Dark Dungeons, the movie: the review. (@Dark_Dungeons)

As most of you probably are all too aware of by now, I enthusiastically backed the Kickstarter to turn Jack Chick’s infamous Dark Dungeons comic into a movie. For the few that read here and who aren’t aware, Jack Chick is a… well, he’s a cartoonist that has drawn and published some incredibly horrible, hate-filled, and just generally awful tracts that are ostensibly about how great Christianity is, but seem sometimes more like the agitprop that Satan would have written in order to discredit Christianity.  Chick has quite the ironic following, however, because it doesn’t matter who you are and what you do: Jack Chick has drawn a tract attacking you.

And the greatest of his tracts has got to be Dark Dungeons, which reveals how Satan will destroy the world via roleplaying games.  This led JR Ralls to – and I still don’t know how he managed to wrangle permission* – convince Jack Chick Publications to grant him the film rights to the comic, and for Ralls to produce the Dark Dungeons movie.  I have finally gotten a chance to watch it, and will discuss it after the fold.

Continue reading Dark Dungeons, the movie: the review. (@Dark_Dungeons)

The full ‘Dark Dungeons’ trailer.

In all of its glory.

The movie will premiere at GenCon in August. An explanation of what is going on can be found here; suffice it to say that the movie is legitimately attempting to faithfully recreate the original Jack Chick comic, both in plot and in tone.  This is a truly audacious enterprise, in its way: I look forward to seeing if it has the effect that the director intended.

Moe Lane

The first “Dark Dungeons: The Movie” trailer.

Yes, they really are going to show a movie adaptation of Jack Chick’s famous comic tract attacking Dungeons & Dragons.

The movie site is here. Crowd-funded, and I was part of the crowd. So you can probably blame me for this, at least in part. And before you ask: everybody involved agreed that the best, most honest, and frankly ethical way to do this movie was to just take what was in the comic and put it up on the screen. That’s what producer JR Ralls promised Jack Chick, and I backed that project because of that promise. It would be far too easy to turn this project into a Flying Spaghetti Monster self-indulgence or some other silliness, and I remain confident that Ralls will be able to give us something that was reproduced as faithfully as possible, in both word and tone.  I will actually be disappointed if he does not.

Moe Lane