Three young boys are told four very eerie Campfire Tales by a creepy homeless man who make have a few dark secrets of his own..
The movie begins with three kids by a campfire, feels very much like the "Are You Afraid of the Dark" midnight society crew. An old man all of a sudden pops up looking for warmth from their fire, startling the kids. They all sit by the fire and the old man begins telling them scary stories that he claims are real.
The first story is your typical girl and guy park their car in the middle of nowhere to make out. It's Halloween night, and the young couple hears over the radio that a serial killer named "The Hook" has escaped a psych ward. The girl Susan (feeling scared) begs her boyfriend to leave and take her home, which he does. The Hook attacks the two of them leading to a bloody and very predictable ending.
The second tale involves two guys who love to smoke pot. While driving around, they pick up some guy off the street who tells them that he can find them weed off of some guy named Frank. Once they start lighting up some of his stash, they discover the pot they're smoking has some devastating results to their overall health. Easily the weakest of the four tales.
The third scary story is a holiday horror themed tale. An ungrateful man named Steve comes home on Christmas Eve. He makes a point that he needs money when his mother mentions her inheritance. Steve murders his mother by pushing her down a flight of stairs. Everything is lining up according to his plan, until an evil Santa Claus figure decides to give him a Christmas present he'll never forget. My favourite of all the tales for sure.
The fourth and final story is about a pirate who ends up shipwrecked on an seemingly deserted island. He learns that there is some buried treasure on the island somewhere, but it is guarded by zombies. The pirate of course ignores the warning and steals the treasure, only to discover that the warning was very real.
Campfire Tales is a very low budget horror film, and the quality of the movie shows how low budget it truly is. I have an old VHS tape of this movie and it's hard to see much of what is going on in the dark. I will say there was something super chilling about how bad the quality of the tape was when watching some of the scary moments, especially in the first story. The grittiness of the tape added to the overall creep factor, it looked way more like an early 80's movie and not one made in 1991.
The acting is extremely average in all of the stories and wraparound story. The best thing about Campfire Tales is the obvious passion that the writers and directors have for the horror genre. It's hard to rate the overall film higher than a 4, but a lot of credit goes to the filmmakers for putting together a decent watch on a no budget. I recommend giving it a viewing for the third story alone which I found the most entertaining of the bunch.
4/10
