Jeux de rôles

I was tempted to turn off during the awful opening theme song for Skullduggery, but if I had I would have missed out on one of the strangest films of the '80s. I suspect that the incredibly bizarre execution of this movie was deliberate, but what I fail to understand is why: Why put so much effort into making something so unintelligible? Why waste money filming a script that would surely struggle to turn a profit? Why put your name to something that is unlikely to help your movie career? So many questions...

The film begins in 1382 in Canterbury, England, where a wizard is betrayed by a nobleman, and so curses his offspring for generations to come. Cut to Trottelville, USA, 1982, where Adam (Thom Haverstock) and Barbara (Wendy Crewson) work at a costume shop. After hours, they join a few friends for a Dungeons and Dragons style board game, during which Adam starts to suffer strange hallucinations. From this point on, things get weirder and weirder, with an offbeat, logic-free storyline full of surreal elements that leave one feeling like they've just dropped acid.

Amongst the craziness on offer: a talent show at the Trottelville Junior College in which a variety of terrible acts are met with laughter and applause by the audience; repeated cuts to a man playing with a jigsaw puzzle; Adam killing people, including a fortune teller (not a very good one-she didn't see that coming!) and a woman in roller skates whose footwear is cooked in an oven; a man walking in an out of scenes with a Tic Tac Toe board on his back, which gradually gets filled in; a fat couple visiting the costume shop looking for rabbit costumes; a Punch puppet appearing in the background of numerous scenes; a doctor in a hospital wearing a gorilla suit; a policeman acting like Sherlock Holmes (and his assistant is called Watson); and an organist at a church dressed like Liberace.

The sheer randomness of the film outdoes even the most incomprehensible of French avant-garde cinema, and gives the most schlocky of '80s horror movies a run for their money. For many, this will prove unwatchable; for others, it might well prove irresistible. Whatever your opinion, there's no denying that it's a unique experience. As for writer/director Ota Richter's intent: the film's final shot is a big clue, a close-up of a character (I gave up trying to figure out who) flipping the bird! It would seem that the joke is on those who stick it through to the end in the hope of any kind of logical explanation.

No, seriously. It makes no sense. It's just a bunch of random nothing thrown together in as senseless as way possible. Pick up stock footage, assemble it at random, and release it as a feature film, and you'll have something easily better than this.

So bad, it's not even funny. The only thing funny is that I watched it, and you can laugh at that.

There's a lot of thins in this movie that could have come straight out of a David Lynch project- constant shots of a creepy puppet, a mysterious man putting together a puzzle, the director walking through dressed as some sort of a technician with a tic-tac-toe board on his bak.... all really interesting imagery. I think that most of the comments on here are negative because no one even bothers to try and figure out what the hell is going on in this strange film. I really liked it; although my taste runs toward the b-grade genre. The acting is really not great, but there's always something interesting to look at (try to figure out how the tic-tac-toe game is being played) and despite what others have said, the music is great. I won't bother going into the plot here (not sure how well one could sum it up anyway) but I must stress that this is definately worth seeing if you get the chance. If you do watch it, I urge you to take your time and actually try to figure the imagery out; there's a good bit of symbolism at work here and I don't think one should simply write this movie off as awfull without at least thinking it over for a while. I picked it up as an ex-rental for $2 so I can hardly complain. This would actually be nice as a DVD. Seriously.

This movie is pure, concentrated evil.

I acquired my copy from the dusty back bins of a video store which was going out of business back in 1987. Just to put things in perspectrive, it was on Beta--I had to dub it over to VHS. As a gamer, I tend to collect movies in the "Roleplayer Goes Crazy" genre. Most of them are pretty bad...but this one has them all beat, in terms of sheer deep hurting.

Nevermind the blatant anachronisms--such as the opening scene, set in 14th century England in an 18th century manor house where a 16th century nobleman is killed by a guy in a cheesy 1980's wizard costume. Nevermind the fact that the lead actor looks for all the world like he's dead, and was animated by black magic just for this movie. Nevermind the fact that the best actor in the entire movie is a puppet who just hangs there and doesn't do anything. Even without all of those factors, the movie would just be painful.

And yet, it holds a kind of sick fascination, not unlike a car wreck---you want to look away, but you can't. This movie has spawned an unwholesome and degenerate cult (at least two of the other comments on this list are from members.) Beware--this movie is CONCENTRATED schlock of the worst kind. Do not, do not, do NOT watch this movie and Mazes and Monsters back to back. The last person who did that wound up in the hospital a few hours later with an acute gall bladder attack. I kid you not.

I rented this film about a dozen times in the late eighties before my video store got rid of it. I wish I was the one to get it. Did I love the film? Yes. Because it is good? No. This film is so outrageously bad, even by bad movie standards. But it doesn't fall into the gray zone of boring bad. It's not bad like other bad films. A million typing monkeys couldn't have come up with a more disjointed script. After reading other reviews, positive and negative, I suspect that a lot of the people who watched it were too stunned to even remember how messed up the continuity was. This is like three bad films in one (at least parts of three bad films, randomly cut together) As far as I remember, it starts off with the story of the friends roll-playing, then they start to die, before anyone figures out what is happening- Adam starts killing some other people, for no apparent reason, then he goes to a party. I won't give away the ending, which comes rather out of left field. In the end I was confused.

Yes, put it out on DVD, it's been too long since I saw it. (I too used to inflict this film on others, watching it is like picking at a scab.) I can't cast a vote, it's awful and great. Please, recommended for weirdo's only.