Tron, Dungeons & Dragons, aerobics and hair metal combined in The Dungeonmaster: a 1984 film that required seven directors to make.
Whether they intend to be or not, films are inevitably a product of the time in which they were made. Few films are quite as steeped in the 1980s, though, as The Dungeonmaster, also known as Ragewar, less commonly known as Digital Knights.
One of its titles hints at a connection to Dungeons & Dragons, the tabletop roleplaying game that was terrifying reactionary parents across the US by 1984. Its sci-fi trappings appear to be inspired by the huge craze for videogames in the same period – essentially, The Dungeonmaster is a low-budget Tron clone. Its hero is both a computer geek and a fitness fanatic; his girlfriend has an aerobics class – another sensation in the spandex-clad, body-conscious 1980s.
The Dungeonmaster was produced by Charles Band, and was one of the first offerings from his little indie studio with the big-sounding name, Empire International Pictures. The company really made its mark with 1985’s Ghoulies, a comedy horror that caught attention with its frankly brilliant poster of a green homunculus leaping out of a toilet. The image wasn’t initially in the film itself, but Band and director Luca Bercovici quickly realised its potential, and shot an additional toilet monster sequence to slot in after the fact.
Before that, though, Empire made a rather pedestrian 1983 horror, The Alchemist, and the subject of this post, The Dungeonmaster. Rather uniquely, its opening credits list no fewer than seven directors – one of them Band himself, the others largely young up-and coming filmmakers in their 20s and 30s.
In theory, The Dungeonmaster falls into the category of anthology film, because each director has written and directed their own segment. In practice, though, this isn’t a collection of discrete stories like the V/H/S franchise, or the Amicus Productions films of the 1960s and 70s. The Dungeonmaster is all of 73 minutes long – even less if you subtract the lengthy credits – and so what it amounts to is a series of snippets, most of them lasting around six minutes. All contain the same actors, and most contain suspiciously similar action sequences, which implies that the filmmakers didn’t talk to each other all that much before they went off and started shooting.
The common thread that runs through the movie is its protagonist, the above-mentioned tech geek and jogging enthusiast, Paul Bradford (Jeffrey Byron). Paul has a strange three-way relationship with his artificially intelligent computer, X-CaliBR8, which he can communicate with while out on an afternoon run via a pair of spectacles that are like a prototype of the Google Glass.
With these specs, Paul can change traffic lights from green to red at a single glance – which, miraculously, doesn’t get anyone injured or worse – and withdraw money from an ATM without a credit card to hand. At home, though, Paul’s oddly close relationship with his computer evidently unsettles his girlfriend, Gwen (Leslie Wing) – so much so that she’s not exactly thrilled when Paul asks Gwen to marry him.
Paul’s domestic life is soon set aside, however, when Paul and Gwen go to bed that evening and wake up in an alternate fantasy world. Gwen finds herself tied to a post and wearing a skimpy dress, like someone from a Frank Frazetta painting. She’s repeatedly menaced by a cloaked villain named Mestema, played by the quite shockingly prolific character actor Richard Moll. Into this sparse realm (which looks suspiciously like an abandoned quarry filmed at night) comes Paul, clad in grey spandex and with a version of X-CaliBR8 strapped to his wrist. (The bit of tech looks uncannily like a Nintendo Power Glove, but that didn’t come out until 1987.)
How did the couple end up in this strange realm? It’s never explained. At first, it appears as though Paul and Gwen have been sucked inside X-CaliBR8, Tron-style, and that the computer itself might turn out to be the villain. This never happens. Instead, we’re treated to a series of largely unconnected sequences where Paul must use his electronic glove to rescue Gwen from assorted threats. In one, there are various zombies, presided over by a puppet named Ratspit. (Ratspit’s played by the segment’s writer-director, John Carl Buechler, who later did the makeup effects on Ghoulies and directed two of its sequels.)
In another segment, Gwen is trapped on stage while the shock rock band W.A.S.P perform one of their appalling songs – truly a fate worse than death.
An even weirder one involves an ice cave filled with evil figures, which soon thaw out and attack. Among these figures you’ll find Jack The Ripper, a werewolf, a mummy, and, er, Albert Einstein. What’s evil about Einstein, exactly? Perhaps writer-director Rosemarie Turko hates theoretical physics.
It doesn’t take long for repetition to set in. Much of Paul’s challenges are met by him pressing a few buttons on his Power Glove before unleashing a laser visual effect which eliminates the threat. The main exception is Mestema, implied to be Satan or at least in league with him; Paul punches him repeatedly in the face and pushes him into a pit.
The Dungeomaster isn’t, by most typical yardsticks, a good movie, but it’s undoubtedly an interesting one. For one thing, it’s somehow both of its and slightly off the cultural pace. The film appears to be trying to evoke the anything-goes spirit of the early 1980s videogame scene, with moments that feel torn from the vivid colours of Atari 2600 games. But by the time cameras started rolling in 1983, the North American videogame crash had happened, and Atari faced all sorts of financial trouble.
As mentioned above, The Dungeonmaster also seemed to have been put together in anticipation of Disney having a huge success with Tron, but that film turned out to be less of a Star Wars beater than anticipated when it appeared in 1982 – though it did, of course, become a cult item itself in time.
The Dungeonmaster’s technical ideas are quite interesting, though, and it’s a little disappointing that we didn’t get an entire film about Paul’s gadgets and the strain they put on his love life. Charles Band did direct a sequel to The Dungeonmaster in 1988 – it was part of another anthology called Pulse Pounders, which also included a kind of Re-Animator re-union called HP Lovecraft’s The Evil Clergyman (bringing back Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton and David Gale) as well as a 30-minute Trancers sequel, bringing back Tim Thomerson as Jack Deth.
In a demonstration of how chaotic things may have been at Empire Pictures, however, Pulse Pounders was never released and spent years in obscurity. The Evil Clergyman and Trancers: City Of Lost Angels have since been re-discovered, restored and released; the half-hour Dungeonmaster segment was less lucky. Only some brief snippets remain online, while the rest of the footage lies in oblivion – tied to a tree, perhaps, and jealously guarded by the evil Mestema.
The Dungeonmaster, should you wish to see it, is currently streaming on Prime Video in the UK.
—Thank you for visiting! If you’d like to support our attempts to make a non-clickbaity movie website:
Follow Film Stories on Twitter here, and on Facebook here.
Buy our Film Stories and Film Junior print magazines here.
Become a Patron here.
