John Rozum's Blog, page 12

31 Days of Halloween - Day 20

When I was a kid, the house with the most impressive collection of science fiction, horror and fantasy atrifacts was Famous Monsters of Filmland editor, Forrest J Ackerman's Loz Feliz home, the Ackermansion. Containing Lon Chaney's make-up kit and his hat and fangs from London After Midnight, original models and stop motion creatures created by Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen, props, books, and pulp magazines as well as walls completely covered in art and movie posters, it was my dream house. I remember studying photos of his collection with a magnifying glass. Alas, his collection is now scattered to the wind, and there are now much more impressive collections belonging to people such as Peter Jackson, Bob Burns, and Guillermo Del Toro. It is this last collection that inspires me the most now, and like my childhood self, I scrutinize the photos of his collection to try and see everything that's in it. here are a few photo's followed by a trio of video( the first of which which can also be found on the Cronos DVD and Bluray from Criterion) tour of the collection which has expanded rnough that a second house was needed to accomodate it (I can't wait for that video). Much of his collection has been touring the United States, Canada, and Mexico as a museum exhibit called "At Home With Monsters" you can see what that was like below.

31 Dyas of Halloween - Day 19 - Movie

A family in isolation during a devastating pandemic finds their safety and routine disrupted when a stranger breaks into their home. Inviting the man's family to come live with them with the idea of greater safety in numbers leads to paranoia and mistrust and violence.

It Comes At Night (2017) sounds like a monster movie, but it's not. The "it" of the title merely refers to bad dreams endured by the teenage son. There isn't a much tension, and introduced story points are often dropped without development. It's a well made film, but not much happens, and the tension it wants to ratchet up, never really appears. In our Covid-19 world a movie about a pandemic really should have hit home, but the characters in the film didn't really do much more than I did while quarantined at home, short of carrying guns like paranoid survivalists, and burning a couple of bodies. This was disappointing.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 19 - Book

If the Dead Knew - The Weird Fiction of May Sinclair edited by S.T. Joshi. Hippocampus Press. 2020


This volume contains all thirteen weird tales written by May Sinclair ( 1863-1946). The stories tend to involve ghosts, reincarnation, spirit transference and the afterlife. Even the lighter stories here, seem somewhat bleak and pessimistic. Unlike a lot of ghost stories from this time period, these do have a bit of bite to them. Sinclair focuses her work on the interpersonal relationships of the characters in the stories and less so on simply having someone encounter the strange. Many of these relationships involve betrayal of some kind which ties in to the supernatural elements, providing them with some genuine horror often lacking in Victorian ghost stories. Sinclair, herself, apparently never had an intimate relationship of her own, which may be why the relationships in her stories are often sour ones, often with keen observations. Of the thirteen tales, only a couple left me unfulfilled. The rest were pretty great. The amazing cover art is by Aeron Alfrey.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 19

Here's the second half of my post of photos taken in the First Burial Groun in Falmouth, MA. The see part one, scroll down to the previoos post.

#1 Days of Halloween - Day 18 - Movie

After a woman and her daughter in law are brutally raped and murdered by a band of samurai, they return as onryo; avenging spirits, set out to kill all samurai.

Kuroneko (1968) directed by Kaneto Shindo does for bamboo, what his earlier film, Onibaba (1964) did for tall grass. Quite spooky, atmospheric and mesmerizing, this film is a real showcase for lighting, staging, composition, and cinematography. Shot in gorgeously luminescent black and white, it's like watching a dream, or nightmare unfold. At the heart of the film is a tragic human drama of these two wronged women, and then the tension of reuniting with the missing son/son-in-law who returns from battle only to be ordered to find and destroy the avenging spirits. This is a true classic.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 18 - Book

Slimer by Harry Adam Knight. Valancourt Books. 1983.

After their yacht sinks, a group of six twenty-something's finds themselves adrift at sea. Eventually they come up to an oil platform. Once on board they find that it's not a working oil platform, but a secret laboratory, and all of the people and lab animals seem to have vanished, but there is something on board with them. As the mystery of empty clothes and a strange black oily substance intensifies, they encounter a small number of the scientific staff who aren't what they seem, and a strange creature intent on taking them out one by one.

John Brosnan and Roy Kettle, writing as Knight, have crafted a briskly paced, exciting tale of genetic experimentation, filled with paranoia and shape shifting creatures. It may seem like a knock-off of The Thing, set on a oil platform instead of the arctic. While there are some similarities, including the need to keep the creature from escaping into the outside world, Slimer is inventive in its own way. This was a very fun and chilling read.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 18

In this entry in my Halloween appropriate travelogue in the year no one travelled, is a bit closer to home. This is the First Burial Ground in my home town of Falmouth, MA. I'm not sure what the oldest grave is in here. Many are from the 16 hundreds but, the oldest are so worn down and covered in lichen that they are impossible to read. There are plenty from the 1700s up to the present day. There are a lot of memento mori decor, odd carving where the carver ran out of room for the text and had to creatively add it on at the end. There is even the grave of someone who was killed by being struck by lightning. This post will be divided into two parts with part two appearing tomorrow.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 17 - Movie

A group of people enter an abandoned house and discover a cursed ouija board and all hell breaks loose. Meanwhile a withered magician brings his perfectly preserved young bride back to life and she rejects him.

Spookies (1986) is a terrible mess of a film. Simultaneously, it also makes for perfect seasonal viewing. Half of the film feels like an Evil Dead and Phantasm inspired piece filled with inventive, yet low-budget monsters. The other part feels like Orgy of the Dead with inane dialogue and unexplained characters that seem like they belong in some zero budget 1970s live action Saturday morning children's tv series. The two halves do not mesh, and the entire movie makes no sense. If you are able to ride along with the anything goes nonsense, you may have a good time watching this. If you can't you'll hate it. As to why it's such a mess, please watch the excellent documentary that comes with this film. With a longer running time than the film itself, it delivers all of the details.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 17 - Book

Hung, Drawn and Executed - The Horror Art of Graham Humphreys . Korero Press. 2019.

I first became aware of the work of Graham Humphreys in 2013 via the H.P. Lovecraft Bronze Bust project for which he provided the poster art for this fundraising event. He did so again for the follow up project which was a bronze bust of Edgar Allan Poe. I met Graham briefly at the unveiling of this bust at the Boston Public Library, the spoke with him a bit more after a connected event, where Jeffrey Combs performed his amazing one man show as Poe in Cambridge. Most of our talk centered around The Damned concerts and art, and I found that he was a really nice guy. After that I kept my eye out for his art wondering how I'd missed it before then. The answer was mainly that I was an American and the bulk of his work was for British dvd releases and movie posters, but after I started keeping my eye out for it, it appeared regularly and never failed to impress me. Using colors that harken back to garish Famous Monsters covers and Mario Bava movies, Humphreys creates astonishingly composed artworks with spot on likenesses and in the case of festival and convention posters some incredible combinations of characters across a wide spectrum of cinematic horror history. If you like horror movies, portrait art, or movie posters before the era of photoshopped blandness, you must have this book in your library.


You can view some of his art here.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 17

Vincent Price, the master of menace, kept himself relevant throughout his career by constantly reinventing himself and taking raoles that would appeal to young viewers and gain him a new growing audience. Outside of acting he was a well known art connoiseur and cook. He has three cookbooks to his name, and appeared in a multitude of advertisements for food products. These ads often contained recipes. If you're looking for some food ideas for your Halloween party, Vincent Price is about as much an icon of the season as witches and Jack O'Lanterns. Why don't you try some of these recipes? If you do I'd like to hear about it.