Wake Up With Tom Hanks’ Freak Out Over Dungeons & Dragons in an 80s Movie

These are a the pivotal scenes from 1982’s “Mazes and Monsters,” a made-for-TV movie created for the sole purpose of warning American families about the greatest crisis facing the country.

Role playing games.

That’s right. There was a time in our not-too-distant past when teenagers playing fantasy games about wizards, elves, demons and magic spells were threatening to tear apart the very fabric of our civilization. In the nation called upon a young Tom Hanks to educate our youth about how RPG‘s can blur the line between reality and fantasy, drive young people insane and send them to the top of the World Trade Center to jump because they’re convinced they have powers.

And in these scenes you can already see the acting chops would later win him Oscars for such films as “Forrest Gump” and “Bachelor Party.” A special shout out to the girlfriend here. If she looks familiar, it’s because she is Wendy Crawson, who played Harrison Ford’s First Lady in “Air Force One.”

In a time of opioid crisis, unlimited free porn, teenage pregnancy, and the family unit crumbling, it’s nice to remember a time when parents greatest fear was their kids playing a boardgame.