A Random, Stupid Adventure

Watching good movies is easy. Watching bad movies is hard. Diving through any streaming service, you’re going to see all the films they promo, the things they want you to watch that they spent a ton of money licensing or creating, and some of those are certainly going to be great. But to make the library feel full they have to also license a bunch of B-movie schlock, the crap no one cares about and even fewer are willing to watch. Occasionally these films can be gems, but most of them are just filler fodder, crap that was rightly forgotten for a reason that no one needed to see again.

And yet I’m weirdly drawn to these films. I want to watch them not only to see how bad they are but also in the hopes that there might be something interesting in and among all the mess. That’s what led me to The Dungeonmaster (aka Ragewar: The Challenges of Excalibrate and Digital Knights), a truly terrible film from 1984 that featured Richard Moll (of Night Court) as the villain and absolutely no one else of note at all. It was meant to play with the same kind of concepts as Dungeons & Dragons and Tron, but it doesn’t have the budget, nor did the creators of the skill, to pull off that kind of high-concept fantasy adventure. And so it just falls flat.

Frankly, it’s only claim to fame (which I only realized while watching the film and then looking it up after) is the one line, “I reject your reality and substitute my own.” That was a line Adam Savage loved to use on Mythbusters, outing him as a fan of the movie. And I will admit, it’s a pretty solid line. The rest of the movie is not, however. It’s a long, boring, random slog of a film, produced in an anthology format despite it not having an anthology plot, all to reach a nothing of an ending. This is not a hidden gem in a streaming archive, it’s just a terrible film that deserved to be forgotten.

The film stars Jeffrey Byron (who played a lot of bit parts on a number of TV shows) as Paul Bradford, a tech wiz who developed his own sentient computer system in his free time. With the help of special AR glasses that he has connected wirelessly to his computer, Cal, Paul is able to take on any task, analyze any problem, and hack into any system (which we see him do early in the film to steal 20 bucks from an ATM). The only thing he can’t handle with his tech is love as he struggles to find the right romantic rhythm with his girlfriend, Gwen (Leslie Wing).

Things come to a head one night, in Paul’s apartment, when first Gwen and then Paul are each teleported to the world of Mestema (Moll), an evil sorcerer who looks to challenge the greatest magicians in the world. Mestema equates Paul’s tech with magic, and so he’s lured Paul in to play his games. With a special bracer directly connected to Cal, Paul must venture through a variety of challenges, each meant to kill him, and prove himself the better each time. Perform enough of these tasks and Paul can get back Gwen and the two can flee Mestema’s world. Unfortunately none have survived Mestema’s trials before.

From the start you can feel the basic influences that The Dungeonmaster draws from. Many of the adventures in the film take place in fantasy worlds, each with random monsters and basic encounters. They feel like mini-adventures in Dungeons & Dragons, as if a dungeon master (we see what you did there, movie) were running the hero through their paces. Each adventure is designed to test different skills and keep the hero on their toes. Meanwhile, the very act of transporting a tech wiz into a fantasy world does speak to Tron. Of course, nothing else about this movie does.

There are two major issues with the film. The first is the budget, which is obviously tiny. The creators (one director for each segment of the film, plus the producers who oversaw the whole film) often have to make do with random props and things they could grab from costume departments, leading to a mish-mash of design concepts and aesthetics. Most of the special effects are shoddy at best, done on shoe-string budgets without much skill or ability. And everything is covered over with fog machines, badly drawn laser effects, and the like, all in the hope that audiences won’t see all the taped-together seams holding the production together.

On top of that, most of the segments are poorly planned and directed. Each director was given the basics of the story and sent off to create their segment. Most often this leads to repetitive and stupid adventures where Paul transports in somewhere, has to fight a monster, and then gets transported out. There’s no cohesion to these segments, no reason for any of them to exist. They don’t really test anything or teach Paul valuable lessons. They simply exist to add runtime to the adventure and then end so that the overall film can continue.

And, in fact, Paul really isn’t even the primary problem solver on these adventures. Cal, his computer device, frequently does all the work. He’ll ask it a question, or punch some buttons on his device, and then Cal will take care of it, firing lasers or picking locks or searching databases. You get the vibe, early on, that without the device Paul would be dead instantly. Also, if anyone else had the device, they’d be as powerful as Paul. Any dweeb could be in this position and succeed since Paul rarely uses his brain at all.

I think it would be different if the segments were designed to build upon each other and actually teach Paul lessons about being a hero. Of course that would actually make this a single, cohesive film and not an anthology movie that just so happens to start the same characters in all the segments (except the intro, where the “girlfriend” in a dream sequence is played by a different actress, one willing to get totally naked for no reason). That would make The Dungeonmaster into a real film and, for some reason, they didn’t want to do that, I don’t know why.

The resulting film is an absolute mess, start to finish. If I’m being charitable I might, maybe be able to see some glimmers of a good idea in this story. Certainly the acting is good enough and you can tell everyone on screen is trying, it’s just that they’re putting all this effort into a truly awful movie that has no hope of being good. I would have liked to enjoy this film, to find something fun that would recommend it, but I don’t think it’s even good enough to Mystery Science Theater 3000First aired on the independent TV network KTMA, Mystery Science Theater 3000 grew in popularity when it moved to Comedy Central. Spoofing bad movies, the gang on the show watch the flicks and make jokes about them, entertaining its audience with the same kind of shtick many movies watchers provided on their own (just usually not as funny as the MST3K guys could provide). It became an indelible part of the entertainment landscape from there, and lives on today on Netflix.. It’s just a bad movie.

And yet, somehow, it almost got a sequel. The second film was produced, shot, and edited in 1988 but, for some reason, was never finished to the point it could be released. Whatever is left of it sits in a can, somewhere, unseen by mortal man. I think that’s fine. Suffering through one of these was enough. I don’t need to see a second The Dungeonmaster, thank you.