Dark Dungeons (2014)

Directed by: L. Gabriel Gonda
Run Time: 40 minutes

A disclaimer before the review. I backed the Kickstarter for this movie. Please keep this in mind while reading my review. With that out of the way let's move on to how the 80's satanic panic lead to the creation of this movie.

In 1983, Patricia Pulling founded Bothered About Dungeon & Dragons (B.A.D.D.) after her son tragically committed suicide a year earlier. She claimed that Dungeons & Dragons was the gateway game to the occult and Satan. A message that resinated with Jack Chick and his ministry. They make cartoon tracts that are meant to be left in random places in the hopes of saving people from evil and hell fire. These tracts are full of religious righteousness but lack logic, research, and real facts. So when Chick Publications made Dark Dungeons tract 1984 it was made in that same spirit. The tract claimed that D&D spell were real and could be used to corrupt and effect others, meetings with robed cult members at higher player character levels, and committing suicide if your character dies are just a few of the evil things about D&D.

Now the end of this story should be that the tract was a joke in role playing circles but J.R. Ralls had other ideas. After winning a thousand dollars in the lottery, Ralls wrote Jack Chick to buy the movie rights to Dark Dungeons and adapt the tract as close as possible into a movie. For some reason they said yes and then the magic of making a movie happened.

The story follows Debbie and Marcie. Two born again freshmen university students who are looking forward their time at school. After their orientation session, an older student Mike, warns the girls about the popular kids on campus and how getting involved with them will only lead to problems. At this university all the popular students play role playing games. Despite the warning the girls accept an invite from the role playing group to attend a party. It starts out like another normal party with loud music, alcohol, and photogenic people showing off how photogenic they are. With the party this exciting, everyone feels it's time to shut off the music and quietly watch a group of people describe what they are doing while rolling dice.

This starts Debbie and Marcie's corruption into Satanism and evil. Also, Debbie and Marcie's friendship starts to have problems as Debbie is selected to learn real magic and be one of the popular role players. Things get even worse when Marcie's character gets killed, kicked out of the role playing group, and ends up killing herself. Distraught over her friend's death, Debbie is at a loss as to what she should do next when Mike comes back into the picture. He has been praying and fasting for Debbie and he has a way to free her from this evil. She has to accept Jesus into her life and burn all her D&D stuff in a big bonfire.

Overall it is an okay movie. There is a lot of inside jokes in the movie that detracts from the overall enjoyment of the movie. Examples would be knowing about the insanity that are Chick tracts and various incidents that people have blamed on D&D. It's worth a watch but don't go out of your way to find this unless this sounds like your thing.


MVP: Possessing the balls to buy the rights for this thing and make just as insane as the original source material.



Make or Break: The unexplained references and inside gamer jokes did a lot to take me out of the film.

Score: 4.5 out of 10

Dungeons & Dragons: The Book of Vile Darkness (2012)

Directed by: Gerry Lively
Runtime: 82 minutes

As of this post this is the last Dungeons and Dragons movie. It is also the best and worst of the three Dungeons and Dragons movies. It is the best as because it is the most faithful to the original source material and it is the worst because it assumes that the audience is made up of hard core D&D fans. This movie also assumes that the audience has read The Book of Vile Darkness.

Yes I should explain this one. The Book of Vile Darkness is one of two adult supplemental material books for D&D. Basically additional information for people who would rather pay for stuff they don't want to make up themselves. As for the subject matter of the book, take the works of Stephen King, Clive Barker, Poppy Z Brite, and Dan Simmons, run their collected works through a blender and have R.L. Stein filter and write the result. An afternoon spent watching horror movie or reading horror novels would be much better than what The Book Vile Darkness is.

Like the second movie there is back story over the opening credits. It is about Lord Dickhead, a man who hates all things living and gets off on being an evil dick to everything. Near the end of his life he clues into the fact that the fun will end when he dies. So he makes a deal with demons that his soul can't be destroyed and then has himself turned into a book. A book so evil that it spread evil, corruption, and madness to anyone who comes in contact with this vile book.

All this evil stupidity creates the Bros of Pelor (Pelor is the god of light and keg parties). These Bros are so awesome that Pelor gives them medallions to help them spread righteous light across the land. The forces of evil deiced to break the book into three parts. The ink was found and destroyed but the cover and pages disappeared.

The movie opens with our young hero becoming a Bro. And like all young heroes he thinks he is the chosen one who is going to change everything. But when he taps the scared stone, the stone does not light up proving that he is the chosen one. So our hero runs off while his fellow Bros have a good laugh at the hero's naivety.

The hero's dad consoles the hero after he is sure that he will not kill himself laughing at the site of his son. The two of them talk about how foolish the hero is being. Meanwhile, barbarians attack the Bros keg party because barbarians are dicks when they smell beer. So father and son join their fellow Bros and the scene cuts to next day. Because who really wants to watch a battle in a fantasy movie.

Our hero wakes up from being hit in the head and finds he is the only Bro left alive. He has a hazy idea that the barbarians kidnapped his dad. So trusting to plot convenience our hero sets out to save his dad. After some needless misadventures with a sex worker our hero finds the people who ordered the barbarians to attack the Bros in the first place. We have goth witch, creep with a mask, annoying assassin, hired goon, and Mr. I have two minutes to live.

This group won't let our hero join until he kills someone in cold blood. Luckily for him, Mr. I have two minutes to live remembers his name and walks right into our hero's sword. So team evil sets out to do the next thing on their list of tasks, kill a bad looking computer generated dragon. This leads to travel and getting more reasons to hate the characters. Then they fight and kill the dragon. This leads to the major thing that takes me out of the movie, everyone except our hero is needlessly evil and stupid. In the dragon's cave team evil finds the mcguffin they need and villagers from a town they need to visit. So what does team evil want to do with the villagers? Why kill them because they are weak for letting a dragon capture them.

However our hero is quick thinking and save the villagers by pointing out by keeping them alive the village will welcome team evil with open arms. So team evil goes into the village, welcomed like heroes, and hired goon goes to the village brothel to meet the topless female nudity requirement. Our hero and goth witch fulfill the required love interest part of the film and creep with a mask goes around the village being a needlessly evil dick because he can. Oh and the annoying assassin is robbing the village.

The next day team evil is about to leave but the villagers are not happy about being robbed. So the villagers locked the gates of the outside and have rounded up a posse to kill team evil. Our hero nearly talks team evil out of a needless fight but creep with a mask makes it worse. Forcing team evil to kill all the villagers without the villagers putting up much of a fight.

Later that night hired goon gets character development and poisoned by our hero. Then our hero puts hired goon and all the treasure team evil has collected into a magical bag (bag of holding) and throws the bag into a near by lake. He then puts annoying assassin in a situation where the assassin gets himself killed. This paves the way for team evil to get the last mcguffin and the last act of this movie.


If you are a D&D fan this movie is for you. It is the closest thing to a movie version of  role playing session that is not a comedy that you are likely to find. As for everyone else if you can't find anything else or you can't sleep this movie might be for you. But I don't suggest looking this one up unless this really your thing or your are a masochistic fantasy fan.

MVT: There is a undead child that benefits from the low quality computer animation as it adds to the creepiness.

Make or Break: What breaks this movie for me is team evil being evil and stupid so the hero looks more heroic.

Score: 4.15 out of 10

Dungeons & Dragons (2000)

Directed by Courtney Solomon
Runtime: 108 minutes


         A rather quick bit of background information about Dungeons & Dragons. In the early 70's Gary Gygax and some of his friends created a set of rules so their miniature war game heroes and generals had something else to. This lead to (at the time this was written) five editions of the game and has inspired hundreds more games similar to Dungeons & Dragons. The game itself defaults to a fantasy world with swords and magic but with some work and imagination can be adapted to whatever the people playing want it to be. So your experience can range from your all time favorite B movie to something Godfrey Ho would give up on.
        Because the source material is so broad it is easy to see how difficult it would be to make a film that appeals to both the fans of the game and a general movie going audience. However what got filmed is a flawed generic fantasy adventure movie with a lot of wasted talent.

        From the opening info dump it is explained that their is magic in the world and humans who use magic are nobles. Humans who can't use magic and anyone who is not human is more than welcome to have no say in this society. Also the Child Empress and Jeremy Irons are both seeking the useless rod of plot momentum. After some average computer generated castle footage for the budget of film the movie cut to Jeremy Irons having a lot of fun being evil and dining on the scenery. He is trying to make his own useless rod of plot momentum. It fails and forces Jeremy Irons to be evil by using politics skill instead of his make artifacts skill.
         The frame shifts to our heroes, generic rouge hero and Marlon Wayans comic relief character number one. Marlon Wayans is funny and he can act when given the right material. This movie however was far from ideal for him. So our two heroes deiced to rob the school of magic because generic rouge hero hates magic users because the obvious coming romance and the plot demand it. In the school of magic, the wizard love interest is helping in the search for the useless rod of plot momentum. Our heroes interrupt her search and Jeremy Iron's goon squad captain and his friends interrupt them. So they use magic to meet the fourth member of their party the second comic relief character and together they all escape.
         Our heroes hide out in the busiest tavern and study a map that leads to the useless rod of plot momentum. Well the map is magical and only works when the characters destined to be in love with other touch the map. Before the other characters can complain the goon squad with their captain show up and a bar fight is started by shouting "Bar Fight!". The dwarf comic relief and Marlon Wayans seek out in the chaos and meet up with the two dimension elf ranger. She only part of the movie is to find the party and sometimes fight. In fact her dialog is so dull I can not recall a single thing she said in the entire film. But before boredom can set in, our two love birds return from the map and tell instead of show where the useless rod of plot momentum is. Also in order to get the rod the group must first get the McGuffin Ruby and that is located in the thieves guild in the city of Out of the Way.
          Richard O'Brien is the thief guild master and is rather over talented for the role and material. Our generic hero goes through the maze holding the McGuffin Ruby and defeats all the traps to get the McGuffin Ruby. However the goon squad with their captain show again, kidnap the love interest, and get attacked by the awesomeness of Richard O'Brien and his hired goons. Being the heroes they naturally go to rescue the love interest who forgot she could save herself with magic. At the base camp of the evil goons, the non-human characters wait for the human heroes to save the love interest, and Marlon Wayans' character get killed off needlessly.
          With our generic hero injured the movie detours to a blue ewok village that is bigger on the inside than the outside. There Tom Baker (Dr Who's fourth doctor) patches up the hero and explains why the rod of plot momentum is so important. The rod controls dragons and the Child Empress also has a rod that controls dragons and if both rods are used to control dragons. If both rods are used then dragons will kill each other and all of creation will get the middle finger. So the generic hero gets the rod and surprise the goon squad with their captain show up.
          This leads into the third act were Jeremy Irons is just having even more fun being evil and commanding average looking computer generated dragons. Sadly the movie ends in a rather predictable manor and leaves one with the impression that they have wasted their lives watching it. 

          This was a badly written movie. The characters are worse than stereotypes and calling this movie a plot is about the nicest thing I can say about the plot. The computer generated was mostly used to good effect and the practical effects are impressive. Also the movie is paced like an action adventure movie. It would have been a better action adventure film if it was not so generic and written by a couple of twelve year old who just wrote their first Dungeons & Dragons game/film. This also makes for a great drinking game movie, which is the only reason I would recommend a sane person to watch this movie.

MVT: The skeleton holding the useless rod of plot momentum. The skeleton is a shining example of why practical effects done right are always better than computer generated.

Make or Break:  Break, badly written characters, stupid plot, writers who did not understand the source material or cared.

Score:  1.3 out of 10