Charles Band was known for promising directing jobs to people he worked with during the past. Some of the people he offered jobs to included John Carl Buechler, David Allen, Peter Manoogian, and Ted Nicolaou. They worked with Band as editors, make-up effects artists, stop-motion animators, and production managers, but they all wanted to direct. In 1983, Band finally gave them a chance to produce segments of an anthology film called Ragewar. Some of the cast and crew from Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn, including Jeffrey Byron and Richard Moll, returned here. The film was initially released as Ragewar but didn’t gain much traction, not even when the studio retitled it Digital Knights. Around this time, the game Dungeons & Dragons exploded in popularity, so Charles Band decided to capitalize on this. The movie finally hit theaters as The Dungeonmaster in the UK in 1984 and the US in 1985.
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Synopsis
Paul Bradford (Jeffrey Byron) is a technical wiz who’s developed a super-smart computer called “X-CALBR8”, aka ‘Cal.’ His girlfriend Gwen (Leslie Wing) isn’t too fond of ‘Cal’ as she thinks Paul cares more for it than her. One night, Gwen mysteriously disappears, and Paul finds himself in another dimension, where he sees Gwen chained to a boulder. Their captor is Mestema (Richard Moll), a powerful sorcerer who wants to battle Paul and his supercomputer. Mestema has Paul compete in a series of challenges to see if he can use his technology to overcome them. These challenges involve frozen terrors, zombified warriors, a giant stone golem, a heavy metal band, desert raiders, and a slasher. In between each challenge, Mestema keeps taunting Paul and telling him how he’ll fail and Gwen will be his. Will Paul succeed, or will Gwen fall prey to The Dungeonmaster?
Review
In some ways, The Dungeonmaster is a perfect encapsulation of what made Empire Pictures what it was. You’ve got action scenes, hideous monsters, stop-motion creations, occasional nudity, gratuitous use of heavy metal, and nonsensical stories. For an anthology film, the segments don’t flow together cohesively and just hop from one to another. It doesn’t help that each segment lasts roughly five to ten minutes without any development or setup. Each sequence does show off that particular director’s style, such as David Allen’s stop-motion and John Carl Buechler’s practical effects. Charles Band’s segment is probably the film’s highlight, even if it’s essentially a music video for WASP. Interestingly, parts of the WASP segment were incorporated into TerrorVision, made by one of The Dungeonmaster‘s directors, Ted Nicolaou. Unfortunately, this movie isn’t nearly as fun or as gooey as that one was.
The score by regular Empire/Full Moon composter Richard Band is decent, and it adapts to each segment. Like in Metalstorm, Jeffrey Byron is charismatic and likable, even if it’s hard to buy him as a tech wiz. Leslie Wing is ok as his girlfriend Gwen, though most of her screen time is yelling for Paul. Richard Moll is entertaining as the villainous Mestema, as he’s having fun playing such a larger-than-life villain. There are also some appearances from other Empire/Full Moon alumni, including Gina Calabrese (Vicious Lips) and Phil Fondacaro (Troll). Despite the film having seven total segments, it only clocks in at slightly over 70 minutes in length. Even though it’s a bit of a mess, at least it gets in and out relatively quickly. Overall, The Dungeonmaster doesn’t entirely work, but it has some cheesy fun to entertain genre fans and curious onlookers.
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