“I reject your reality and I substitute my own!”

Justin’s rating: I am a worthy opponent for Mestema too!

Justin’s review: What do you get when you toss the infamous Charles Band, six of his director buddies, Tron, and Dungeons & Dragons into a blender and set it on “bizarre schlock?” One of the oddest anthology flicks to come out of the ’80s.

Paul (Jeffrey Byron) creates a fully sentient female computer in 1984 named X-CaliBR8 — a name which is totally metal — and immediately lands in hot water with both his human girlfriend (who’s jealous of the computer) and an interdimensional wizard.

The wizard*, Mestema (Night Court’s Richard Moll), thinks that he’s found a worthy opponent in Paul.** So he kidnaps Paul’s girlfriend Gwen (Leslie Wing) and challenges the hacker to a dungeon run with Gwen as the prize. While Paul’s navigating these dangers, Gwen gets to hang out without any pants and chained to a rock for the duration. She probably hated her agent after this film.

As I said before, this is an anthology flick with seven short segments crammed into the 78-minute runtime. What I wasn’t expecting with a movie called The Dungeonmaster was a heavy dose of computers, cybercars, and magic tech glasses that change traffic lights and crack into ATMs. As Paul runs Mestema’s dungeon, X-CaliBR8 helps him via a cool wristwatch that apparently communicates over dimensions. Also, it shoots lasers and makes dragons. Google is still working on its own prototype.

So it’s magic vs. machines (“the new magic”), which is a pretty cool concept, as is handing all seven segments to seven different directors to handle. There isn’t a lot of time here to get bored as The Dungeonmaster careens from challenge to challenge in Mestema’s reality. These include an ice cavern full of frozen historical villains (including Einstein?), a zombie cave, a WASP heavy metal concert, a fight against an Indonesian stone giant, and a desert race in Future Cars.

Each director puts a spin on this merry-go-round of kitschy craziness, and while it doesn’t make any sort of cohesive sense, it’s still a wild ride with puppetry, animation, stop-motion, and futuristic vehicles. As such, it’s certainly not well-tread territory, and the imagination present is a cut above a lot of Charles Band productions. It kind of reminded me a little of Waxwork II: Lost in Time (but perhaps not quite as good).

I absolutely wouldn’t argue with anyone who claimed that this was messy and cheesy — it absolutely is. And Paul is a rather dull lead character with no ability to pull off the one-liners he spouts.

But it was a great short watch even so.

*X-CaliBR8 says that Mestema is also Satan, which seems like a jump in the narrative here.

*How Mestema managed to monitor all of the universe for opponents is not explained. As the Simpsons famously said, “Whenever you notice something like that, a wizard did it.”

Intermission!

• There was a sequel that was filmed in 1988 called Pulse Pounders, but it was never put out in theaters or on home video. Its three parts were eventually found, restored, and released decades later, most notably with the Trancers mini-film.
• TSR put out a statement that this film had absolutely nothing to do with Dungeons & Dragons, just in case viewers were misled by the title.
• There are at least three versions of this movie, and each pose the challenges in a different order.
• Just jumping into the deep end of nudity early on, aren’t we?
• The anti-sex monsters will get you
• Paul’s glasses are comically HUGE
• Wait, does Paul have cyborg vision with his glasses? How? Where do you stick ’80s microchips in that thing? And how does it control traffic lights?
• “How did I fall for a guy whose first love is a machine?”
• “By the power of the Prince of DARKNESSSSSS!”
• Jack the Ripper (frozen), Einstein (frozen), Bloody Mary (frozen), Louis the 16th (frozen with his head chopped off)
• The zombie effects are pretty well-done
• The animated dragons… a little less so
• Mestema is a horrible music composer
• The stop-motion titan is so very groovy
• “The word is ‘forget it!'” That’s two words, Paul.
• Back when cop cars had no barrier between seats yet had accessible locks on the back door
• Laser bank shot off a mirror
• Wait, the gargoyle was an angel? One who needs a bra?
• Well, I guess you just killed Satan. That was easy.