with a fetching young woman (who coincidentally enough caused their accident). All three inexplicably run deep into the woods where they meet Ranger Bill. He tells them stories while they wait for a tow-truck to come get their car.
The wrapper wasn't all bad, but it wasn't good either. I really dug on seeing The Misfits in the scene at the bar, but otherwise it was predictable and wholly unscary as these things often are.
Story 1 involved a bunch of cruel high school kids tormenting and wanting to kill the crazed janitor at their school. Naturally, he'll have none of that.
Story one is where things really started to go wrong. The good guy characters were so unbelievably unsympathetic that the story literally falls to pieces before any violence has occurred. Once the story does unfold, its pure randomness does nothing to make things better.
Story 2 makes even less sense than story 1. Loosely it involves a diner, some bikers, some bad drugs, a badly done cgi hallucination or 6, and a twist that is not only not surprising, but cliched.
Things more or less went from bad to worse with this one. It was random and bad and just didn't make much sense. The cgi bits were truly horrible and unnecessary as they could all have been accomplished by other means. Better means.
Finally story 3 rolls around and while it still doesn't have much in the way of character development, at least the story is mildly interesting. And the girls mildly attractive. One of the girls is jumpy and nervous and making out with her boyfriend in a car that is parked very close to a house that she seems to think is haunted. Well, it is. And later when she and a friend try to pull a fast one on their boyfriends, things go awry.
This really was the best part of the movie, but it was still confusing and strange and poorly shot. The dialogue and character motivations were sometimes miguided and sometimes just bad.
So what did I think of it? I thought it was pretty bad. I wrote on my notes that the best part was taking the movie back. If it weren't for The Misfits, I'd say there will never be a reason to see this one, and probably not a reason to read the comics it is based on.

Rish's Reviews
That's right, we were looking for a copy of Cronos, and we had to ask what section it would be in. This is at the local second-largest-chain-in-the-world video store not far from tyranist's house, and they must have had a No Senses of Humour prerequisite on the employment application, because I couldn't get a laugh, smile, or raised brow from the two replicants behind the counter. It was this night that we rented Jeepers Creepers 2 and Creepozoids, one that tyranist insisted on (see, it's not always me), and I said, "Oh! Thank GOD you still have a copy of Creepozoids, I was so worried you'd be sold out! Looks like we got the last one in the store!" In retrospect, maybe that wasn't all that funny.
Anyway, in addition to those, we picked up The Legend of the Jersey Devil, and this little "gem," which I have to take all the blame for having rented. This film was extremely cheap. And while that can be irritating, it can also be forgiven. This felt like an overly ambitious high school Film project. Campfire Stories was not a high school Film project, though, and that makes it harder to forgive.
David Johansen, who I sadly remember as Buster Poindexter, was in it. The girl from "The Sopranos," Jamie-Lynn Sigler, was alright. A lot of people find her attractive, I'm told. Certainly her name was all over the cover as a means to get people to rent it. All it took for me to insist we give it a view was that it was an anthology, which I've been trying for years to a) get tyranist to like, and b) get tyranist to write with me. Tyranist has mentioned before (though perhaps not on the site) that he doesn't like anthology movies. I really do. But a couple more flicks like this one may make me head over to his side.
Not to be confused with Campfire Tales, Campfire Stories wasn't an abomination, and some of it was sort of fun, in a harmless, extremely stupid sort of way. The dialogue alone was good for a laugh. But it's hard to recommend, especially since I liked it least of the films we saw that week. Practically none of the killings took place onscreen. Sometimes things were insinuated due to cutaways or sound effects. While this can occasionally be effective, in this case, it usually wasn't.
I liked the twist in the second story, even though it doesn't make a lot of sense. Occasionally the dialogue didn't suck and occasionally there was a hint of creativity to the narrative (especially during the third story), but even so, it was spread way thin, like butter over too much bread.
Worst of all, I didn't even get to see Creepozoids.

Total Skulls: 31

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears
Former celebrity appears		Buster Poindexter
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood spatters - camera, wall, etc.
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?