Mazes and Monsters

Man, this movie makes me miss the days when gamers were viewed by the general public with unease and fear. The best gaming happened then. These days, there are no cautionary tales of gaming gone awry. Instead they make fun of gamers on shows like "Jesse" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". Time has stripped away the fun of doing something that your parents worry about and just left the "geek" stigma. I'll bet that 90+% of the people who have viewed this film are actually gamers themselves. I will also bet that those same people have watched this movie more than once. It's a guilty pleasure. How many times have I heard a fellow gamer say "Frelig jumps into the pit, what does Frelig find?", or have said it myself? It has added to the jargon of gamers. I've heard gamers refer to someone as having "Gone Pardu" when they are getting a bit too much into their role-playing hobbies. Though I have yet to rescue a fellow gamer off a skyscraper after he has been stabbing "Gorbils" in the subway. My Best-Friend's parents actually made him watch this movie to try to scare him away from gaming when he was a teen. They didn't actually watch the movie. They just taped it, and showed it to him and didn't stick around. Boy, his Dad was horrified with the results. Instead of turning my friend off of gaming, it turned him onto to Live Action Role-Playing. Within a few years he founded the LARP group Adventures in Mid-Land in NY. A group that still exists under new leadership a decade and a half later. How many others were inspired to LARP because of this film? If you enjoy this film you should also check out the following movies. "Shakma" is a film starring Roddy McDowell as GM who's live action game goes horribly wrong when a crazed baboon starts killing his players (Don't you hate when that happens?). When billed in channel guides it is typically listed as "A game of Dungeons & Dragons turns deadly". Uh oh, Mom and Dad, another cautionary tale. Then there is the OTHER Wendy Crewson anti-gaming film "Skullduggery". With both Mazes and Monsters and Skullduggery to her credit, you have to wonder what this lady has against us gamers. Skullduggery is so incredibly bad it deserves to be on MST3K. If you are a gamer and a fan of bad films (and what are the odds of that?) you really need to track those two films down. Quick listing of other movies that have some anti-game statement. "Cloak & Dagger", "T.A.G. the Assasination Game", "Gotcha! (1985)" and for our S.C.A. friends there is George Romero's "Knightriders". The film "The Dungeonmaster" with Richard Moll is NOT a gaming movie, despite the title. It is side-splittingly bad though. There is also the book "The Dungeon Master: The Disappearance of James Dallas Eggbert III" by William Dear. It's the true story of how the author's search for a missing college student. The author is a P.I. and focuses his search around the missing kid's D&D hobby. He ignores other aspects of trouble in the kid's life, like the kid's drug problem and instead hangs out to play D&D and get into this kid's head. In the end James Dallas Eggbert III is found in a crack house with no help from the author. The cover of the book lead people to believe yet again that D&D is bad for you, when the reality of it is that being a 16 year old genius in college with drug problems, homosexual tendencies and the name Eggbert would overwhelming for anyone, gamer or not. James Dallas Eggbert Committed suicide before the book came out. William Dear had the TV show "Matt Houston" based on him. They even had an episode play very Loosely on the Eggbert story.

If you look at all of these tales, fictitious or true, the game itself is never really to blame. In Mazes & Monsters it's Robbie's issues with guilt over a missing brother that caused his insanity, not the game itself.

Mazes and Monsters was the made-for-TV special at the head of the anti-Dungeons-And-Dragons movement, spearheaded by Patricia Pulling who blamed the game for her son's suicide the same year. I know people whose parents confiscated and threw out/burned all their gear as a result of this film, which suggests such games cause loving, sensitive kids to go insane and suicidal.

For a made-for-TV, it's pretty well done, despite the fact that its premise is rather, well, inflamatory. It's wholly designed to make parents fear their kid's imagination. Still fun to watch and laugh at. Although it launched Tom Hank's movie career, I've heard he won't acknowledge having made it.

Laughable early attempt to "show the danger" that playing D&D leads one to lose all contact with reality, this film (from the book) was an obvious attempt to cash-in on the popularity of the most durable RPG ever.

Never rising above the low-level of a "Made-for" that this is, it's the sort of movie which Lance Kerwin, at the peak of his teen stardom, would have turned-down flat.

Utterly ridiculous.

I disagree that this was just a smear campaign against fantasy role playing as so many others have said. I felt it was more a story about general psychosis and loss of a loved one. It wasn't really hinted that the "game" was at fault, as the majority of players didn't suffer any ill fate. It was a drama/tragedy genre movie just with a d&d plot. This movie wouldn't tell parents to not let their kids play games as it really doesn't try to push that agenda much or make that direct connection. Nobody said anything like "the game is to blame for this" - even the news caster in the very beginning had no idea about what was going on just happened to hear the name of the game. I guess you could say the early 80's era does mean it was 100% just trying to make it anti-d&d but in actuality the movie really doesn't push it much.

So, with that out of the way, a review... Not great. A decent watch for what it is (if you're into gaming) however really nothing spectacular. There is more focus on character drama with very little about gaming. Of course Tom Hanks is an immediate pull to watch... so yea, it is what it is.

This movie is a classic. OK not in the "what a masterpiece" sense or the "what a great undiscovered gem" sense but more along the lines of "Oh my God I am gonna pee my pants laughing at this early 80s fear-mongering flick which happens to feature a young and bewildered Tom Hanks." This is right up there with "Plan 9 from Outer Space" or "Reefer Madness." Not a movie to take seriously AT ALL, just a nice slice of Reagen-era silliness for your Sunday afternoon perusal. If you haven't seen it, it is well worth rooting out, though I fear you won't "get" the beauty of it if you are not a thirtysomething former nerd who lived through the "D&D is a product of Satan and responsible for warping my child's fragile mind" eighties. Then again people are making the same complaints about "Grand Theft Auto" and "Hitman" so perhaps it still holds its charm...