What's the Opposite of an "Urban" Legend?

As someone born in 1982 who therefore spent the bulk of filmgoing in the '90s, it's fascinating to see the current pendulum swing on genre cinema of that era. I had a big moment of reevaluation when I revisited Disturbing Behavior, and ever since then, I've found myself not just charmed, but sometimes surprisingly impressed by movies that I as a surely teenager wrote off 20+ years ago. Would Campfire Tales, a rare anthology, have the same effect?

Spoiler alert: no.

Quick Plot: After a quick teaser starring Amy Smart and vampire James Marsden (not a vampire in the story, just a human celebrity vampire who doesn't age) as a couple encountering the urban legendary hook man, we meet our storytellers: two young couples with very familiar faces drunkenly speeding late at night. They crash in the woods, start a fire, and indulge in their titular routine. 

The first tale follows a pair of newlyweds on an RV trip through the woods. A mysterious mechanic stops by and warns them of a murderer on the loose, but they brush that away as the ravings of a mad man. Naturally, they soon find themselves mysteriously out of gas. Rick (Ron Livingston, savoring the chance to push a Long Island accent on innocent cinema goers) discovers the mechanic brutally murdered, and tries to get back in time to warn his wife. Things don't end well.

Up next is a standard chat room PSA about being catfished before we used the term 'catfish.' A young girl is excited to be left home alone with her dog (don't get attached) and soccer ball, but she makes the mistake of telling her online pal. Things...don't end well.

Last up is the saga of an aimless motorcyclist (Glenn Quinn) who runs into mechanical trouble just outside the sprawling horse farm of a beautiful, mute young woman who's adequate enough at charades for them to quickly fall in love. The only thing standing between them is her abusive father and choker necklace. Things, you know, end as they do.

Back to the campfire, our youths are finally found and - 

you know.

Campfire Tales was made right before Scream exploded the market for mostly mediocre teen slashers. On that front, I can appreciate its almost old school charm. Urban Legend would do a better job of this a few years later, but Campfire Tales is still watchable. The stories move quickly. They have to, since there's not much to any of them. 

The first is the best, probably because Livingston and Jennifer MacDonald carry it well and it moves at such a brisk pace. The second goes the other route: it can't be more than 20 minutes, but the story just doesn't really move in one direction. It ends on a classic urban legend beat, but takes such a convoluted route there that I can't imagine anyone caring. Then again, I spent the entire thing telling myself, "you know they're gonna kill the dog and spare the kid," so in fairness, that might have been my own problem. The haunted farmhouse has a little bit of poetry to its soul. That doesn't mean it's good...just that it clearly tried. 

Directed by the trio of Matt Cooper, Martin Kunert, and David Semel and written by a slightly different trio of Kunert, Cooper, and Eric Manes, Campfire Tales is probably most interesting as a taste of the '90s seasoned by a heaping tablespoon of before-they-were-famous stars. It's fine. Never scary and not particularly funny, but considering how few horror anthologies the '90s gave us, it's an interesting relic.

High Points

Anthologies should fundamentally be about comeuppance, making the final reveal of Campfire Tales feel very right

Low Points

The more I think about that poorly paced second segment AND the fact that it ended with a lovable golden retriever massacred, the angrier I get at everything

Lessons Learned

Don't promise M&Ms before you've evaluated your surroundings

Crows only squawk at night if stirred

Everyone needs to learn what it means to be free, which is the kind of thing someone with a broken down motorcycle would say

Rent/Bury/Buy

There's a particular nostalgia people of a certain get now when we think back to the '90s, and Campfire Tales, with its dial-up tech and choker fashion, will certainly fuel it with Diet Snapple. This isn't a very good movie, but the stories are short, and the wraparound has a rewarding payoff. Watch it on Peacock if the mood strikes. 

Flying Economy

 

A few months back, I watched the first three entries in the Airport series over the course of a few days. The experience was, well, weird. 

Have you seen these movies? They're insane, in both terrible and wonderful ways. Each one comes loaded with gender politics that would make Andrew Dice Clay blush. Every flight attendant (well, in these cases, stewardesses) is having an affair with a much older married superior. Old ladies scam their way through security. Suicidal bombers cheat the insurance industry. The third installment sees the plane buried at the bottom of the ocean. Everyone from Christopher Lee to Gloria Swanson shows up. This series is madness!

Anyway, for someone whose reference to Airport was always just Airplane! (which, it turns out, isn't THAT much zanier than Airport), this was a wild ride that no colors every other piece of culture I consume set on commercial aircraft. 

Quick Plot: The worst people imaginable board a flight headed to Tokyo. Among them are a new racist bride, a soon-to-be-divorced-but-faking-it-for-their-friends couple, a sad pregnant girl not in love with her partner, a racist petty thief, and a few portly men who dare to EAT on a plane (we can assume at least two of them are also racist). We know this is a crime because the attractive and trim flight attendants make jokes about it. I should also mention that the head of the crew is hoping that this is the trip that will finally convince her captain boyfriend to leave his wife and kids. 

A reminder: this is a 12-hour flight. We're going to be with these jerks for a while.

Up in the air, oddness ensues. A passenger guarding a mysterious coffin-like box has some kind of a seizure, dying instantly and causing some mild panic just as weather conditions jostle the plane. Air masks drop down, luggage descends from the upper storage, and a corpse goes missing. The only thing worse? First class passengers are forced to move down to economy. The horror!

Flight 7500 is directed by Takashi Shimizu, best known for both the original and surprisingly good American remake of The Grudge. This film definitely shares some of The Grudge's style, albeit in diluted form. It doesn't help that Craig Rosenberg's script is filled with so many awful characters, though most are thankfully played by good actors who manage to make them pop onscreen. 

Look, when I queue up a genre movie I've never heard of on Amazon Prime, my expectations are in a specifically low place. As soon as actual actors like Amy Smart and Johnathon Schaech show up, my brain has to do some recalculating. Where is the bar? 

The easy answer could be at 20,000 feet. Dad jokes aside, Flight 7500 is kind of like a junk drawer that has a few pleasant objects messily tucked inside. Based on the haircuts and fashion, Flight 7500 feels like it couldn't have been filmed after 2008, though it's currently on Amazon Prime with a 2014 date. The way these people speak to one another comes from another world.

And yet, I was kind of into Flight 7500's story? Even if it didn't line up in any logical way? There's a twist that hits at the 3/4 mark that isn't very satisfying in a narrative sense, but then you land on a good actor's face as they react and you walk away feeling like these 90 minutes had some value. 

And then you end on a very dumb jump scare and become even more convinced that the 2014 date is a lie. 

High Points

Genuine standing applause to much of the cast of Flight 7500, most of whom are overqualified for this kind of movie. Leslie Bibb is, for all intents and purposes, playing a woman whose primary motivation is to pull a cad away from his family, but we're able to forget that because she's also quite good as an actual flight attendant. Even Nicky Whalen, last seen by me as a shark hunter in Maneater, makes her terrible human being of a character, actually fun to watch

Low Points

If you start thinking about the details in Flight 7500, you will very quickly find that you have watched a movie that makes very little sense

Lessons Learned

The longer the flight, the more racists onboard

It's bad luck to board a flight without saying I love you

Screenwriting 101, courtesy of The Darkest Hour: if you need to establish a character as being unlikable, the easiest bit of dialogue is to have him rant against the 'no electronics during takeoff' rule

Rent/Bury/Buy

I think of Flight 7500 along the same lines as The Asylum's Flight of the Living Dead. These are not, by traditional definition, 'good' movies, but they're both far better than their poster art and pedigree would suggest. If hearing something described as "The Grudge on a plane" lends any interest, this is a fun watch.