Skullduggery (1983)

Wow! Such a good movie.

A Masterpiece!

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

SKULLDUGGERY is a comedy horror from Canada, made on an independent budget and with no discernable sense or storyline to it. It's one of the cheapest and dumbest films I've seen in a long time, a film which flirts with the then Dungeons & Dragons craze for a while but which mostly makes no sense whatsoever. A guy goes on a killing spree for some reason or another, but the picture quality is incredibly bad, so bad that you can't even make out what's going on. The film is dull-witted and inane, and a definite chore to sit through.

Skullduggery (or its many alternative titles) seeks to cash in on the early 1980s backlash. A group of college students get together to play a D&D board game led by an older gentleman (who turns out to be the devil).One of these players - Adam - comes from a long line of cursed men (starting with a king who betrayed the devil). While Adam is helping out at a community college talent show, he remembers his ancestral curse and starts killing people.Adam seems to think that some of his victims are villains fron the D&D game, but other times its seems that Adam is under a demonic spell, or mentally ill or something else.Sometimes Adam seems to have command of several different magical powers, while other times he seems like a helpess puppet.He frequency changes into different costumes, can tranform theatre props into real weapons and women seem to instantly want to have sex (sometimes very kinky sex) with him.The devil - pretending to be two different men (a older D&D gamer and a rich man named, Dr. Evil) - seems confused about what he wants Adam to do.He wants Adam to kill people, he wants Adam to join some sort of Satantic cult, and he also wants Adam to kill most of cult members...for...some reason....The film lets us watch a large chunk of the talent show (a weird show... lacking in talent) and the party hosted by Dr. Evil (an even weirder event that seems to suggest the devil likes to hang with geeks, nerds, stoners, and wanna-be young intellectuals.I suspect that the director and writer thought that they were making a clever, avent garde film with a topical, supernatural twist.Mostly, the film is hard to follow, with lots of weird characters and scenes that don't really seem to make sense.When the film pauses to make a point, its either too University pretentious to be taken seriously, or the film tries to make a joke that ain't really funny.One of the D&D players makes so many lame sexual innuendo jokes, he comes off as more shallow then a certain character from the Family Guy series.The local hospital has a doctor who has sex with nurses, while dressed in a Gorilla costume. Why? A nurse leaves work to press Adams pants. She then tries to seduce him by pretending to be his mother. Why?The film pauses backstage during the talent show to show us two effemiate gay characters who exist as a "arent them gay people funny" joke.Later on, at the party, two gay characters act as door bouncers who (for some reason) try to rape a woman in a threeway. Adam kills all three with a harpon gun. Granted, Adam becomes an effective killer (it helps when the police are mostly inept, and people leave dangerous weapons lying around or hanging up on walls).What else is good in the film?The music is actually pretty good (albeit often out of place). Skullduggery will probably be enjoyed by people who want to "riff" it. The Spoony Experiment has done so, and more efforts will follow.

Oh, Skullduggery, you horrible little cow patty of a film. Your actors are stiff and couldn't read the dialogue for an Ovaltine commercial with a sense of conviction, your plot is incomprehensible and filled to the brim with pompous symbolism no one buts its filmmakers could explain, and in the end, you just plain stink. But gosh darn it if I don't feel proud to have you in my collection of films. You are, without a doubt, the crown jewel in my cornucopia of crap. I threaten my friends with you and they cringe in fear. What power! And honestly, even though you still provide tons of laughs and potential riffing, one aspect of you keeps me coming back for more: your theme song! Oh, how brilliant is your theme song? I burned it onto a CD, for crying out loud! Does that not express my loyalty to you? I have no idea who was crazy enough to write the lyrics and put it to one of the worst tunes to come out of the '80s, but if I ever meet them, I will be sure to shake their hand (or tentacle) and say, "Thank you. Thank you."Can you read what's in my mind? SKULLDUGGERY! SKULLDUGGERY! Tearing up my mind! Heavy breath, passion in your eyes SKULLDUGGERY! SKULLDUGGERY! I just found a clue, it's all gone! YEAH! I can see what's in your head SKULLDUGGERY! SKULLDUGGERY! Feeling just ahead (??) Killer's smile, now I understand SKULLDUGGERY! SKULLDUGGERY! Shattered hopes and dreams all fall down! YEAH!Oh, good times, good times. 4/4 stars for sheer crapdom

There's a lot of thins in this movie that could have come straight out of a David Lynch project- constant shots of a creepy puppet, a mysterious man putting together a puzzle, the director walking through dressed as some sort of a technician with a tic-tac-toe board on his bak.... all really interesting imagery. I think that most of the comments on here are negative because no one even bothers to try and figure out what the hell is going on in this strange film. I really liked it; although my taste runs toward the b-grade genre. The acting is really not great, but there's always something interesting to look at (try to figure out how the tic-tac-toe game is being played) and despite what others have said, the music is great. I won't bother going into the plot here (not sure how well one could sum it up anyway) but I must stress that this is definately worth seeing if you get the chance. If you do watch it, I urge you to take your time and actually try to figure the imagery out; there's a good bit of symbolism at work here and I don't think one should simply write this movie off as awfull without at least thinking it over for a while. I picked it up as an ex-rental for $2 so I can hardly complain. This would actually be nice as a DVD. Seriously.