T. Ott plunges into the darkness with five graphic horror novelettes: "The Hotel," "The Champion," "The Experiment," "The Prophet," and the story which frames it all, "The Girl," each executed in his hallucinatory and hyper-detailed scratchboard style.
The first story in the book introduces the other four: A little girl visits an amusement park. She looks fascinated, but finds everything too expensive. Finally, behind the rollercoaster she eyeballs a small booth with "CINEMA PANOPTICUM" written on it. Inside there are boxes with screens. Every box contains a movie; the title of each appears on each screen. Each costs only one coin, so the price is right for the little girl. She puts her money in the first box: "The Hotel" begins. In the film, a traveler goes to sleep in what seems to be an otherwise empty hotel. His awakening is the stuff of nightmares.
"The Champion," the second film, introduces a Mexican wrestler who fights against death himself. In a typical Ott twist, he wins and loses at the same time. In the third film, "The Experiment," a short-sighted man initially goes blind from some pills his doctor gave him, but soon the blindness wears off and he finds they accord quite a view. In the final story, "The Prophet," a vagrant foresees the end of the world and tries to warn people, but nobody believes him. They will soon enough...
Ott’s O. Henry-esque plot twists will delight fans of classic horror like The Twilight Zone and Tales From the Crypt, or modern efforts like M. Night Shyamalan’s films (well, the good ones); his artwork will haunt you long after you’ve put the book down.
