John Rozum's Blog, page 14

31 Days of Halloween - Day 13 - Book

The Witch by Robert Eggers. A24. 2019


The Witch (2016) is one of my favorite recent horror films, so it was a no-brainer that I'd pick up the book published by A24. Containing the screenplay, production drawings, 24 frames from the movie, and interview between Eggers and historian, David D. Hall (whose books provided some of the research material gathered by Eggers), an essay by Carmen Maria Machado on Thomasin's response to Black Phillip, and the full production credits for the movie.

This is a beautifully produced volume well worth the price for any fan of the film, allowing for further exploration and insights into the world of the movie. My only nitpicking criticism, is that for many of the film frames, the characters in the center of the image wind up swallowed into the binding. While this may be somewhat fitting here, it's something I hope A24 learns from and adjusts for in future volumes in this series.

The Witch, and other books in this series,  is available from A24's website.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 13

Here's my third original cut paper Halloween piece for this month. You can scroll down through this months post to see the other two, or visit The Art of John Rozum, where they are all available to purchase.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 12 - Movie

A young woman suffering from PTSD after being raped begins to believe that she is the incarnation of an ancestor who was believed to be a werewolf. When triggered, her psychosis causes her to go on a murder spree.

Werewolf Woman (1976) has a lot of the charms that low budget foreign horror films do. Like bootleg toys which are just enough off model to remain recognizable, yet still evade legal repercussions, these movies present subpar looking monsters and create their own rules as to how the monsters operate ignoring established lore. A werewolf kills a victim with a hatchet in this movie. There's also something really effective about the slapdash make-up concocted for the werewolf that's far more sinister for its primitiveness than most accomplished werewolf make-ups.

Essentially a rape revenge fantasy film with a heavy amount of sex and nudity, the film is sleazily effective, and Annik Borel as Daniela, the traumatized woman, is persuasive in her performance. This movie turned out to be much more engrossing, and even tragic, than I was expecting.






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32 Days of Halloween - Day 12 - Book

The Resurrectionist by E.B. Hudsbeth. Quirk Books. 2013

Dr. Spencer Black was a renowned surgeon and anatomist in the late 19th century, but his studies in teratology led him to bizarre beliefs, and his undoing. According to Black, mythological creatures were real, and when a person, or animal was born malformed, it was due to the body attempting to revert to one of those hybrid mythical forms. Dissections and mutilations led Black on a mad quest to attempt recreating numerous mythological species through surgery rather than genetics.

The Resurrectionist is divided into two parts. The first section contains a biographical overview of his life and work. The rest of the book is devoted to his notes and precise anatomical drawings of his mythological recreations. While an initial perusal would suggest this as slight reading material created to support Hudsbeth's finely rendered drawings, there is something unsavory about the book as a whole. Another book that was created to serve as a biological and anatomical field guide to mythological creatures using the same illustrations would come off as fascinating, but after reading the disturbing account of Black's disturbing experiments, those same illustrations come across as grotesque and unsettling, like something you really shouldn't be looking at. This is a strong recommendation.










This post contains affiliate links, which means that John Rozum receives a percentage of sales purchased through links on this site. Thank you for your support!

31 Days of Halloween - Day 12

This is the 3rd, and final post of the contents of the Gallery of Paleontology and Comparitive Anatomy at the Muséum national d'histoire naturale in Paris, France, You can see the previous two posts by scrolling down to my blog entries for October 10, and October 11. Today is, mostly, images from the paleontology section of the Gallery.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 11 - Movie

After tragedy strikes, a man finds himself a ghost, and returns to his home, where he becomes a silent witness, and occasional participant, in the events that unfold on that plot of land over vast periods of time.

A Ghost Story (2017) is not a horror movie. It is a profound contemplative movie on loss, time, love, and letting go. There is almost no plot to speak of, and lots of long lingering shots of mundane things and time passing. It is in no way boring. It is mesmerizing and moving. The decision to make the ghost a classic bedsheet style ghost is brilliant, removing the character from humanity and forcing the audience to participate in the ghost's emotional reactions to what transpires around him.  This is a beautiful film and I can't wait top see it again.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 11 - Book

100 Fathoms Below by Steven L. Kent and Nicholas Kaufmann. Black Stone Publishing. 2018.


The USS Roanoke, a Los Angeles class nuclear submarine is sent on a mission to Russian waters to seek out the existence of a new Russian submarine. Before the get to Russian waters though, they have another problem to deal with. While on shore in Hawaii, one of the crew men was bitten by a vampire, and now begins turning and killing the other crew men. Those that survive have some serious obstacles to face in order to fight back. The vampires have been systematically destroying all the lighting on board the submarine, an environment which is also lacking in sunlight and wood for stakes.

While the writing here is a few notches above serviceable, and there are some plot elements that could have been improved upon, this book was a real page turner. It wastes no time getting things under way and escalating the tension. The authors do create a real sense of place and take advantage of the books claustrophobic setting. The characters are fleshed out just enough to make them sympathetic and not simply vampire fodder. This was an enjoyable quick read and quite a fun surprise.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 11

In this year where no one could travel, I made a decisiuon to share some of the more macabre things I've seen in the past couple of years, before COVID-19 came along. Today will feature some of the more monstrous items in the collection at the Fallery of Paleontology and Comparitive Anatomy at the Muséum nationale d'histoire naturelle in Paris, France which I visited in May of 2019. You can see more images by scrtolling down to yesterday's post, and by checking back tomorrow. Part 3 tomorrow...

31 Days of Halloween - Day 10 - Movie

Strange things are happening at the Kingdom Hospital. A mysterious ambulance arrives in the middle of the night without discharging anyone. There are ghosts, self-induced liver transplants using a cancerous liver, the missing head of a corpse,  the most grotesque birth ever seen, and a demonic entity. That's to say nothing of the staff and patients.

Lars Van Trier's The Kingdom (1994) is actually a Danish television series that was released in two four episode seasons (the second in 1997), though I first encountered the entire fist season in a movie theater in New York City as a five hour movie. A third, concluding, series was planned, but not made due to the deaths of three of its central characters. The series is most definitely inspired by Twin Peaks, though none of the characters are as endearing here.  Despite that, and the fact that the story is never concluded, this is absolutely riveting, must see viewing.


Both seasons are available at a reasonable price at Kino Lobber.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 10 - Book

Monstrous Affections edited by Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant. Small Beer Press. 2014.

Fifteen acclaimed authors, most of them of Young Adult fiction,  contribute stories of love and monsters. Like all anthologies, the quality of the stories ranges wildly. A couple are exceptional. A few are pretty good diversions, but most didn't really do it for me. There is a quality to the writing, but almost all of the stories lacked any real bite to them. The monsters wherever truly monstrous and typically didn't veer too far out of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer comfort mold of vampires and very human behaving demons. The stories leaned a bit more towards the Twilight kind of monstrous love and not the Guillermo del Toro type of monstrous love. Maybe it's the YA background of many of the writers but this book is probably better for your twelve-year-old niece than for an adult looking for some darker tales. Link (whose story is the best of the lot) and Grant have edited some incredible anthologies of genre fiction, which I actively encourage you to seek out.