Mazes and Monsters (1982) - Because You Watch Starcrash
Episode description
“Beware of the sacrilege!”
This week your Distinguished Professors enjoy a film with Tom Hanks, fresh off his days of bosoming and buddying and on the cusp of a noteworthy acting career: the D&D-sploitation movie Mazes and Monsters! Roll for initiative as we discuss the sad fact that two-thirds of this podcast can’t drink a man’s beverage, the “real-life” roots of this story, a series of tragic hat choices, the 80s backlash against Dungeons and Dragons, a bit about D&D’s popularity, the Maze Controller, Clink’s uncle Tom Harvey is in this (!!!), a comparison with Ordinary People, the worst opening music ever, Clink’s helmet, JJ being coded as gay through his Noel Coward costume, the transition from JJ’s story to Robbie’s story, a brief digression into ghost belief, the first world problems of our protagonists, creativity and individual leads to destruction (hi, Supergirl!), ways this could have been weirder and more compelling, made-for-TV special effects, bad lighting, Kate’s desire to be a writer and the role of imagination in writing, random funk, another cheapass Styrofoam cave, a nerdy clarification of the emotional status of Vulcans, live-action role-playing, JJ hijacks Daniel’s game once his character stupidly gets killed, the fallacy of “winning” D&D, the irony of capitalists accusing D&D of being satanic for being about accumulating wealth and power, Tom Hanks can’t run, the morass of the cave, Berres’s origins as a D&D player in 1984, comparisons with the anti-video game movement, Vanderpool spitting some random Eminem lyrics, the fiction of an open parking spot in New York, Slayer on the marquee in New York and other moral panics, a quick discussion of modern Satanism (and Berres screws up the name of the Satanic Temple), and the mystery of priapism.
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Music credits:
"Laser Groove" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License