Campfire Stories (2001)

I'd like to start off as saying that I, like so many horror film buffs, enjoy the cheap laughs to be acquired from B-grade trash. The film "Campfire Stories," however, isn't even amusing accidentally. I'd love to know how badly Jamie-Lynn DiScala, David Johansen, and the Misfits needed money to partake in this utter waste of celluloid.I knew this one was going to be trouble when I saw a talking skull engulfed in flames at the beginning. From there on in, we have two annoying young men who can't tell a joke correctly get lost in the woods with a beautiful "Sopranos" girl, where they come across Ranger Bill, Buster Poindexter's evil alter-ego. He proceeds to bore them to death with three generic horror tales with relentlessly inane twists at the end of each.The first tale is of a nameless lunatic who escapes the Corbin Bernsen Institute of Dentistry, reestablishes himself as a Catholic high school janitor, and takes out four of the young men they randomly pulled off the street to play the most annoying bullies I've ever seen. The second tale involves three career criminals who rob a Native American spiritualist, smoke his peace pipe (which was obviously filled with whatever the filmmakers were smoking), and are tormented by legions of computer animations created by first-year graphic arts majors from a community college. The third tale involves a homicidal maniac whose identity you'll probably figure out long before it's "revealed."After sitting through these three sessions of ungodly torment, we're finally punished with a "surprise ending" which tries to tie everything together but fails miserably along with everything preceding it. "Campfire Stories" has no scares, no humor, and over all, no redeeming value whatsoever. If you want a real scare, light up a campfire and tell your own stories; they'll be a hundred times scarier than this melted marshmallow.

I have no idea why people think they can make a good anthology film on a 10 dollar budget. This was awful. It had three stories. The first was perhaps the most pointless and is about a man escaping from the insane asylum. Later he works as a janitor at a school, kids make fun of him so he kills them. The second story is about some mean teens killing an Indian for no reason at all and stealing his peace pipe and getting high off of it. They have hallucinations, one of which is a REEEAALLLYY poorly computer animated snake. The third is just about some girls messing with these guys trying to scare them. It's all surrounded by this random guy named Rick, played by "Tales from the Darkside: The Movie's" James Remar. The opening to the film is a poorly animated skull that looks pathetic. The end is absolutely ridiculous.My rating: 1/2 out of ****. 92 mins. Rated R for sex and violence and language

The computer animated skull was the cheesiest, dumbest, most retarded thing I have seen in a long time. I couldn't even hear what it was saying. I just assumed that it was the normal crypt-keeper rip-off crap. Not that the Crypt Keeper was good. Then we are introduced to the story of two guys with a broken down car who meet a random girl, and then, respectively, a Southern Deputy. That is the overarching plot, but it doesn't matter. It takes up less time then the sub-stories. I also was unable to hear what the zany deputy was saying throughout his five hour long idiotic rambling.The first sub story was just unimaginative. We listen to repetitive punk rock for ten minutes before the story actually begins. A guy kills people at a mental institution that performs hideous experiments on it's charges. Then the story REALLY takes off with a bunch of jock teen kids molesting a gardener. BUT WAS HE FROM THE MENTAL INSTITUTION??? WE DON'T KNOW!!!! Well, they know that he's unstable, saying that he killed his family, and then unburied them and "killed them again." Oh, what a card that psychopathic gardener is! Then they are hanging out in a large inexplicable vacant lot with various sport equipment. The gardener then kills all the kids who are too ****ing dumb to use the golf clubs they have to bludgeon the killer from a distance OR to stick together so he couldn't possibly stand a chance since he, like this movie, sucks really bad. Oh, and he stuffs all his victims.It warrants special attention that in this particular story, the lead teen jerk has a fake ear for half the sub-story. Not a good fake ear, one that doesn't have an ear hole. It looks like it's falling off every time he falls down. I mean, nothing actually happens to his ear after it is originally attacked, and it isn't even a fake bloody ear. Just a regular flesh colored, hole-less ear. I hate this movie for that. Next is the story of some kids who steal a Native American's pot, have a bad trip and become old. I need say no more, as my IQ score drops in a negative exponential curve each second I think about this story.The last is a whole bunch-o-fun! This girl is making out in the car, okay? We'll call her No Name, since I don't know or care what her name is. Now get this, she is afraid of some guy stalking her! Got that, 'cause that actually almost matters. Now her girlfriend starts talking about revenge on their boyfriends, because the boyfriends taped them having intercourse without their permission. MORE SUSPENSE!!!! And then a deputy who is southern (even though nobody else in the scene is) agrees to investigate the stalker for No Name. And then the stalker is forgotten in lieu of a fake teen sex scene. See, the girl's plans are to get the guys drunk so they can films the guys doing stuff. Then they all get killed except No Name, WHO IS ALSO THE KILLER!!!!!! o_0 OMGWTFBBQ????!!!!1!!!! It also shows the fakest kill ever, as No Name kills her girlfriend by playfully tapping her in side of the head with a poker. Not with the sharp part, the dull part. Hitting her at .0000000000000000000000000000000001 attometers per mega second! Her girlfriend keels over like drunken decapitated moose who gave up on life. Did I mention how much I hate hate hate hate hate this movie?Oh, And in the over arching plot, the random girl they find is evil. We don't know why, but she is. And all the people from the stories come back and kill the two guys from the broken down car. No reason is given for why any of this happens or why this movie made me want put my foot in blender, but hey, that's CAMPFIRE STORIES!!!!

Upon going to the local video store with a 2-for-1 rental deal, I decided to rent Campfire Stories as my free one. Well, I probably should have known what I was in for when I saw "Starring Jamie-Lynn Sigler of the Sopranos!" as its publicity. Basically, two guys on their way to a bangin' woods party get a flat tire and pick up a random hot girl on the way. They go into the woods, and hear three cute sweet tales told by an over-sized boy scout. The first story is one of revenge--four football players are killed by a criminally insane janitor who escaped from a mental institution that conducted "pain threshold" experiments. Yeah. Death by croquet mallet--nothing is better.Honestly, I didn't really watch the second story. The third story has a bit of a twist--two girls decide to get even with their boyfriend at one girl's crazy-dead-grandmother's house. Chaos and death ensues! The ending that ties it all together is 'eh' at best.I did not expect much. I really didn't. I love campy humor, but even this tried me. I would recommend this movie for twelve-year-old slumber parties and/or bad horror movie marathons.