Tuesday 18 January 2011

Mazes and Monsters is a far out game

Mazes and Monsters (1982)
Chosen by James Bloodworth who had this to say about it - 'Potentially Tom Hanks's first starring role, this came out in the early 80's at the height of the D&D fad, and the concern surrounding it. It's a thinly veiled attack on the dangers of RPG's and the effects they have on their players. It's mean't to be based on actual events but googling throws that into a potential gray light. It's not a brilliant film but it remains a curio from a bygone age.'


We never had quite the cycle of Dungeons and Dragons is evil films like we did with drugs (they did make a couple of teevee movies about a famous murder which made the implication that DnD was to blame) and indeed this could easily fit in the 'marijuana is bad' mould except that the kids are playing a Roleplaying Game rather than partaking of the weed (Hanks even attempts to fly by jumping off a building at the end in the classic drugs cliche) and is as laboured and ill thought out as that sounds.
It's not quite silly enough to be enjoyable (Hanks thinks the subway train is a dragon and stabs a mugger he thinks is an evil monster - played by the Predator himself Kevin Peter Hall,  but mostly just wanders around looking dazed whilst ominous music plays), the Jack Chick tracts that link DnD to Satanism are far funnier.
In fact the 'game' aspect barely matters and it's just about a guy having a psychotic breakdown and only a cop character played by Murray Hamilton, the mayor from Jaws, really pushes an anti DnD line.
Dull, dull, dull.

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