The TV Movie You Never Knew Tom Hanks Was In
Lifestyle - News
By SHANA ABORN
In 1982, CBS released a TV movie called "Rona Jaffe's Mazes and Monsters," based on a bestselling novel about the real-life case of a student whose disappearance was blamed on Dungeons & Dragons. The star of the film was a 26-year-old Tom Hanks, who was just starting to make a name for himself in the sitcom "Bosom Buddies."
"Rona Jaffe" follows four misfit college students playing the classic fantasy role-playing game; Tom Hanks plays the character Robbie, who becomes delusional and thinks that he is his "DnD" cleric character, Pardieu. Believing he is on a quest, Robbie wanders to New York City, and his friends track him down in time to stop him from jumping off a skyscraper.
The film was meant to warn against playing the "evil" Dungeons & Dragons game, but to today's viewers, the message comes off as campy. Hanks has apparently never talked about his time battling pretend demons, but at least the film kept him in the public eye, and two years later, the film "Splash" made Hanks a genuine star.