You can enjoy classic literature because you judge the writer by the values of their time. But literature published today is judged by the values of today.
Of course it is, as was Ravenloft when it came out. But maybe we've become so judgmental it is impossible for us to even enjoy older tropes? (and maybe we are missing the forest from the trees in how we apply our judgement: it seems to me there is an intensity to our level of criticism that is very counter productive because it often sweeps up things that are trying to say the opposite of what the critics assume they are saying....again content doesn't equal message). Maybe there is an issue with the way in which we judge things today, where we aren't even really seeing things for what they are, but always casting them in the worst possible light, always leaning on the least charitable possible interpretation.
Ravenloft was attempting to reject the idea horror should be visceral; blood and guts and severed limbs. And it was successful at that. But it didn't really reject the tenants of slasher horror either. Verbrek is more Camp Crystal Lake than it is the Wolfman for example.
Which was a long time ago, and the world has changed enormously. Well, maybe it hasn't for you, maybe you live in some backwater that time has passed by, but my world is unrecognisable compared to how it was when Ravenloft was first published.
If you try publishing them today, yes.
The average party of adventurers does far more slashing than any number of Jasons, Freddys and Michaels.
Again, context matters. How these things are used is what's important. Again, if you are going to always leapt to the least charitable reading of something, you are going to have wholesome but very uninteresting media IMO.
