We open in Canterbury--where else?--in the year 1382. Lord Adam is betrayed by his vizier, the leader of a Satanic cult, who murders the Lord for reneging on his deal to give him his soul. In addition to kill Adam he also curses his bloodline. Flash forward six hundred years to "Trottelville, U.S.A.", where Adam's descendant, also named Adam, is a costume shop employee who plays a Dungeons and Dragons clone which is unfortunately never named. After experiencing some strange incidents, like a red light appearing in the game board castle, and a harlequin puppet falling off the wall for no reason, Adam becomes possessed by an urge to carry out murders that mirror his friends' game session. Slowly, with a wide variety of sometimes-relevant tangents along the way, we seem to accomplish these murders until the rather bizarre ending where he may or may not be killed.
I've been an extremely casual D&D player since high school, and so the "D&Dsploitation" films are old friends of mine. I haven't seen all of them, unfortunately, but both Mazes and Monsters and Skullduggery have been films I've returned to over and over again over the years. I know a lot of people think it's weird that people used to demonize D&D so much, but really, I'm sure we could all make lists of the developments within our lifetimes that have had overly elaborate crusades pushed against them. The first rule of humans is that we hate that which is new, no matter its benefit to us, and no matter how harmless it truly is. And clearly the only path to virtue is found by repressing one's natural tendencies and feelings. If you're not familiar with the controversy that appeared around Dungeons & Dragons, it's basically this: in 1979, a student named James Dallas Egbert III killed himself after at least one failed attempt. It came to light during the police investigation that the child prodigy was a D&D player, and when people realized they didn't know too much about the game they figured there was a connection. This controversy, as far as I know, was tied in with the greater moral panic against Satanism in the U.S. during the '80s and '90s, when we got all those strange cases of kids claiming they saw the workers at their daycare sacrifice zoo animals to the Devil. The Egbert case was the story that Rona Jaffe based Mazes and Monsters off of, and when that got its 1982 TV adaptation with Tom Hanks I assume that Skullduggery's director Ota Richter got himself to thinking that this was a new market of sorts. Little did he know he'd end up creating the best that tiny market would offer!
Beyond possibly ripping off Tom Hanks, Richter had some sort of heart in this film, and I can tell because of how meticulous it is. So much happens in this movie that I doubt I can get it all written down succinctly. Several recurring tangents include a series of scenes where guys with tic-tac-toe boards drawn on their backs have squares marked off by competing players. Also, there's a guy in a dark smoky room who puts together an incredibly simple jigsaw puzzle, which is related to the recurring tarot references the movie makes...I think the puzzle is supposed to be the same as the Lovers card but I'm never sure. As you can surmise from all of that, D&D is not the only game being played here. The idea of games even extends into more casual scenes, like a creepy sequence where a nurse tries to "seduce" an unwilling Adam by asking him if he wants her to play the "game" of being his "mommy" (ugggghhh). And every moment of this is made as weird as possible, to make it as game-like as possible, to remind us that this is a world where magic exists. This is a story about a curse. If you don't play attention to that opening scene literally none of this will make sense, but that's good, because then you'll have to watch it again.
The lapses in logic, while abetting the themes and plot, are also hilarious. When Adam is possessed during that scene with the nurse (which, by the way, you should watch pretending the genders are reversed), and begins chasing her around, she tries to get into a mansion by banging on the door. But this mansion apparently belongs to none other than Liberace, who is playing the piano too loud to hear her. May not be played by the real Liberace, but it's got to be him--not only does he have the sequins, but his piano has a candelabra on it! And when the film isn't showing us the final fate of Chandell, it's showing us a Lady Street Fighter-esque crime-party held by a man known as Doctor Evil.
I think that speaks for itself. There aren't any jokes that I could make with that that haven't been made a billion times before.
If you are even just a casual D&D fan like me, Skullduggery will hit you in ways both good and bad. It's a product of a time when embarrassing paranoia ran rampant, but it's also more loyal and fair to the actual game than something fearmongering like Mazes and Monsters. And in a lot of ways, the movie transcends the D&Dsploitation mold to be a movie about the magic of games in general. It was one of the earlier Really Weird movies I saw, and I think it will resonate with you too.
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