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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8462733" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 79: January 1993part 5/5Into The Dark: Oooh. No mere mortal can resist the evil of a Vincent Price special. He might have been typecast as the villain in horror stories, but he actually had a pretty wide range as an actor, doing hundreds of films over his lifespan. Of course, many of them suuuuuucked, but even then, he was usually entertaining to watch. Which end of the quality spectrum will James go for?The Witchfinder General gets the highest score of these, as it's not just supernatural schlock, but a serious story that lets Vincent really show his emotional range as the fanatical witchhunter. There's no heroes here, just various shades of grey, and everything ends tragically. Not really light popcorn entertainment, but still very worth watching.Masque of the Red Death is similarly dark, but in a very different way, as it's mostly an excuse for Roger Corman to indulge his decadent imagination, before killing nearly everyone off brutally in the expected way at the end. You could just watch actual porn and skip the tragedy part, but then it probably wouldn't have the cool production values. Oh, the compromises life forces on us.The Tingler is one of those 50's gimmick films that doesn't hold up that well in hindsight. Applying electric shocks to the cinema audience at appropriate points to make them scream? That would definitely fall foul of modern health & safety rules and quite right too! The pacing is also pretty slow even by 90's standards, so if James thinks it was too slow then, it would feel even moreso to a modern audience. The Abominable Dr Phibes sees him playing the eponymous doctor, inflicting biblical retribution on the people who let his wife die. An inherently ridiculous premise, but rats, locusts and frogs can all be pretty scary. 80's slashers only wish they could kill people that inventively.Theatre of Blood follows pretty much the same formula, only it's the unfavourable reviewers of his theatre productions that are meeting ironic ends stolen from various shakespeare plays. Just the thing to make real life reviewers think twice before giving it a negative review in turn. Thankfully, despite some moments where the melodrama slips into cheesiness, it manages to be an entertaining watch overall. It concludes what has been one of James's most positive columns overall. Proper acerbicness will resume next month.Bloodmoose & Company try another tricky method to pay off their ever-mounting debts. An issue that's interestingly heavy on the conflict between people who are only interested in D&D, and those who would like the RPGA to cater to a wide range of systems, some by companies other than TSR. There's still plenty of people who would like more non D&D stuff, but of course they're widely split on which specific games to cover, and financial pressures are gradually building. Even if the RPGA itself is still growing, being attached to a TSR which is shrinking in revenue overall is going to make that an increasing issue over the next few years. Let's see what responses next issue will have.</blockquote>

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