Customer Reviews

Mazes and Monsters

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This 1982 made-for-tv movie was made during the period when D&D started to get attention and is a delightful expoitation cheesefest made by folks who have NO idea what the heck the game or the people who play it are about. Tom Hanks is great in an early role as a gamer gone over the edge of reality. Yes, this movie is stupid and insulting to folks who enjoy roleplaying games, but it is a FUN kind of stupid and worth a look when you and your friends have "bad movie night" at your house. It is rather fun to see gaming exploited in a cautionary tale that makes it look like the next great plaugue that will assasinate America's youth. Worse than crack you know. Recommended.

On August 15, 1979, a troubled child prodigy named James Egbert slipped into the steam tunnels beneath Michigan State University with a pocket full of 'ludes. And lo, an urban legend was born. You see, James had occasionally played Dungeons & Dragons some time before enrolling at Michigan, and his oblivious parents along with a news media hungry for scandal latched on to the idea that the fantasy world of role playing had driven him to suicide. The reality was Egbert wasn't dead, or even lost in the tunnels, but hiding at various locations in fear of his folks. The truth rarely matters in such circumstances, though, does it? Soon word of other suicides by teenagers who played D&D began popping up like dandelions in April, and a new hysteria had gripped America. Anti-gaming advocacy groups were formed. Chick tracts were published. The makers of the game even began to change some of their manuals to avoid controversy. And just before the madness peaked (around 1983), Rona Jaffe published a fictionalized warning of the sinister power of RPGs, "Mazes and Monsters", based loosely on James Egbert's story. This film was a television movie adapted from the novel, and is notable today mostly for starring a young Tom Hanks.

Now, before I get started, I'm not a gamer. I've never played an RPG in my life to be honest. However, I know how the 'fear and consumption' media works and a little bit of digging will turn up studies that prove the suicide rate among gamers is lower than the national average. And anything reguritated by the Falwell crowd is automatically suspect to begin with, right? This isn't the usual "incredibly strange film" that occupies my late nights. But when you spend money on a movie, even a few bucks, even if it was a year or two ago, don't you kinda feel obligated to watch it if for nothing else than to justify that you got something, anything, for that wasted cash? Ditto, amigo.

905 Studios is the party responsible for "Mazes and Monsters" DVD debut. This disc doesn't give me much hope for the quality of "Death Wish Club", a truly strange film that 905 is allegedly releasing soon. There are no extras, and the transfer isn't very good. "M&M" centers around four university students who decide to play a live action game in the caverns around their school. During one of these sessions, Hanks character goes nuts. "Bardu" dreams that his long lost brother is calling him to Manhattan, so he breaks up with his girlfriend (he's a cleric, after all!) and takes off. Well, everyone thinks he's missing in the caverns, and his fellow gamers lie to the police so they won't be expelled. Finally, Hanks snaps out of it for a moment after knifing a mugger, and the gang comes to get him. The final scenes show "Bardu" hopelessly and forever immersed in his character as the heartbroken friends decide to play one last campaign with him on his folks estate.

As propaganda, "Mazes and Monsters" fails on every level. It's not even that entertaining as kitsch like "Reefer Madness" or "Safety Belt For Susie". Lord knows that theme song gives Debbie Boone some competition in the ghastly department. Maybe someone who games and was a wee tyke (like me) during the time it was made might find it amusing as a time capsule of an era they were too young to remember. I tend to doubt it has much replay value even then. A much better purchase for you wizards and paladins out there (and even us boring folks who don't game or read comics ;) is the 5-disc set of the D&D toon that ran on CBS. Not only is that series entertaining, but BCI threw in the kitchen sink as far as extras. There's even a D&D compatable manual included. As for 905, let's hope a truly DVD worthy piece of junk like "Death Wish Club" gets the justice it deserves. I'm not expecting Criterion quality, but c'mon guys, you can do much better than this.

This review contains some spoilers.

I've grown to become a Tom Hanks fan over the years. This movie is one of his forgotten early films.

The premise of the film is that a group of young role-playing gamers become a bit *too* involved with a game called "Mazes and Monsters," a blatant reference to Dungeons and Dragons.

Tom Hanks plays the boy that falls hard for the role-playing game and comes out psychotic and suicidal. (One of the climatic scenes eerily takes place on the observation deck of the Twin Towers in New York city.)

The entire cast does a good job with their roles (hence the three stars), but ultimately the movie fails to deliver.

The most glaring problem is that the premise is not credible.

The film was clearly done in response to (actually as a way to exploit) the poor Michigan man that ended up as a suicide victim a year or so before the film was shot. At the time, the media and some religious groups tried to put role-playing as the central reason for the suicide. Good investigative work by folks like Mike Stackpole and organizations like the Game Manufacturers of America have gone a long way towards dispelling these kinds of wild ascertions, and today the film just seems like something akin to "Reefer Madness."

Robin Williams, Al Gore, Mike Myers, and even the royal British princes have all described their experiences with role-playing games. It is hard to push the suspension of disbelief button when the central premise of the movie is that RPGs form an avenue to the darkest pits of the human soul and invite the players to become addicts and potentially commit suicide. (Now, if the film has instead showed the kids playing hour after hour and eventually failing out of school then I would have to admit that that premise is credible.)

Overall, this film is probably worth a Netflix view, but probably is not worth it as an addition to your film library.

Okay, let's start off by making it clear that I'm a gamer. I started playing D&D way back in 1980, and was very into it through junior high and high school. One of my earliest jobs was working at a game (not toy) store, and I have worked at several more game stores since then, including managing one.

When I first saw Mazes and Monsters (on TV), I was thrilled to see characters enjoying a role playing game (just as that brief D&D scene in E.T. made so many gamers happy). I even bought a copy of the book - and enjoyed it - although Rona Jaffe isn't an author I'd generally read.

One thing that was clear to me in the book - and it was also fairly clear in the movie - is that the game was a red herring. It wasn't the game that caused Robbie to lose his grip with reality, it was the way his family failed to deal with the disappearance of his older brother, and the emotional damage that this caused in an otherwise normal seeming teen.

In the book/movie, there is a great hubbub about Robbie getting lost in the caves, when he wasn't lost in the caves at all - just as the real life case that "inspired" this had everyone in a furor about the student getting lost in the steam tunnels, when he was actually not there, and D&D had nothing to do with his disappearance. If anything, this illustrates how much the "steam tunnels" urban legend was based on hysteria and fear of the "different". Having a movie - even a mediocre TV movie - about D&D (even if a fake name was used) is something that helped to bring mainstream awareness to role playing games, and thus probably helped to dispel more ignorance than any number of "Chick Tracts" can create.

This movie is about a group of collage friends that play a fantasy game similar to Dungeons and Dragons called Mazes and Monsters. One of the players looses track of what is real and what is the game and disappears on a quest to look for his lost brother. This quest nearly lead to his death his friends saving him in the nick of time.

The movie itself is not great, but it is passable. It is over done, like with one of the group of friends always wearing some strange hat and so on. The acting is a bit stilted here and there. But all in all the movie is not bad and is good enough to entertain for one and a half hour. And the topic of fantasy vs reality had been really interesting, if the movie had not been pure propaganda.

The movie is basically a see what can happen if kids play role playing game scare. I talked to somone that works at a local game shop, and he told me of a lady that had come into the store, seen the strange dice many RPG games used, screamed about evil and fled. Movies like these is what basically have been a big part in forming those ideas. Instead of a creative, entertaining hobby, pepole see something mysterious and dangerous that make pepole go insane, or worship the devil or commit suicide.

If you can look past the propaganda factor this movie is ok entertainment, do not expect to be swept of your feet by it's brilliance or remember the movie very long, but expect to be entertained for one and a half hour.

Before Tom Hanks joined Hollywood's A-list, the actor starred in a comedy series called "Bosom Buddies" on ABC and several forgettable made-for-tv dramas like this one, "Mazes and Monsters" created to capitalize on the "Dungeons and Dragons" hysteria and bad press the game received during the early 80's. Despite a fairly good cast, mostly in cameo roles (Anne Francis, Murray Hamilton, Lloyd Bochner, Susan Strasberg) and Chris Makespeace ("My Bodyguard"), and a interesting premise about a college student who retreats into a fantasy world depicted by the game itself; his character "Pardu," the vehicle of his quest for the "Great Hall" (subconscious guilt over his brother's death) and the "Two Towers"--a "quest" that takes him from the bowels of NYC's subway system to the World Trade Center.

Adapted from the Rona Jaffe novel of the same name, the film has some good scenes, but tends to drag in the middle. And the love interest between Hank's character and the female lead seems rather forced and artificial only to move the plodding storyline along. (After Hank's character leaves her for his "quest," she immediately takes up with the other male member from this quartet of gameplayers.)

The movie serves no real purpose but to show, albeit negatively, that "D & D" players are nothing more than your brighter-than-average talented misfits that never "fit in" who dream and manufacture their own world of monsters, heroes, heroines, and far off places. The parents too are mere cardboard cutouts of the same tired cliche: Robbie's mother is an alcoholic, Jay-Jay's mother is a vapid interior decorator who changes his room every semester. The ending of the film, however, was unexpected and helps dispel some of the bad reputation most, if not all, made-for-tv movies have earned over the years. This transfer to DVD is rather poor and a very bad transfer overall. I bought mine for $3.99 at Ross Dress for Less.

The most telling and effective scene occurs at the end of the film when Robbie's friends visit the protagonist at his home (apparently on leave from the university and recovering from a nervous breakdown); we think he is recovered and ready to join his friends back in school next semester, but alas, he only sees them as the fictional characters they portrayed on a gameboard--his idyllic backyard the setting for yet another adventure.

Hanks does his best given the limited material and script he had to work with (he had done pretty much only comedy at this point) but it's a solid reading that would provide this actor with a springboard to a distinguished acting career and several Academy Award winning performances to follow.

"Mazes and Monsters" was part of the Reagan-era moral panic over the Dungeons and Dragons game. It was an '80s afterschool special,a made-for-TV movie about the dangers of gaming. It was back when fundamentalists considered it occultic, diabolical, and dangerous. This movie was made in response to the infamous Dallas Egbert case at the University of Michigan. While it turned out Egbert was dealing with drug abuse, perfectionist parents, and his closeted homosexuality, D&D was blamed. The late creator of D&D, Gary Gygax, was besieged with hate mail when "Mazes" was released.

"Mazes" begins as a typical,slice-of-life drama. Kate Finch is dealing with her divorcing parents. Daniel has a perfectionist, materialistic father. Jay-Jay, with his wild assortment of hats,plays it out of the closet-he dresses as Noel Coward for Halloween-his mother is a diva (Jay-Jay is a prototype for the hat-wearing,flamboyant Ryan in Disney's High School Musical) Finally,there's Robbie (Tom Hanks),who's got an alcoholic,Nancy Reagan-like mother. The four come together with their Mazes&Monsters game. The first half hour of the movie plays it straight (except for Jay-Jay) However,when Robbie slays a "Gorvil" (think of one of those green monsters from the OLD Star Trek),he descends into madness. Robbie's cheesy visions take the movie into campy territory. He takes on the persona of Pardu,a holy man. He tells his girlfriend Kate that they have to "love each other without making love" (indeed,the wizened sage in his visions commands him to be celibate)--one wonders why conservatives lambasted D&D. It promotes abstinence! It prolongs virginity! Why aren't Dungeonmasters being bankrolled for abstinence-only programs? Robbie's quest leads him into NYC. He encounters thugs,as well as a madman,in his quest for "The Two Towers" ("That's Tolkien!" Daniel exclaims) At the World Trade Center, Robbie nearly kills himself to reunite with his lost brother,but his friends save him. In the end, Robbie still thinks he's in the game. He still believes he's Pardu. The scenes at the WTC are poignant. Indeed, Hanks' performance is quite natural and convincing. He's awkward and sympathetic.

"Mazes" makes for good viewing. It's the "Reefer Madness" of the '80s. Hanks has a good early role. Despite the sappy theme song "Friends forever" and the turgid script, Hanks and the ensemble cast rise above it.

As a DVD,"Mazes" gets a mixed reviewing. It looks like a TV show... from the '80s. Still,quite good. The "scene selection" is pretty mediocre&difficult to use. Unfortunately, there aren't any special features.

"Mazes" is a window on the world of the early D&D controversy. Pour yourself a flagon of mead, and raise it to Gary Gygax!

PLOT

The film begins with the excitement of a new college semester on the verge - Kate, Daniel, and Jay-Jay travel to school with their seemingly 'normal' stereotypical families'... then there's Robbie, a sensitive sort with an alcoholic mother and verbally abusive father, trying to align his priorities despite his past extreme distractions with a fantasy board game akin to "Dungeons & Dragons" called "Mazes & Monsters", when lo and behold, he spies an "M&M" group advertised on the posting board in the cafeteria... and it begins... the obsession resurfaces, progressing from a gloomy candlelit room to "taking it to the next level" wherein the players actually don the accoutrement of their characters {acquired from Theatre class} and travel to the local caverns where Jay-Jay, the resident "Game Lord" {eq. 'Dungeon Master'; D&D} has arranged several objects including a skeleton which appear on cue when the wayfarers pass through certain spots in the caves, whereupon the Game Lord's voice echoes forth with warnings and instructions. This is where the hallucinations begin for Robbie, imagining a literal "Gorvil" creature stalking the stalactite-laden corridors, which becomes the first indication of his mental degeneration.

He confides in his girlfriend Kate about the loss of his brother 'Hall' on Halloween to a mysterious dissappearence and was never found...

Thus, on Halloween night, while others were living it up, he sleeps and begins dreaming of a dark figure named "The Great Hall" who informs him of his erstwhile 'destiny' as 'Pardu' the Holy Man, who must seperate himself from the group, become {ack!} celebate {there went Kate...}, and seek 'The Towers' by engaging upon a quest, which takes Robbie to New York City where he roams in a hypnogogic state until an attempted mugging by a couple of greasy thugs results in him defending himself by stabbing one of the lowlifes, all the while perceiving himself as this 'Pardu', and the attacker as another Gorvil.

Frightened by this encounter, he almost comes to his senses and calls for help. Being skiddish however, seeing another couple of guys on a street corner scares him enough to descend into the city's subway system and further below into the labyrinthine underworld beneath the streets, and its roaring "Great Dragon"...

Meanwhile, the Police become alerted to his sudden disappearence, and the group are payed a visit by an investigator. Scared that they may be implicated in his missing, his friends scramble to figure out where he may have gone by inspecting his room and find a hand-drawn map, carefully brainstorming to decipher his 'journey'.

Robbie eventually encounters a homeless man who jestingly refers to himself as 'The King of France' - of course, being in a completely delusional state of mind, "Pardu" acknowledges him as such, inquiring for directions to 'The Towers'*, which turns out being 'The Twin Towers', The World Trade Center, to be exact, which one could see coming from a mile away, as it were, both figuratively and literally. Included is some extensive interior footage of the WTC from lobby to observation deck.

His friends eventually catch up to him as he climbs out on the parapet preparing to join with "The Great Hall", until tearfully awakening from the somnambulism. He is eventually committed to a scenic mental home where his delusions persist, and after one last 'adventure' with friends, is left to live out his days in his fantasy world.

ANALYSIS

Obviously, Robbie dealt with the loss of his big brother by anthropomorphosizing his memory as "The Great Hall", and his desire to reunite with him. Delving into the board game as a form of escapism taken to an extreme, in this case served as an affectation of his mental illness, but may not necessarily have been the cause of it, but merely placed fantastical definitions and terminology to establish an albeit false identity.

Through a balanced perspective, these games can be an amusing recreational activity, but there may always be the danger of those with a wayward brain who will literalize elements therein and attempt to detrimentally personafy either the characters and/or activities described. While the exercise of the imagination is encouraged and channelled into creative endeavors, care must sometimes be taken with the mentally ill in order to prevent compulsion, lest you travel the "Pardu Path" to insanity.

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* 'The Towers' as part of the legend of 'The Lord of The Rings' series writ by sage Tolkien were acknowledged as one of the possible motivations while the group were inspecting a map and gathering clues to his whereabouts, defining his mentality by the persona of the Pardu character. Ergo, "What Would Pardu Do?"

It's no great epic or anyting like that, just a tale of how some people lose touch with reality. Mazes and Monsters deals with how a player of a role playing game begins to lose touch with reality and sinks into the make believe world.

This movie means a lot to me because I grew up in that time when D&D first came out. Not having anyone close to me get that 'confused' but there were tales of kids poking out their eyes and replace them with 'magic buttons' and so forth.

All the references to this movie paralleling reefer madness are dead on the money.. the dominant theme is definitly one of 'D&D style games will destroy lives'. The primary salvaging feature along these lines, and the indication that the director's intent was benign is an insightful comment by the mother toward the end that the game was merely an outlet for problems he was already experiencing.

That being said, ignoring any political agenda, this movie rated toward the upper ranks for a 'B' rated flick. Do not rent this looking to enjoy a fantasy story, for while the characters are engrossed in their own fantasy, we do not truely get drawn into this. Rather, this allows for more of insight into some roll players lives with a twist toward stereotyping rollplayers as rich hyper-intelligent social rejects. Watching this movie, I get the impression the directing team had a conflict between empathy for roll players, and a desire to ride the hype of "D&D is evil".

Ultimately, this makes a fine movie for when you have time to kill, and want to watch a touching story of overwhelming grief. If you pay more than $5 for this though, you're going to feel like you've been taken. (I paid $5.50, so have mixed feelings :-)