For this week’s old horror movie I decided on something a little newer. My last three movies have been from the ’70’s and ’80’s, so I decided on a movie from the ’90’s: Campfire Tales. The 1997 movie is broken up into five segments, each focusing on a 20-30 minute scary story.
The five segments are The Hook, The Campfire, The Honeymoon, People Can Lick Too, and The Locket. Original names, I know. The movie opens up on a black and white scene that looks like it came straight from a corny movie set in 1953. Jenny and Eric are parked in a deserted area, and doing what typical teenagers parked in a deserted area would be doing- making out. Since this segment is titled The Hook, it's pretty predictable how the rest of the first segment goes.
The scene changes to a back road in the middle of the night. Four teenagers are driving home from a concert, and The Hook was just the first story used to entertain each other on the ride home. Unfortunately, the rest of the stories are told in the woods. The car crashes, and since this was before everyone had a cell phone, the teens find themselves in the woods waiting for help. To keep warm they build a fire and, shocker, decided to continue telling scary stories. The movie goes back to them in-between the other segments, and I think you can guess that the storyline focusing on the teens is called The Campfire.
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| photo courtesy of imdb.com |
The first story told around the fire is about a couple traveling cross country for their honeymoon in an RV. Valerie and Ricky find themselves in a deserted area and decide to take a break from driving for a while. Soon enough, a crazed man knocks on their camper telling them to leave and cryptically warns them “when the moon comes out they hunt.” What “they” are is never specified. Ricky and Valerie take that as their cue to exit, but run out of gas before they get very far, and Ricky leaves Valerie in search of a gas station. The rest is, again, fairly predictable.
The segment next moves on to the story of a little girl, Amanda, and her Golden Retriever. In People Can Lick Too, Amanda’s older sister is supposed to stay home and watch her, but decides to go out instead. Too bad she had no idea Amanda has a stalker, who decides to break in while Amanda is home alone.
Finally, in The Locket, a young man is traveling cross country on his motorcycle when it breaks down in a rural, somewhat deserted area. Sounding familiar? Of course, the beautiful sunny day turns into a downpour, and Scott runs to the only house in sight. A beautiful, but mute, young woman answers the door, wearing a black ribbon with a locket tight around her neck. Everything in the house is old fashioned, including the gas lights and well in the front yard. Since there is obviously no phone, the woman, Heather, lets Scott wait out the storm. During his time there he see flashes of gruesome scenes, which hint at what happened at the house.
You might already be able to tell that I did not like Campfire Tales. The producers tried to capitalize on the trend of good looking kids in distress that worked for popular slasher films like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. They failed. Except for the twist at the end, the entire movie was predictable. The writers apparently weren’t creative enough to come up with their own material, and based the “story” segments off of old urban legends which everyone has heard. How am I supposed to be scared when I already know whats going to happen? The acting wasn’t terrible, but the effects were. I did not jump once, which in some cases would be acceptable, but I get the feeling that the audience was supposed to be at least a little creeped out. The whole movie was corny, and cliche. In the end, I would not recommend watching this movie. Even if you could get it for free. It was a waste of time.
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