Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bedrockgames" data-source="post: 8252475" data-attributes="member: 85555">I was a big hammer fan (mentioned Plague of the Zombies earlier in this thread). I am aware they weren't just gothic horror (and I am aware the movies became much more gory and exploitative as they were competing with more edgy films: and I particularly like a lot of their more bizarre movies). But regardless of their reasons for drawing on gothic horror and regardless of why they used fog, they made those movies and those films had in influence on stuff like Ravenloft. My point was, at least initially, Ravenloft was drawing on stuff like Hammer's Dracula and Frankenstein (it is obvious even in the art: even though he played the monster, Christopher Lee is clearly the facial model for Mordenheim, and Peter Cushing is clearly the model for Van Richten). Later they even drew on the Lost Continent (which arguably is a big step away from the more classic horror stylings) Certainly possible audiences haven't seen a hammer movie. But then many people in 1990 hadn't seen the silent phantom of the opera, or the universal horror movies from the 30s (that stuff was 60 years old when the Ravenloft boxed set came out). Again the Ravenloft black box was kind of a challenge, to try older horror sensibilities and go to the root. A lot of people discovered those things by way of Ravenloft. I think young  people today are just as capable as we were then of developing an interest in older movies and older stories. Granted I was already pretty familiar with many of the black and white horror films (particularly the universal movies). But lots of people playing Ravenloft at the time I am sure were not. I think one of the great values Raveneloft gave to me was it helped propel an interest in romantic horror literature, and in classic Horror stories. I hadn't read Dracula or Frankenstein before playing Ravenloft (it was actually the quote in the black box from Frankenstein that made me instantly want to go read it). I just re-watched a bunch of hammer a few months ago. I think it still holds up quite well.</blockquote>

Verification