Mazes and Monsters (1982)

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   Siskoid

   I remember when Mazes and Monsters was broadcast back in the day (1982), but I wasn't yet a D&D player (actually, DungeonMaster, not until 1985 I think), so what it adds to "D&D panic" isn't what concerned my mom some years later (I was asked about possible ties to Satanism instead). What the movie is actually concerned about is D&D turning into an obsession that makes teens go off the deep end and mistake fantasy for reality. Not that they ever say D&D, of course. The fictional M&M, as it is played, doesn't seem to have any products not home-made, and while dice rate exactly one mention, you never see a polyhedral on screen. I don't know how the book did it, but they are really trying their best not to get a letter from Gary Gygax's lawyers, looks like. It makes this "highly popular" role-playing game feel completely unrealistic. Anyway, as the characters are introduced, I immediately identified the real culprit of the "madness" - these were all over-privileged kids used to having their way and whining about parental units who didn't understand them. Privilege was going to go to their heads. And at first, that's pretty much it, until Baby Tom Hanks starts to hallucinate, and though I get that he's resolving a childhood trauma, there's no real explanation for his breakdown (they really don't want to diagnose him), so the movie seems to say role-playing drove him mad. Kind of. It's not quite as harsh as all that, but where Mazes and Monsters missteps is in poorly motivating a lot of the character turns, introducing things that don't pay off, etc. So role-playing is both dangerous and healing, but it doesn't really convince either way. And the cheesy music had me rolling saving throws every time we got a romance montage. Oof. 3 years 11 months ago

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