October 26, 2003

Who’s the scariest person you could encounter in the woods at night? If you guessed Buster Poindexter, then here’s the movie for you!

Two guys get a flat tire and encounter a girl who also has car trouble. The decide to wander into the woods to look for campers with a cell phone. Apparently, they’d never seen The Blair Witch Project. In any case, they run into Buster Poindexter, er, Ranger Bill. Ranger Bill sits them down in front of a campfire and starts in with the ‘scary’ stories.

The first tale is the old cliche about an escaped mental patient. 20 years later, he’s a high school janitor – of course – what other jobs are ever available to escaped mental patients? Remember Student Bodies? Some high school jocks harass him and then decide to stalk him into the woods to kill him. Of course, they find out the hard way what an escaped mental patient does to high school jocks…

The second tale is about a trio of criminals that track an old Indian into the woods and murder him for his peace pipe. Apparently, they never saw Creepshow 2 – don’t fuck with Indians! They start smoking the peace pipe…and now we know where the production budget for the film went. They have the worst CGI hallucinations possible…snakes and fairies, whatever. Then they get old…it seems that the Indian had really lured them out to the woods to steal their youth.

The last tale is the longest and most confounding. Melissa invites her best friend and their boyfriends to her grandmother’s deserted house in the woods. Not only is Melissa sex-phobic, but she is convinced that someone is watching her. Blah, blah, blah, contrived plot, blindfolds, the lights go out and people start dying. Turns out that Melissa herself is the murderer because “she like to watch, baby.” Shades of Happy Birthday to Me.

After all the tales are told, Buster announces that the tow truck has arrived and they may go. The tow truck drops the kids off at a deserted bar. The go inside and The Misfits are playing. It’s really them! For some reason, the kids are more freaked out by The Misfits than by all the scary stories they’ve just heard. They turn around and bartender is Buster! The mosh pit is comprised of all the villains from the stories they’ve just heard! They try to leave…of course the girl is the only one who is able to escape – just in time to flag down another car. Ooooohhh, spooky.

No nudity. Negligible blood. Bad acting. Too many cliches. Don’t bother.

Year – 2001
Rating – R
Runtime – 95 minutes
Genre – Horror Anthology
Director(s) – Bob Cea, Andrzej Krakowski
Writer(s) – Bob Cea
Actor(s) – Jamie-Lynn DiScala, John Hensley, David Johansen
BOB Rating – One BOB
Favorite Quote – "You think you've got life by the balls, but then you go and kill an Indian..." - Ranger Bill (David Johansen)