Campfire Stories Review

 What makes It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia so good is the chemistry between the actors. This is owed to them having worked on different projects together beforehand. For instance, Rob McElhenney and the lawyer both appeared in a YooHoo commercial, that also featuring the original actress for Dee Reynolds in the pilot, Rob and Charlie Day would appear at separate times in Law and Order, and they would gradually come together in ER, then in 2003, they would get to work on the pilot, as it gradually became what it is now.

However, Rob and Charlie had worked together on something relatively earlier, and this film is credited to how they originally met. So, if there wasn't a Campfire Stories, would there ever have been an It's Always Sunny in Philadelpha?

Background

Campfire Stories is an anthology film released direct-to-video in 2001. It was based on an independent comic book series put out by Don Oriolo, and if that name is familiar, I literally talked about him in my last review, the guy behind Coconut Fred. The film was put out by Velocity Home Entertainment, who had also put out an early Uwe Boll movie by the name of Blackwoods. The film was divided to three directors, and while this wasn't their only rodeo, there isn't anything notable I can list off of them here.

Aside from Charlie and Rob, apparently Perez Hilton was in this, though this was within his first year of acting. The film was shot in New Jersey and apparently was the start of two actors' careers, that's about it. For a while this movie was tricky to find... for free, but in recent months, I got lucky and someone posted it on YouTube, and after I had finished grad school I figured I'd unwind and check out this movie, as well as another called Out of Bounds, but for another time.

What can you expect? Well sit around the fire and let's find out.

The Movie

One thing that bugged me about the start is that we're treated to a two minute intro involving a talking skull done in ultra cheap CGI, trying to overhype the rest of the movie, but then we finally get to the wraparound sections. Charlie and another guy with a speech impediment I guess, he's weird, get a flat and stranded with a girl. As they attempt to find help, they happen upon a desolate campsite and encounter Ranger Bill.

This would be a time to hedge some bets on what the big ol' conclusion is. Is Ranger Bill a psycho killer? Did the three somehow die on the way? Ddi they prevent a realtor from meeting a dealine? But let's not jump to assumed conclusions, this is a cheap rental, I'm giving it a shot.

A tow truck is called and Bill decides to tell the three stories while they wait, I mean this is Campfire Stories so at least we didn't lose that out of the gate. Because we didn't have any summaries of the stories available elsewhere, I didn't know what to expect out of what the tales would consist of, so I had low expectations.

The first story details an escaped mental patient who is tortured at his ward. I'd question if this is true, but have you've even been to Turn-About Ranch or Provo Canyon Boarding School? The director is onto something it seems. The guy would take on a job as a school janitor years later, and some jocks, led by someone who would be better suited as a water or towel boy, harass the janitor to justify the scary element of the story to come soon. After the janitor steals the kid's backpack, he decides the best course of action is to murder him.

He and a few others head out to find him, and yeah they're gonna get picked off one by one. Not even a castration can be considered subversive here, lest the janitor hates when people piss on trees. So of course, the kid gets left alone and after trying to make peace, he backs down and now he's going to go through similar torture, and his girlfriend is dead apparently.

Pretty standard revenge tale, I feel some of it is a bit forced such as the conflict, but I guess the other kills make sense as they joined the dogpile. I'll give Bill the benefit of the doubt of this being a warm-up, though I gotta say it would've been more interesting to have the three share their own stories, stuff that would give viewers a firmer idea on their mentalities or whatever, but that's just me.

The next story details some teens, and it's quite obvious they're crooks I mean look at their outfits, we can't be subtle here. The teens see a Native American enter a restaurant, and they feel like killing somebody today, must've objected to him not wanting the change for a fifty. It is here that the bad CG effects return with a vengeance, not for a lack of quality but because there's so much happening without rhyme or reason. It seems like he summons a snake via a ceremony, but he gets strangled and it turns out the teens did that. Was this meant to be a warning? If so why didn't he do something sooner? This would've made more sense as a prediction rather than a representation of what happened.

And look, it's teens in a horror scenario, you know what that means? Getting high. They do some puffs on a staff the guy had and begin to see more of the so-so CG in this, and they trip harder than anyone I've ever seen, so do they die? Actually no, I had expected them to go that route, but there is one tell that I only then realized was there. It began at a diner with multiple old people, one was apparently dead or non-existent because he was completely still. If you haven't guessed, the teens are made old, and their youth goes into the Native American. I dunno, is this a more acceptable fate? I mean they didn't die at the end, but this reminds me of that one episode of Tales from the Darkside that I don't seem to like.

This consists of three stories, and we're already on the third, and this one is where Rob comes in. In this, two couples stay at a house haunted by the ghost of a relative to one of the girls. This one is fairly slow and kinda hard to really keep up with. The girlfriends reveal to have been caught on tape by the guys in their pranks and they want to get payback... eventually. The girls get them to play hide and seek and blindfold the boys, but then a killer enters the fray. Is it the guys? Is it one of the girls? Is it that deputy that randomly showed up?

Well... not necessarily? Everyone gets killed except for the girls, but then the last girl gets killed and... apparently... the one girl was possessed and killed everyone. I liked the transition at the end, but, I dunno. At least the other ones benefited from being more straightforward. This needed a little extra elbow grease, so to speak

And at the end, with the expectancy of Bill turning out to be a psycho killer still out their, the tow truck arrives, and they all leave. Forgot to mention that at the start Charlie and the other guy were on the way to a party, and the one place that has a working phone is where they were trying to go in the first place. But then oh lawd, Bill is the bartender, and everyone in the stories turns out to be real, and we assume Charlie and the other guy get murdered. I didn't know what to expect, but the girl turning out to be evil was admittedly a twist I didn't see coming. The writers actually made this twist seem surprising, at least in my opinion.

The credits role and we get to see pages from Don's comic, and that's about it.

Final Thoughts

Okay, so for a shorter amount of tales, a lack of predictability or heavy-handed socio-political allegories and not being treated like an idiot the entire time, this is automatically better than American Nightmares.

This is a cheap movie through and through, respectable for its ambition but otherwise having little to show for it. I can respect it for being a little passion project, and of course I've seen much worse. But at the end, perhaps had it not been for this movie, Rob wouldn't have met Charlie and we might not've got It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Now if you'll excuse me, I saw this guy pay for a coffee and not ask for change for a fifty, and now I feel like committing murder before meeting a girl who was possessed by a psycho grandmother who was murdered in her very house 100 years ago tonight.