Mazes and Monsters

This 1982 made for TV movie starred Tom Hanks, Wendy Crewson, David Wallace, and Chris Makepeace as college kids who play a roleplaying game called "Mazes and Monsters". This movie, directed by Steven Hilliard Stern, is a thinly veiled insult to the actual gaming public, and specifically those who play Dungeons and Dragons. This movie, shot at the height of the era when anti-gaming rhetoric was at its highest, takes the same stabs at gaming (and in the same manner) that the ultra-Christian tract by James Chick "Dark Dungeons" does.

In the movie, Robbie (Hanks) goes off to college and is quickly swept up in occult dealings by a small "cult" of gamers. Lead by the cult leader (My DM was charismatic, too, but jeez...) Jay Jay (Makepeace), Robbie's life quickly falls apart under the stress of trying to lead a normal life, and simultaneously exist in the world of animal sacrifice and dark dealings that roleplaying leads to.

This movie, while funny at points, is more sad than anything else. Many parents in the 80's honestly believed the hype about D&D screwing up their kids, and as a result a lot of would-be gamers probably ended up having more self esteem issues than they would have anyway. Sad state of affairs. This movie is available in VHS format, published by Time Warner.