Dark Dungeons: The Movie: Parody Done Right

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Back in the early 1980’s, D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) came as close as it ever was going to get to being cool. At the time, D&D was readily available in almost every toy and book shop, right on the shelves. It was even popular enough for an 80’s cheesy Saturday morning cartoon which I remember with equal parts nostalgia and shame.

As the game’s popularity grew, there was also a backlash from certain fundamentalist groups and moral crusaders against D&D (there was even a 60 Minutes segment on this) concerned that it would lead to Satan worship (just like He-Man and Rock & Roll). Enter Jack Chick. Jack Chick is a cartoonist who creates “missionary bibles.” These are short, free comics that warn people they are going to hell unless they worship Christ in precisely the way Jack Chick does. These are scattered in unlikely places in the hopes that sinners will read them and change their lives based on a comic instead of using them as TP.

“Chick Tracts” rail against a variety of targets (Muslims, Catholics, sex, drugs and rock & roll) but one of the most unintentionally hilarious is a comic he created called Dark Dungeons (1984) which showed how D&D is a tool of Satan that leads to players developing THE REAL (satanic) POWER from its intense occult training. It has been a source of unintentional amusement for gamers for years. Somehow, a gamer managed to get Jack’s permission (likely with a Charm Person or Suggestion spell) to use his eight page comic into a 45 minute movie. Naturally, once this sucker hit Kickerstarter, it was fully funded. It is now available for $5 here.

 

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So is it worth $5 for this 45 minute movie? If you are hard core role-playing nerd, I would give an unqualified yes. This is a movie made by gamers, for gamers, loaded with obscure cameos and references just for you. There’s even a cameo; the Gamer’s cast plays a bunch of hooded demons trying to conquer the earth for Satan from their dark tower in hell.

But even if you aren’t a gamer, you may still find it quite enjoyable, so long as you know enough about RPG’s (and reality in general) to get the idea that D&D nerds don’t actually go around casting spells, and can pick up the irony of the D&D club being “just too popular” to kick out of school. Even if most of the in jokes and gaming references go right over your head, this movie just works as a parody in general for one reason; Dark Dungeons takes its subject matter seriously.

 

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Most parodies these days make the critical mistake of not bothering to research or stick with the source material, instead relying on stereotypes, in jokes, pop culture references or zany manatee gags. However, the majority of a good parody’s comedy shouldn’t derive from in-jokes, pop culture references or manatee gags. A parody’s best source of comedy should be played off the inherent ridiculousness of the original source material. Dark Dungeons gets that: its best source of humor is the utterly straight delivery. Dark Dungeons is, at its heart, a faithfully adapted, utterly clueless movie based on an utterly crazy worldview in which the UN is at war with God and Muslims actually worship the moon*.

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Dark Dungeons takes the original material and adapts it faithfully, keeping as many of the lines as possible. When it can’t rely on the source material (presumably from extending a short comic into a 45 minute film) it at least keeps to the spirit of the original, adding in bits from other comics, or the aforementioned in-jokes I mentioned earlier. The result is funny, even if the gaming references mostly go over your head (or at least, my significant other found it really funny). I really wish Hollywood comedy writers would take note. Recently movie parodies make the mistake of flying way too far off the plot. You have to give a certain level of faithfulness and understanding of the source material for a parody to really work. You also have to let the actors actually act as though they are in the situation in the movie. You can’t just throw in pointless dated pop culture references, some zany manatee gags and call it a parody.

Having taking the ridiculous situations being taken with deadly seriousness adds another level of comedic appeal. When the source material in itself is ridiculous, it just makes sense to just play it absolutely straight. Every line in Dark Dungeons, no matter how ridiculous, is delivered with gloriously goofy earnestness, from the crazy cultists to the feminist/witchy/dominatrix GM to the nightclub D&D rave party that I really wish had occurred in my college days.

Where ever possible, the movie choses to go with Jack Chick’s original dialogue, stuff from his other pamphlets he’s written, or made up insanity that might as well have been written by him. Thankfully, his comic is only a few pages long, so the 45 minute run time gives plenty of time to add in its share of Easter eggs and in jokes to let you know yes, the writers and actors are in on the joke. 

Other than those reminders, Dark Dungeons takes place in the world as envisioned by Jack Chick. It’s world in which D&D really is a super popular addictive gateway drug into real magic, occultism, Satanism. Where playing around in college steam tunnels where you are likely to be eaten by a grue and your soul sent straight to hell. Your only chance is to burn your books and accept Jesus as your personal saviour, or C’thulu will be summoned and Satan will reign on earth!

 

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You can check out the first 20% or so of the movie on YouTube for free. If you like it, you can get the whole movie for $5 at http://darkdungeonsthemovie.com/.  Incidentally, those creepy occult demons at the start in the robes? Those are the cast of The Gamers movies. Check out their stuff at http://deadgentlemen.com/ if you are a fan of tabletop RPG`s.

By Marc Thompson

#KeepItNerdy