This movie, however, is steaming hot garbage.
Okay, so some background. I know it's a little hard to believe, but once upon a time playing Dungeons & Dragons was actually considered a very controversial thing. Shocking, I know! Back during the 1970's and 80's, we had what was called the Satanic Panic, where a bunch of moral busy bodies who had too much time on their hands and not enough to do with it (totally not like anything going on in real life right now) took barely a glance at Dungeons & Dragons and decided that it was clearly a tool of Satan.
Because Satan apparently has nothing better to do than screw around with D&D nerds.
If you think this is more than a little silly, that's only because it is. That didn't keep several people from jumping onto the bandwagon to demonize Dungeons & Dragons. Whereas video games had moral guardians like Jack Thompson and Anita Sarkessian, the 1980's D&D Satanic Panic had the still (ironically) fondly remembered Jack T. Chick of the Chic Tracks comic strips. If you're one of the people who hasn't seen it, look up Dark Dungeons if you want to laugh until you cry at the sheer absurdity of it all.
This panic hit its peak in the early 80's, spurred on by an event in 1979. A college student by the name of James Dallas Egbert III left his dorm room after writing a suicide note, and he attempted to commit suicide in the steam tunnels beneath the university he was attending - Michigan State. He failed, and went missing for a month. A private investigator was hired and it was a media circus, all of this being pinned by the sensationalist media on a single factor - Egbert played Dungeons & Dragons.
Thankfully, in the years since (and sadly, following Egbert successfully committing suicide in 1980), the case has been re-examined and other factors are known to have been at fault such as Egbert feeling extreme depression, pressure from his parents, and drug addiction, and others. Keep in mind, this was a kid of only sixteen at the time he attempted suicide in those steam tunnels, seventeen years old when he died. Perhaps that is why the detective hired to look into the case, William Dear, and the media were so quick to pin his situation on something so juvenile and easy as roleplaying games.
That said, you will always find vultures who will take an opportunity when it's given to them. Such as it was when novelist Rona Jaffe decided to write a book based on the now widely-debunked story of the events of Egbert's attempted suicide, which she titled - you guessed it - Mazes and Monsters. It was published in 1981 and just one year later, in 1982, CBS aired a made for TV movie of the same name and from the date of it's airing until now in the year 2020 (unless you're reading this in the future), we point and laugh at it's sheer stupidity and cheesiness.
It's notable for multiple reasons, not the least of which is the debut performance of a certain person that you all probably know very well: that's right, Wendy Crewson from The Santa Clause!
...oh, yeah, and Tom Hanks. Provided any of you have any idea who that is. He's really obscure.
And no, by the way, this film is probably not on Tom Hanks's resume. I can't imagine why. It's not a completely irredeemable piece of shi-nope, nope, couldn't type that with a straight face.
Buckle up, kids. This movie sucks.
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| Everything about this DVD cover is a lie. |
We begin with some police and other first responders investigating some caverns. When asked by a reporter what happened, the story is that a game of "Mazes and Monsters" got a little out of hand. Right away, the movie makes it very clear what it's view is - roleplaying games make you crazy.
Several months earlier, we're introduced to a cavalcade of characters who are to be our poor, innocent victims to be corrupted by the evil influences of Satan (Tom Hanks, Wendy Crewson, David Wallace, and Chris Makepeace) as Robbie, Kate, Daniel, and Jay-Jay, respectively. Jay-Jay is a child genius with an overbearing mother, Kate has a string of failed relationships and Daddy issues out the wazoo, and Daniel wants to be a video game designer despite his disapproving parents.
Oh, and Robbie. He's a relatively normal guy who used to be into Mazes & Monsters, but not anymore. That's pretty much his entire character besides having a missing younger brother, which only becomes important later.
Naturally, from how the film is set up with Jay-Jay getting it in his head to commit suicide in the caverns near the university they all attend in order to become a legend, that the film would focus around his mental degredation as he is clearly supposed to be the equivalent to James Dallas Egbert III, but no! No, it's Robbie who gets to have the insanity bucket dumped on his head...and there's really no good reason for it.
I understand why the network would have had had issue with the (supposed) sixteen year old attempting suicide despite the real-world equivalent, but there's really no justification for it happening to Robbie at all. It just happens because plot.
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| Minis too tall, 3/10. |
The introductions of our leads takes up about ten minutes of screen time. Normally, this would be fine...except it's some of the most harrowing crap to get through and drags longer than a caveman with a freshly-killed leopard.
Their interactions with their parents doesn't make them endearing to me, it just makes me want to get through the stereotypes and clichés to get to the ritualistic Satanic murder and insanity that this film is promising me! I was promised ritual murder and Satanism, damn it!
For the record, our main cast is fine. Their parents are absolutely terrible to the point of extreme hyperbole.
Robbie's parents are by far the worst, being a domineering asshole and a drunk that both constantly berate him, with Kate's mother being so milquetoast as to almost be invisible in her one scene.
Regardless, thanks to a flier that Jay-Jay puts up in the cafeteria, Robbie is pulled once more into the world of Mazes and Monsters, eventually joining the group with Jay-Jay, Kate, and Daniel. Thus begins his descent into madness as he...goes on to have a romantic relationship with Kate (scored to an absolutely dreadful pop song), does well in school, and plays Mazes and Monsters with seemingly no problems for a while.
Then Jay-Jay gets it in his head to bring Mazes and Monsters into the world of LARPing with the intention of committing suicide in the caves to become "a legend" (that comes to him on a whim and he never follows through on it or shows any signs that he even really wants to). Once they're there, the world of reality and fantasy begin to blur as Robbie's mind becomes irrevocably twisted by the insidious role playing game...which he isn't even playing when he goes crazy.
I mean, it's the LARPing version of it, but anyone with working eyeballs can tell you LARP and tabletop really don't play by the same rules...I probably made some Vampire: The Masquerade LARPers cry just now.
Regardless, that's really the least of the problems with this scenario.
After fighting a paper mache dragon man (which made me laugh out loud the first time I saw it), Robbie begins referring to himself as his character, the cleric Pardue, dressing in his costume, and having other insane quirks pop up culminating him in somehow getting to New York City and climbing (and I'm not kidding about this) the World Trade Center Towers in order to become "one with the Great Hall" - a manifestation of Robbie's missing younger brother within his own mind.
That is a bit of cringe thanks to events that would occur some nineteen years after this movie premiered, but it's still really awkward just by the subject matter alone.
In the end Robbie does get talked down by his friends and seems that he's going to get the psychiatric help he very clearly needs. Hopefully, with some time and patience and care, Robbie will be his mentally stable self once more and-I'm just kidding, the other three go to check up on him sometime later and Robbie is still spouting off as though he's Pardue the holy man.
That's the main problem with Mazes and Monsters (besides...y'know...the plot, the characters, the after school special quality of the writing...): it wants to say something, but has no idea how to go about screaming at the top of its lungs going "Look! Role playing games are evil!". The problem is that they present no real evidence that this is why Robbie is going crazy. The film presents a variety of factors that could easily be attributed as a cause of his mental decline.
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| Pictured: Tom Hanks when he realized he couldn't get out of his contract |
Robbie comes off as someone likeable (largely because he's played by Tom Hanks, who I couldn't hate even if he murdered my dog right in front of me, let's be real), but without a great deal of self-confidence.
Robbie's parents are constantly arguing, they're very domineering and critical of his life and his choices. External pressures like that could very easily contribute to that. He could also potentially suffer from depression or any other sort of abnormalities. He could be (and possibly is) schizophrenic. There's a lot that you could work with here to make a case for Robbie having an actual mental illness and needing treatment for it.
However, by the logic of Mazes and Monsters, he only went crazy because he played the role playing game.
Which is to say nothing of the other three members of the group. Daniel butts heads with his parents over his career choices. Kate worries about her future as a writer and deals with her parents being divorced (complete with Daddy issues). Jay-Jay deals with an overbearing mother who regularly decorates his room like an insane asylum (what the hell?) and the pressures and loneliness that comes from being a sixteen year old genius in his sophomore year of college.
They all played the game as well, but when they go to visit Robbie they all seem to be thriving if not are at least content with how their lives are going. They don't show even the tiniest sign of some sort of crippling problem through RPG addiction or any sort of Satanic worship. Robbie, though, Robbie is a Happy Meal with absolutely no fries left.
Still, oddly enough, no Satan.
The movie also shows absolutely no knowledge of its subject matter, either. I'm aware that, like much of the Satanic Panic of the 80's, this is an incredibly jaded and one-sided account of Dungeons & Dragons and how it's played and what the people who play it are like. That said, would it have killed the filmmakers to actually talk to some people who actually play the game? The scene early on where everyone's describing their characters doesn't sound like how a normal person would describe a character from an RPG, much less how actual players would.
Basically all they get right is that the players sit around and roll dice. That's it.
I'm aware they probably couldn't have used any of the licensed names or the like without TSR drowning them in lawyers, but they could have at least made an effort to provide even a modicum of authenticity to the experience.
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| Another way you can tell this isn't legit. Wax candles ON the maps! |
Effort, though, would have gone against the point. The point was to use sensationalist nonsense to yell and scream and cry about "THOSE DURN GAMURS!". The problem with this, and the failing of this movie, is that it comes so close to hitting on things that could actually lead to problems that people would need an outlet for like Dungeons & Dragons. It then doesn't bother to develop those things or explore them in any real way.
So it's all so much babbling dreck.
In doing this, Mazes and Monsters floats in between being offensive and being almost insightful and just falls into a bland area that occasionally produces something ironically funny, but is otherwise could be replaced with white noise and you'd barely notice any difference. Like a playground ball, it has no edge to it at all, nothing to drive us along. It has absolutely no clue how to say what it's trying to say, so it goes about it in the least intelligent and blunt way possible without realizing how much it ruins the very point it's trying to make with literally every character in the story that isn't Robbie.
I understand why Tom Hanks doesn't have this movie on his resume, despite it being his first big onscreen appearance in a starring role: it's trash, plain and simple. I'd love to say that Mazes and Monsters is just imagination, like Daniel claims the movie is, but this movie is no cavern-induced fever dream.
This isn't the worst movie I've ever seen, but it is by far the absolute dumbest, most ignorant one. It's a good film to riff on, to sit around with your friends and make fun of over a few drinks, but that's really all and even then you have to be pretty desperate.
Also, I still have no idea what in the hell a "Gorvile" is.
Mazes and Monsters is available from McDermott Productions, Proctor & Gamble Productions, and CBS.
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