*evil laugh* Hello, dear, foolish mortals.
I beseech you to join me on a campaign that
I promise your parents is not full of
demons and danger.
Who am I kidding? We all know it is.
In other words…
"I want to play a game."
Shut up, Jigsaw.
This is not just any game, oh no! 
This will become your life.
And if you do not survive the game, well...
sacrifices must be 
made for spells and…
...y’know, creatures and... things.
When you create a character in the world,
you will become that character.
And then will probably get very depressed and die!
Or you could just play it like a normal game 
like most people do!
Dungeons & Dragons,
is it just a normal game?
That’s not what you’ll hear 
in today’s dumpster find,
which is, of course, 1982’s made-for-TV movie 
"Mazes and Monsters,"
featuring some surprisingly notable names,
such as Tom Hanks, Lloyd Bochner,
Anne Francis, Vera Miles, Murray Hamilton
and some other people.
Get ready for a blast 
from the Satanic Panic past!
“The point of the game is to amass 
a fortune without being killed.”
So… life. This game’s actually 
just about life,
that sounds fun.
The absolutely worst 70s 
torchy song
plays over the opening credits 
of a taxi driving.
*music*
“...WHEN COLD WINDS BLOOOOWWWWW...”
That’s enough of that!
The taxi drives back in time to
six months earlier.
Wow, where can I find that taxi?
Three college kids return home from
college for break,
and they all have apparently
crappy home lives.
Jay Jay’s mom redecorated his bedroom
to look like a bathroom.
Kate's parents are divorced
and boys don’t understand her.
Daniel's parents want him to
transfer to MIT
and not aspire to create
computer games anymore.
We need the Daniels of the world.
How else would I have spent
a large portion of
my childhood playing Wolfenstein?
As if you didn’t!
Finally, they get back to school
and now they need a fourth 
player for their Mazes and Monsters game.
Robbie’s parents have
transferred him to the college
and tell him not to play that
Mazes and Monsters game anymore
because he got so obsessed that
he didn’t go to class
and got kicked out of his last school.
“I hate it when you drink.”
“I drink to get through the day.”
Geez, Lloyd, you drove Pia Zadora
and Vera Miles to drink?
What’s the common
denominator here, buddy?
“I could have been someone.”
 A contender!
Robbie reads the notice about
needing a fourth player
and Jay Jay tries to 
convince him to play.
He invites Robbie to 
a party in his dorm room,
where Kate talks him into it, mostly
because Robbie thinks she’s cute.
They soon play their first game,
you know, as you do,
by candlelight!
“I am Pardieu, a holy man.”
*singing along*
“...WHEN COLD WINDS BLOOOOWWWWW...”
Kate hears about Robbie’s brother Hall,
who ran away three years earlier
on his birthday,
which happens to be Halloween.
He is believed to be in New York City,
but nobody can locate him.
“Robbie, I’m so sorry,”
No touching, I am 
a holy man, after all!
“I know that I was meant to do comedy.”
Oh, is that what all of the stupid hats are
supposed to be telling us?
Jay Jay proposes they start
a new game of Mazes and Monsters
in the nearby Pequod Caverns
to make it more realistic.
Some kids got lost in the caverns
a while back and were never found
and the group risks expulsion from school
if they go there, but they agree to it, anyway.
“You are entering the secret mazes
of the evil Vorations.
"Somewhere within dwells 
the wicked Ak-Oga."
"Shall ye enter?”
“Aye!” “Aye!” “Aye!”
I guess.
“Why don’t we split up and each of us
look for the herb?”
“No, no, I don’t think that’s a good idea."
“What’s the matter? Scared?”
“...no!”
Okay, children, life lesson number...
...well, it’s probably not important enough
to be one, but it’s pretty important.
If your friend proposes 
a really bad idea,
and then follows it up with
“what, are you scared?”
Go ahead and say yes!
Fear, though sometimes
inconvenient, can be healthy
and stop us from doing stupid things
like wandering around alone in a cavern which is notorious for eating people.
When Jay Jay announces that there is a monster,
Robbie sees an actual, well actual imaginary,
monster and freaks out.
“’Tis all right now, I have slain the Gorvil.”
The group is excited as they leave that night,
except for Robbie because 
holy men shouldn’t kill things.
Except hopes and dreams, 
and maybe your buzz.
Robbie has a dream 
as Pardieu that night.
“Once you glory in killing, now you are
of a higher level.”
Well, you might be high, I’ll give you that.
The Great Hall tells him that 
in order to achieve the highest level,
he must lead a life of 
holiness aka celibacy.
Rather inconvenient 
now that he’s dating Kate.
“When you are worthy,
then you will come to the Two Towers
and be one with the Great Hall.”
So, of course, Robbie 
breaks up with Kate.
“I love you and I will always love you,
but I just can’t touch you anymore.”
A likely story.
Y’know, the Great Hall didn’t
say you can’t tell anyone.
If you just explain what’s going on, maybe
there’d be less confusion and hurt feelings
and maybe a little bit of therapy!
But we’re only halfway 
through the movie,
so we can’t possibly 
clear anything up yet!
It’s okay, though, because
now they’re just good friends,
however Kate thinks Robbie
is acting weird.
“What about his blessing people all of the
time and giving his stuff away and acting so holy?”
Yeah, that’s not weird and, 
quite frankly, irritating.
The Great Hall tells Pardieu to find
the secret city under the earth.
“Why are you so impatient?”
“Because I love you and I want you to forgive me.”
Pardieu, this is so sudden! We don’t
even know if we have anything in common!
Kate sees Daniel bicycling to the caverns
and follows him in.
“Daniel?”
Come on in! I was just
making an omelet, ya want one?!
Daniel admits that he
went into the caverns to cheat
and find where Jay Jay 
hid the game’s treasure,
and naturally this drives Kate
to kiss him...
...sure.
They admit that they love each other
and now everyone’s happy.
Oh, except for Robbie, whose no touching policy
appears to be problematic in a
crowded dorm room Halloween party,
so he leaves
and goes to bed,
where The Great Hall 
tells him he’s ready.
The next day, Daniel 
can’t find Robbie.
Kate calls his mother,
and she hasn’t seen him, either,
and she should be seeing
double about now,
so if he were there, she should
be seeing him twice as much.
Daniel finds the map 
Robbie was making.
Even though Jay Jay confirms
this is not a map of the caverns,
they figure out that Robbie has flipped into his
character and go to the caverns to find him.
“Robbie?!”
That’s Pardieu to you, heathen!
They can’t find him, so they 
clear their gaming stuff
out of the cavern and report
his disappearance to the police.
The detective starts quizzing them
on Mazes and Monsters
and the rumors of people
playing it in the caverns.
The friends play dumb,
and the detective proposes his
completely unsubstantiated theory.
“One of the players Robbie played with 
got carried away and killed him.”
“That’s kind of far out.”
“Mazes and Monsters is a far out game.”
Riiiight.
This brings us to the beginning of the movie
with the police search of the caverns.
Please don’t be starting over!
“The only thing I know 
is that if he is in those caverns,
...he’s dead.”
…dun Dun DUN!
Kate has an epiphany.
The Great Hall on Robbie’s map
signifies Robbie’s brother Hal,
who disappeared on Halloween night
just like Robbie did.
Meanwhile, Robbie is getting mugged
in New York City,
so like the smart cleric that he is,
he runs down a deserted alley into
a dead end to escape.
He sees the one mugger 
as a monster,
tries to use his spells on him, 
and ends up stabbing him.
It’s technically self-defense, 
but y’know, gray area.
Robbie seems to have a lucid moment 
realizing what just happened,
so he calls Kate and
tells her he is in New York,
which she should have 
remembered from the story,
but you know,
gotta draw out the movie!
Kate tells Robbie to meet them at 
Jay Jay’s parents’ house in New York.
Robbie ends up in the 
“secret city under the earth,”
where he meets a homeless man 
who tells him he is the King of France
and, though he does not know 
where The Great Hall is,
he can direct him to the Two Towers.
FINALLY, the friends figure out
that the Two Towers on the map are not a 
Lord of the Rings reference,
but the World Trade Center.
This movie’s a little dated 
for a few reasons.
They eventually track Robbie down 
on the roof of one of the towers
as he is about to
climb over the railing.
They snap him back to reality
and we know this moment 
is touching indeed
because that SONG is playing again!
And it apparently plays 
for three months!
The three friends are doing 
so much better
now that they don’t play 
Mazes and Monsters.
Kate is writing a novel,
Jay Jay is directing a play,
and Daniel… just is.
“How’s he doing?” 
“Oh, he’s fine.”
“I want you to know I don’t blame any of you 
for what happened to Robbie.”
The therapist blames my drinking
and I blame Lloyd Bochner for that, 
so you all are in the clear!
And indeed, Robbie is doing so much better
...except for the 
teeny, tiny fact
that he is now permanently 
Pardieu the Holy Man.
THAT information would have 
been helpful going in, Mom!
What is it with Lloyd Bochner 
driving his wives drink
and Vera Miles driving
all of these men
to permanent psychotic breaks?
The three humor Robbie with one last game
of Mazes and Monsters in the nearby woods
and mourn the loss of their friend’s mind,
the end.
So why is this film in the dumpster?
Mazes and Monsters is basically
if LifeTime decided to 
make Reefer Madness,
only about the exaggerated
evils of Dungeons and Dragons.
There are have been many 
controversies surrounding the game
since its release in the 1970s,
most of which seemed to crop up 
in the 1980s.
I could go through each and 
every single one right now,
but this video is already long enough.
Let's just hit on the major one at the moment.
The original book "Mazes and Monsters" by Rona Jaffe
is clearly based on the case of 
James Dallas Egbert III.
James was a University of Michigan student
who attempted to take his own life in the 
campus utility tunnels in 1979.
After this attempt failed, he hid out 
in his friend’s house for the next month.
Meanwhile, the search 
for the missing student
led an ill-informed 
investigator to assume
that James got lost in the tunnels 
during a Dungeons and Dragons campaign.
Once the press got a hold 
of this story,
it was impossible to separate James’ 
disappearance from D&D,
even after he was found 
and the real story came out.
This made D&D’s reputation 
more controversial,
and even more so when James was unfortunately
found dead the following year 
from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Of course, his emotionally-
abusive mother, drug use,
and alleged difficulty coming to terms with 
his sexuality were not factors,
but the game that he sometimes played was!
Correlation is not causation, people, 
please remember that.
Since then, clinical research has been performed
by multiple health agencies
and they have found no connection between 
role-playing games and self-harm.
"But," I hear you religious opposers saying,
"what if the scientists are lying?"
*sad sigh*
All right, let’s suppose D&D is bad.
What exactly about it makes it bad?
Is it the role-playing aspect?
If so, then we have to rule 
that acting, dancing,
and even certain psychiatric exercises 
are bad for the same reason.
What if the psychiatrist role-plays
a client’s abusive parent and becomes it?!
Maybe it’s specifically D&D itself,
and its use of magic, dragons, 
violence, and general dark things.
If you really want to rid the
world of such things,
do you know what else 
you gotta get rid of?
The Bible.
The Bible has all of that 
and then some in it,
and this is not me trying 
to be controversial,
this is a fact.
So if you read the Bible 
or are cast as Satan in a church play,
you’re apparently screwed.
The truth is if you don’t already believe
there is nothing 
inherently wrong with D&D,
my saying so is not 
going to convince you,
and I will probably hear 
about it in the comments
if the right people find this video.
But it’s true, there is 
currently no proof
that role playing games 
of any sort cause harm to anyone.
And because the belief 
that they do
has finally waned in light 
of science and research,
plus the other typical bad movie 
reasons like acting and writing,
Mazes and Monsters can be 
found in the dumpster.
If you are a Tom Hanks fan, 
it could be kind of fun
to see him in his first starring role.
If you’re not a Tom Hanks fan, 
then what the hell is wrong with you?
You do not like that, do you?
*sings loudly*
WHEN COLD WINDS BLOOOWWW!
*cat meow*
Shh!
*irritated cat meow*
SHH!
"I guess I'll get used to it."
