Café de Nuit

Grigg_Deadbreaker wrote:Event Horizon

A fine example of a phantasmagorum. And the kind of mind shattering evil and horror needed to create such. Watch when the ship's final record is fully cleared up, frame by frame, and be prepared to be horrified at how grotesque it is. It wouldn't look out of place in the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre in terms of gore. Liberate tuteme ex inferis!

The Re-Animator trilogy is a good example of philosophical alchemy gone horribly wrong. In the third movie Dr. West discovers something very much like the essential coagulant. That's the one that can literally transfer a soul to another body.

I just watched the "House of Usher" expecting it to be a kinda OK movie with a Ravenloft feel.

It was actually a Ravenloft movie. The place screamed "Mordent". It was also quite original Gothic IMO. Not too much gore, suspension, romance, the inherited qualities of evil, unforgiving (and uncaring) nature, etc. What it lacked in a way IMO was the lack of temptation; the hero isn't actually tempted to do evil although he pays for his pride.
I enjoyed it very much. I would say it wasn't horror though; just gothic feel. You feel sorry and all, evil gets punished etc, but you're not horrified in the least.

In any case, it's a very Ravenloft movie. Change the 3-4 mentions of "Boston" to "Mordenshire" and you're set.

I recently watched The Possession on Netflicks - I'd never seen it before, nor heard of it. I thought it was at least as good as the Exorcist, and certainly derived from that movie. I enjoyed the Jewish take on ghosts, demons, possession and exorcism. The special effects showing the being that is forcibly moved into the dybbuk box, is not the direction I'd take - it could have been done better, but overall, I really enjoyed the movie.

MichaelTumey wrote:I recently watched The Possession on Netflicks - I'd never seen it before, nor heard of it. I thought it was at least as good as the Exorcist, and certainly derived from that movie. I enjoyed the Jewish take on ghosts, demons, possession and exorcism. The special effects showing the being that is forcibly moved into the dybbuk box, is not the direction I'd take - it could have been done better, but overall, I really enjoyed the movie.

I never saw The Possession, but I thought The Unborn used the dybbuk to good effect. I'm not overly familiar with the original legends, but I thought the film had some intensely creepy imagery (the mirrors, the dog, the creepy kid...) and I liked the story behind the dybbuk's creation.

Dread - A student's experiments in fear spiral into the kind of psychological-malpractice-cum-sadistic-torture that unlucky patients might expect in Ravenloft.

Black Death - Pick an inquisition, then turn it on its head. Plenty of madness and obsession toward the end of the film.

Flesh+Blood - A medieval siege film showcasing betrayal, plague, degeneracy, Stockholm Syndrome, and Rutger Hauer.

If you have Netflix, catch Red Mist (aka Freakdog). The "antagonist" (no one in this movie is truly innocent) is an example of how villains with powers of possession can wreak havoc. As well as an object lesson in the consequences of inaction, the power of resentment, and how the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. The movie's general plot and characters have been done to death in movies like Tamara, the acting is so-so, and the visual effects aren't that great. Okay as a one-off IMO but not worth buying.

Also Kenneth, the victim, is also deeply disturbed and engages in self-cutting and "desecration of a corpse" in the opening scenes. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Season of the Witch with Nicholas Cage actually felt a lot like a Ravenloft adventure.

If you haven't seen the new Hammer film Wakewood, it can serve as an example of resurrection magic gone wrong.

The film Stakeland might give you some inspiration for a quest or two. Despite the title making the film sound like Zombieland with vampires, the tone of the film is completely different (Much darker and a lot more serious). I'd recommend giving it a chance if you haven't seen it.

The backwoods environment of Pumpkinhead could serve as inspiration for a domain with a demonic darklord that can only act when called upon to serve the cause of vengeance. There are three sequels in the franchise, but I would only recommend the first Pumpkinhead and the third film, Ashes to Ashes.

The Masters of Horror series has some chapters that could be of use. Particularly The Black Cat and Haeckel's Tale (be warned though, the latter contains some rather disturbing behavior).

Some honorable mentions with The Keep, The Church, Ravenous, The Bride, They, and The Woods.

I recently made a mention of Wake in Fright in my Random Hooks thread (which you should read and contribute to!), it's a psychological drama set in the Australian outbacks where a young but mentally exhausted and bored teacher is, through a series of happenstances, caught in the net of "depravity" of some rustic locals.

While he seems initially eager to escape back to civilization (the big city and his girlfriend, as he's currently doing rural service), the local doctor and his friends take care of the penniless teacher and initiate him into their nightly games.

While the context might be modern, the ideas are flexible enough to be used in Ravenloft.

I'm just using this thread to urge you to give this rather obscure title a chance. Donald Pleasence is great as the vice-ridden "fallen intellectual" who hangs around brutish kangaroo wrestling binge drinkers.

My personal top three of movies may actually portray Ravenloft itself, rather than just to provide scenery and characters:

Countess Dracula
Done by the Hammer studios and set in early modern Hungary, the costumes fit large parts of Ravenloft.
Elizabeth Bathory and her hopeless quest to become permanently beautiful and young through the blood of slain maidens also fit very much the terror track.

If you can show your players only one movie to show what RL is like and how it works, this would be my pick.

The Raven
Another film in the early modern age, very very very losely based on the poem by Poe. It also stars Vincent Price. What more reason do you need to watch it?

Brotherhood of the Wolves
Having already talked about vampirism and evil wizards, what would Ravenloft be without lycanthropes? Another movie set in the early modern age, but this time centering on werewolves. Special mention goes to the card-reading Monica Belluci, who could be lifted wholesale from the Ravenloft campaign setting.

This is CLEARLY a B movie but it still has an incredibly Ravenloft-y feel. If you ever wondered what it' would be like to take a walk across The Core, I think this is about as close as it gets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F86VNE4j5Ek

Young Sherlock Holmes. To be honest it's been so long since I saw the movie that I can't remember if it was actually any good, but there are definitely some critters in there which wormed their way into the first Ravenloft Monstrous Compendium!

I just finished watching ' The Boys from Brazil' With Gregory Peck at Dr. Mengele and Lawrence Olivie as a Nazi Hunter on NetFlix. Developers of Drakov and Falkovnia should add this to their lists.

Quality of the following is, of course, interpretive, but I include some here for the purposes of re-skinning, Frankensteining, whatever you want to call it.

Suspiria (1977) = witches

Wake Wood (2011) = careful what you wish for

Zombi 2 (1979) = adventure island

The House by the Cemetery (1981) = house by the cemetery

The Omega Man (1971) = Quevari? Vampyrs?

Soylent Green (1973) = societal horror

Pumpkinhead (1988) = curses/careful what you wish for

House of Wax (1953) = classic

Curse of the Werewolf (1961) = classic

The Devils (1971) = multiple themes

Taxi Driver (1976) and chased with Hardcore (1979) = urban debauchery/microcosm; no-name/"noir heroism"

Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee (in most everything they've done) = core RL archetypes

Hell Comes to Frogtown (1988) = good laugh

The Sandbaggers (1978-1980 TV) = Falkovnia-Darkon "Cold War" and the skullduggery behind it (including the signatories of the Treaty of the Four Towers for added depths of muckery)


And that's all for now. Maybe I'll add more. Maybe I'll forget about this thread. haha Either way, I've found inspiration through all of the above films. Skinning the ideas is a bit of an art, but it's easy enough for any DM to do I like to think. The last one, the Sandbaggers=Falkovnia-Darkon Cold War was a major campaign of mine. Trimmed with (eventually stripped-down) info I found in various books about the SOE..

Five wrote:The House by the Cemetery (1981) = house by the cemetery

Might want to include the two prequels, City of the Living Dead and The Beyond (aka Seven Doors of Death). The three movies are Lucio Fulci's Gates of Hell trilogy. Excellent examples of how evil can persist even long after it's been forgotten, that evil acts have consequences far greater than anyone knows, how ignorance can be damning, and that sometimes there are no winners. The last is especially poignant for Gothic horror because sometimes a victory over evil can be Pyrrhic.

EDIT: The Beyond is the theatrical title for Seven Doors of Death. If you have an Amazon Prime account, it's currently available to watch.

Hereditary 2018:

Witches.

Seances.

Demonic Possession.

'IS THIS REALLY HAPPENING OR AM I GOING CRAZY!?'

'THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING BELIEVE ME I'M NOT CRAZY!'

How utterly, utterly helpless and doomed regular people would be in the face of a supernatural evil whose existence they can barely believe in, let alone try to fight.

One that gave me inspiration lately was actually The Nun. The movie, on the whole, didn't quite have the feel but parts did. The convent itself, being in a gothic style castle, screamed Ravenloft to me, especially with how isolated it was. Also the village and how superstitious the villagers got about the convent. It felt like the setting could have easily been in the mountains of Barovia (which fits since the movie was set in Romania.)

This also assumes we ignore that the movie is set in the 50s and has modern conveniences like cars.