Campfire Tales is a 1997 American anthology horror film directed by Matt Cooper, Martin Kunert, and David Semel.
The film is made up of three individual short segments that are presented in an overarching narrative, told by a group of friends around a fire after they crash their car in the woods.
In the present day, Cliff, his girlfriend Lauren, and her little brother Eric and friend Alex are driving home from a concert.
Valerie sprains her ankle and Rick leaves to walk to a gas station nearby, even though he had recently filled their tank up.
As she exits the RV, she hears a screeching noise; the officer tells her to look straight ahead but she looks back and sees Rick's eviscerated corpse hanging upside down from a tree, his wedding ring scratching across the metal rooftop.
Inside is a beautiful mute woman named Heather; she communicates with Scott by writing on a handheld chalkboard and invites him to stay the night.
Scott hears a commotion downstairs, and runs to the kitchen, where he sees two bloodied bodies, and witnesses Heather's father throwing a woman's severed head into the well outside.
After each of the friends have told a story, Cliff decides to return to the road and sees that the police have stopped at the site of their car accident.
Writer and co-director Martin Kunert and producer Eric Manes had known one another while both film students at New York University, and collaborated to make Campfire Tales as their debut feature.
The film was released direct-to-video in overseas countries by Initial Entertainment Group, first on May 16, 1997 in the United Kingdom, and then on June 13, 1997 in Germany.
[3] The theatrical distribution deals never eventuated, with New Line Home Entertainment later acquiring the North American rights to Campfire Tales, releasing it on VHS in the United States and Canada on September 22, 1998.
Promotional material from 1998 compared Campfire Tales to the Scream series and I Know What You Did Last Summer, despite the fact the film itself had been conceived prior to both of these.
[2] Steve O’Brien of SFX magazine gave the film a negative review in June 1997, writing, "It’s difficult to imagine why anyone would want to watch a sanitised slasher movie such as this, especially when so few of these loathsome kids actually die.
[8] Donald Munro and Rick Bentley of The Fresno Bee awarded the film a B-rating in September 1998, writing: "None of the short stories are masterpieces, but they offer plenty of moments to make you jump.
Filmed at the height of the slasher revival, it features smart, late-1990s teens countenancing several tales of horror, one of which involves them too.
Other films that have tried to capitalize on the whole handed-down story thing such as Urban Legend do not even come close to handling the subject matter as smartly as it is done in Campfire Tales.
[22] Richard Scheib of the Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review gave the movie three and a half stars and wrote: "The film received little genre press and it was released direct to video (although the end credits reveal that it was originally intended for theatrical release).
"[24] Kevin Matthews from For It Is Man's Number gave the film six out of ten and stated: "It's not a bad little movie but there are better urban legends to choose from and better ways to showcase the material.
[26] In 2019, Den of Geek included it on their list of "12 Underrated Scream-Inspired Horror Movies of the Late 90s", commenting that the film had a "smart script".
That said, it’s great [...] It stars a bunch of people who have since become famous, including Christine Taylor, Ron Livingston, Amy Smart and James Marsden.