Review of Mazes and Monsters (1982) by Jason M — 11 Sep 2009

Tom Hanks goes IIIIIIiiNSANE thanks to a thinly disguised version of Dungeons and Dragons, starts seeing Minotaurs on the streets of New York, feels that he has to kill to protect his spells, etc in this made-for-TV film that's found a new life on DVD. The film has sort of found a second life in recent years as a campy comedy cult classic (4 C's in a row! What do I win?)-- possibly because Dungeons and Dragons-type roleplaying games don't have the dangerous aura that they used to--but at the time, it was intended as a serious thriller. Tom Hanks gives a fairly intense performance, and a good deal of the movie's effectiveness, either as a thriller or a comedy, is watching him come unglued, but like Reefer Madness, there's a sense that the film you're watching is so sincerely wrong-headed that it's hard to recommend it, if only because it won't understand why those kids are pointing at it and laughing.

Notable in that, like the 1970's King Kong remake, the World Trade Center features in the plot's 'climax', such as it is.