Netflix Instant Queue Fridays: The Dungeonmaster
There are times my Netflix recommendations are pretty awesome. You know how on XBox Live Netflix streaming it offers you “Movies Like [name of last terrible movie you watched]“? Well, normally for me this leads to “Movies like Fright Night,” which is going to list a bunch of subpar horror movies, most of which I’ve seen. While I still appreciate this as sometimes it uncovers a forgotten gem or something, this feature is really the most useful for me when I watch something out of my usual interests. This past week I decided to watch Krull, which is nowhere as great as you remember it — even if you hated it, it’s even worse. However, I then got a “Movies like Krull” listing the next time I went on… and just wow, what a load of crap. While it did list Time Bandits and a few other movies that I would like, I got a whole bunch of crappy barbarian movies — and a movie called The Dungeonmaster that I have never even heard of. I’m so glad I checked this out.
The Dungeonmaster is basically a video game storyline put to film, and I mean that in one of the best ways ever. The main story is that some computer guy named Paul and his girlfriend somehow get mystically transported by their desktop computer to another hellish dimension where the devil (or some other evil warlock / demon) forces Paul to go through a series of 7 challenges to save his girlfriend and himself from eternal damnation or slavery or something. A normal human being like you or me would probably be doomed to fail but not Paul, because he’s got the magic of his… computer. Yes, somehow Paul has a magical bracelet that gives him a tie to his computer so that he can, in many different ways and places, zap things with a wrist laser. Oh, and the main bad guy is Bull from Night Court.
All 7 challenges were by a different writer / director team, and are all substantially different from each other. While there’s are a few standard fantasy-style (for lack of a better word) missions, there’s also an urban detective / crime drama and a pretty lackluster Road Warrior ripoff (that is half of the trailer even though it’s maybe 5 minutes of a 90 minute film). Oh, and the band WASP makes an appearance.
I still get erect for Rock and Roll related horror, and while this is merely a cameo, it’s still pretty great. WASP as you may recall also wrote classics like “Fuck like a Beast” and “On Your Knees.” They’re one of the heavier hair-metal bands, and this song, Tormentor, was a real song on their first album. It’s not all that good… just like this movie.
Overall, this is a completely watchable piece of trash. Each of the challenges is short enough that you won’t lose interest in them, even the really bad ones (like one where Paul literally walks into a cave and shoots the wall repeatedly with his magic compu-bracelet and rocks fall down and smashes a troll– that’s the whole challenge). It’s got some promise, but every one of the challenges just manages to somehow fail to live up to its potential, especially since the solution to pretty much everything is “maybe I’ll shoot a laser from my arm.” It’s like every episode of Voltron, but instead of forming Voltron at the end, some guy just shows up and shoots a Robeast with a blowdart. It somehow devolves into watching Paul wrestling the devil awkwardly for a few minutes as the amazing climax to the film, ending more out of necessity to stop paying for film than because we get a rewarding finale. Still, I loved all 90 minutes of this movie, and I can’t wait to see what movies are “Movies Like Dungeonmaster.”
