Dark Dungeons

Demonising fear mongering and hate spreading. Suicide over an RPG game? That's disgusting. It's one thing for a man out of time to spout that nonsense. Back in the masogonistic prehistoric era of racism and homophobia. But now?.. is no one safe. Can't even leave gamers alone?

If you go into this expecting a great film, you're going to be disappointed. This is based off of a Jack Chick pamphlet, so you know that it's not going to be serious business.

What makes this film is that everyone tries to play their roles as straight as possible. There's no Leslie Nielsen-esque romping or Jim Carey mugging for the camera. Calling this a parody isn't entirely accurate, however it's not entirely *inaccurate* either. The source material here is so absurdly ridiculous that there's no need to lampoon the fact that some religious groups are over the top ridiculous when it comes to "demonic" material because they do it for you. It's like petting a cat: you just put your hand down and it does all the work for you.

The end result is a film that can arguably be called "bad", but bad in all of the right ways. The acting is decent and the script, while ridiculous, is pretty hilarious. So far there are only two avenues for getting this film, either a DVD via Amazon or a direct purchase from the official website. It's absolutely worth purchasing at least via the website and it's a shame that it's not more well known than it it currently is.

"Dark Dungeons" is based on the Chick Tract of the same name, which tells of the dangers of Dungeons & Dragons. When college students Debbie and Marcie enrolls into the world of tabletop roleplaying games, they enter a world of darkness, madness and an evil cult set on awakening an ancient evil. Will Jesus Christ be able to save them?

As a tabletop gamer and D&D player myself, I have of course known about the Satan panic in the 80's, of which Jack Chick's work is highly prolific of; with anti-roleplaying groups, movies like "Mazes & Monsters" and obvious the Chick Tract, upon which this movie is based on, I often just laugh off the lunacy of the fearmongering against D&D. I just can't take those claims about it leading to Devil worship, murder and violence serious, when not only am I a member of that community and know it very well, but also that thanks to internet shows like "Critical Roll", D&D has become more mainstream these days.

I actually liked this movie for a number of reasons; if you know anything about the producers of this movie, Zombie Orpheus Entertainment, you'll know that they mainly focus on popular movie and web content aimed for the geek community that are into sci-fi, fantasy, and tabletop gaming, such as "The Gamers" and "JourneyQuest". They have also produced games themselves. So it would be no stretch to believe, that the reason why the script may be a bit lacking and the acting is not all that convincing is because they were mainly not taking it all that serious and were just poking fun at the sourcematerial. On the other hand, this is actually an official film adaptation with Jack Chick himself signing his approval of the movie.

The best way to watch this movie, in my opinion, is to do so ironically - like with any "so-bad-it's-good" movie like "The Room", "Birdemic", and "Troll 2". Then you will get a ton of entertainment out of it.

7 out of 10

Honestly, this feels more of a poorly written joke made by a couple of people with no idea of board games. Am I supposed to take this movie seriously ?

In the 1980s, Jack Chick Publications produced an extremely fundamentalist Christian tract denouncing the dangers of playing RPGs. This film is hilarious precisely because it is so self-aware in following the fantastical tract, even one-upping it at times(LARP and Cthulhu, anyone?) The story follows two Christian girls, Marcie and Debbie, as they go off to college and become ensnared by the glamorous, underground bacchanal that is Dark Dungeons gaming. But things are even darker than the bags under the girls' eyes after playing all night -- Mistress Frost seeks to use the girls to call forth demons into our world. Watch who lives, who dies, and who falls to their knees to accept Jesus as their personal lord and savior.

Above all, watch for the references to gaming, to other Zombie Orpheum productions, and to Maven of the Eventide from the That Guy With The Glasses website.