ETI Radio 2024 Mahalloween Broadcast!

 Click HERE to listen to the annual EXOTIC TIKI ISLAND Radio Mahalloween Broadcast....

The Cryptoscatology Top 20 Horror Film List (in Reverse Chronological Order...)

Two specific rules dictated the choices on the following cryptoscatological list: 1) There had to be at least one film from each decade, and 2) If you watched all twenty films in a row, the resultant collective film would essentially tell an epic story about The Secret History of the Twentieth Century & Beyond; therefore, I picked movies that shared a consistent theme. If not for those rules, more obvious choices would have been included (e.g., James Whale's THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN or Georges Franju’s EYES WITHOUT A FACE). The list below is submitted for your Halloween viewing pleasure...

20. MAD GOD (Phil Tippett, 2021)

 

19. POSSESSOR (Brandon Cronenberg, 2020)

 

18. BLOOD TEA & RED STRING (Christiane Cegavske, 2006)

17. TWIN  PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME (David Lynch, 1992)

 

16. JFK (Oliver Stone, 1991)

 

15. SANTA SANGRE (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1989)

 

14. SOCIETY (Brian Yuzna, 1989)

 

13. THEY LIVE (John Carpenter, 1988)

 

 

12. HOUSE (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977)

 

11. SUSPIRIA (Dario Argento, 1977) 

 

10. THE WICKER MAN (Robin Hardy, 1973)

 

9. WITCHFINDER GENERAL (Michael Reeves, 1968)

 

8. SPIDER BABY (Jack Hill, 1968)

 

 

7. THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (John Frankenheimer, 1962) 

 

 

6. INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (Don Siegel, 1956)

 

 

5. CAT PEOPLE (Jacques Tourneur, 1942)

 

4. THE BLACK CAT (Edgar Ulmer, 1934)

 

3. FREAKS (Tod Browning, 1932)

 

2. VAMPYR (Carl Dreyer, 1932)

 

 

1. HÄXAN (Benjamin Christensen, 1922)

 

 

THE EXPECTANT MOTHER DISINFORMATION HANDBOOK HAS ARRIVED!!!

Congratulate me on my weird new arrival! The salacious rumors you've heard are shockingly close to the truth! A whiskey-addled, desomorphine-addicted stork has just delivered my dear one, who is now safely tucked away in its booby-trapped crib! Complimentary cigars are both expected and welcome! Today marks the birth of my new book, THE EXPECTANT MOTHER DISINFORMATION HANDBOOK, courtesy of Madness Heart Press! Feel free to order this beautifully perverse bundle of joy RIGHT HERE! The first to order the print edition will be named the godparent in future editions!

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR THE EXPECTANT MOTHER DISINFORMATION HANDBOOK...

"Robert Guffey’s The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook is weirder than parthenogenesis, weirder than the Republican Party, weirder than the fetishizing of pregnancy that suffuses our culture, weirder than all the back issues of Weird Tales combined. You will laugh, gasp, and scratch your head in pleasurable bemusement. I can’t recommend this tongue-in-cheek tour de force too highly."

—JAMES MORROW, award-winning author of Only Begotten Daughter and Behold the Ape


"Here it is. THE perfect baby-shower/gender reveal party gift. Forget all the binkies, blankies, cute little onesies, and diaper-service subscriptions. Those are so overdone and boring. Want to make a REAL impact? This book. This book right here [...].

"Well-written, lively, engaging, easy to read, and tons of fun. If I were a truly evil imp with plenty of money, I’d sneak copies into every OB/GYN office and ‘Parenting and Family’ bookstore section in the country."

--CHRISTINE MORGAN, award-winning author of Spermjackers from Hell and Lakehouse Infernal 

 

________________________________________________________

The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook is part novel, part fabulist encyclopedia. It’s academic research that’s shockingly close to the truth. The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook is a cabinet of wonders disguised as an informational guide for expectant mothers. Backed up with scientific-sounding footnotes from imaginary obstetricians, this book threatens to raise the paranoia of postmodern motherhood to a new level of absurdity.

In the pages of this handbook you will learn about such chimerical illnesses as the Quantum Singularity Syndrome, Symmetrical Child Syndrome, Involuntary Dimensional Transits, Spontaneous Infant Combustion Syndrome, Black Hole Syndrome, Polyinfantalia, Shrinking Brain Syndrome, Muppetitis, Midwich Disease, and Oneirokyesis (known to some pediatricians as “Dream Baby Disease”). But fatal diseases are not the only purview of The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook. You’ll find out about the dangers of allowing your fetus in utero internet connection, how to use your child as an assassin, the growing problem of terrorism in the womb, in utero phone sex, the high weirdness of Origami Babies, the little known fact that Shakespeare created pregnancy, the mystery of the fetus-abducting Comprachicos, and a rare in-depth interview with Dracula about his attitudes regarding child raising, among many other illuminating tidbits of obscure but vital historical data.

Ultimately, this book is a scathing satire on the unthinking commercialization of motherhood, fatherhood, and procreation in general.

Spooky the Cat Endorses CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES (Sort Of)

Just the other day, my loyal familiar floated over to me and said, "You know, you should take a picture of me posing next to CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES, your recent collection of 25 short stories praised by such luminaries as Philip Fracassi, Nick Mamatas, and John Shirley. People tend to like images of felines, or so I'm told, which is why I chose to manifest in this form in the first place. Why not take advantage of it while I still remain on this plane of existence? Hell, who knows? Maybe some schmuck will actually buy your dumb book. After all, anything is possible in this strange world filled with odd-shaped folks." Then he started aggressively licking his butt. Soon afterwards, I decided to heed his advice and snapped the photograph below...

(Did my loyal familiar mention that you can snatch up the Kindle edition of CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES for only $6.66? What better way to celebrate All Hallows' Eve than to curl up with a furry familiar and a preternaturally evil book? What are you waiting for, my friends? Happy Halloween!!!)

PRAISE FOR CRYPTOPOLIS:

"The stories in Cryptopolis feel like the bloody, star-filled lovechildren of Burroughs and Delany, with each tale ostensibly one part of a greater whole; abstract limbs and organs tethered together by strained flesh. Cryptopolis will take readers on a hallucinogenic journey through worlds fractured by time and place—slipping through liminal dimensions with seamless abandon to unveil unsettling illusions and heartbreaking realities—and totally worth the trip."

--Philip Fracassi, author of Boys in the Valley

 

"If you're tired of the same wines and you're curious about the vintage only just whispered about, have a deep draught of Robert Guffey's Cryptopolis. You don't have to descend with Fortunato to the deepest cellars to find this bottle of Amontillado. Here it is! If Poe collaborated with Robert Anton Wilson...if Borges had a lovechild with Lovecraft, which was subsequently adopted by Kafka...you might get Cryptopolis. I think too that Clark Ashton Smith would admire this collection. Written with the obsessive precision of a mysterious staircase descending into the abyss, Cryptopolis will take you to strange epiphanies..."  

 

--John Shirley, author of The Feverish Stars

 

"Once upon a time, weird and speculative fiction had an underground full of stories that were not written as calling cards or as film treatments or as extended internet memes. Guffey's tales resist genre gentrification; they move into your mind to turn it into a punk house squat!" 

--Nick Mamatas, author of Move Under Ground and The Second Shooter

 

 "In Cryptopolis & Other Stories, Guffey's free-ranging intellect meshes wonderfully with his command of the language."

--John Oakes, author of The Fast

 

"Guffey brings together 25 horror shorts that swing wildly between terrifying mindtrips and gritty realism. Throughout, Guffey’s blunt prose lends a sense of normalcy to the fantastic as his cast of losers from all walks of life face the cruelties of their existence—sexual violence, drugs, war, parenthood, and poverty [...]. Though not for the faint of heart, this bizarre and over-the-top collection is sure to thrill devotees of weird fiction."

--Publishers Weekly

"Cryptopolis may end up being a gateway drug into Robert Guffey’s work. I don’t use that term spuriously. So many of Guffey’s stories in Cryptopolis have a hard-bitten edge and gritty feel to them that I could see him crafting a metatext about an author whose books are physically addictive. Across the collection’s twenty-five stories and vignettes, Guffey displays a range of interests and foci with such depth and heart that I wouldn’t be surprised if he became one of my favorite modern writers [...].

"Affect, the experience of emotional response, seems to be at issue in every one of Guffey’s offerings. From the opening eponymous story (which is the only outright Lovecraftian story in the collection), with its resonances of love as a torturous paralytic, to the last, 'Esthra, Shadows, Glass, Silence,' a parable of alternate lives and lost possibilities, the emotional response drawn from the reader appears to be the crux of every piece. These stories are engines designed to make the reader feel."

--Géza A. G. Reilly, Dead Reckonings

Strange Realities Preview!!!

HEADS UP!!! On Sunday November 3rd, I'll be speaking at the annual STRANGE REALITIES conference where I'll be delivering an hour-long presentation entitled "Mr. Ulmer's Cabinet of Wonder: Edgar G. Ulmer and the Cinema of High Strangeness," which will draw upon at least two of the chapters in my next nonfiction book, HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE CINEMA OF OCCULTED TABOOS (forthcoming from Headpress Books in 2025). I'll also be discussing information about Ulmer and his work not included in HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD. If you want to purchase tickets for the event, click HERE.

You can hear four of the conference speakers (Seriah Azkath, Kyndyll Lackey, Timothy Renner, and Yours Truly) talking about the upcoming three-day event on CONSPIRINORMAL'S latest STRANGE REALITIES PREVIEW...

Strange Realities Preview Part 4

PROJECT 2025

I highly recommend listening to this intelligent discussion about the possible implications of Project 2025 courtesy of Adam Sayne and Serfiel Stevenson's CONSPIRINORMAL PODCAST. This interview with John Brooks (of the POD ONLY KNOWS PODCAST) was recorded back on August 20th, 2024...

Conspirinormal 486- John Brooks 2 (Got the Project 2025 Blues)

If you're still unclear about the dire nature of Project 2025, I suggest listening to the below song, an homage to the Schoolhouse Rock! cartoons of the 1970s. I'd like to offer a tip of the hat to Mark Evanier's NEWS FROM ME website for turning me onto this illuminating ditty....

The Project 2025 Song!

HAPPY 142nd BIRTHDAY, BELA LUGOSI!

On what would have been the 142nd birthday of Bela Lugosi, I urge you to check out my Rondo Award-nominated novel BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD (Crossroad Press, 2021), the ideal read for Spooky Season! One Amazon reviewer has described BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD as "perfect reading for October." Who am I to disagree? 

While the Lugosi fever is upon you, this would be a good time to watch an uncovered gem from Hollywood's Golden Age. My friend and colleague, Gary D. Rhodes (with whom I wrote the nonfiction book BELA LUGOSI AND THE MONOGRAM NINE), recently drew my attention to an obscure short subject entitled VOICE OF HOLLYWOOD that features Bela Lugosi, Jean Harlow, Walter Huston, and other Tinsel Town luminaries. This film, which was released the same year as Tod Browning's DRACULA, has now been restored by UCLA thanks to David Stenn, David Nemeth, and Gary D. Rhodes. You can watch the short in its entirety on YouTube...

The Voice of Hollywood (1931)

By the way, you can hear me discussing BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD on the June 22nd, 2021 episode of Adam Sayne's CONSPIRINORMAL podcast. Here's Adam Sayne's description of the show: 

"Robert Guffey joins us to discuss his new fiction book BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD. We speak to Robert about some of the themes in the book and his fascination with the character and life of Bela Lugosi, especially dealing with Lugosi's relationship with Manly P. Hall and his interest in esotericism. We also speak to Robert about his continuing series in THE EVERGREEN REVIEW dealing with Qanon and the run up to the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol and how it was influenced by these ideas."

Conspirinormal 372- Robert Guffey 4 (Bela Lugosi's Dead)

PRAISE FOR BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD:

“Blending intertextual rampage through the horror-movie canon with engrossing noir mystery and a backdrop of Hollywood esoterica, Robert Guffey serves up an intoxicating pulp cocktail that will leave you wanting more. A crepuscular treasure from a fascinating author.”

--ALAN MOORE, author of V FOR VENDETTA and WATCHMEN

“In Robert Guffey's latest and greatest novel, dreams of old movies and nightmares of classic horror rack into sharp focus through the lens of a brave film historian, one determined to squint clearly at fleeting grains of film through the shifting sands of time. Never has the truth of Hollywood been so well revealed through fiction. As a result, BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD delightfully and definitively proves that Bela Lugosi isn't dead.” 

--GARY D. RHODES, author of LUGOSI and TOD BROWNING'S DRACULA

"[H]orror fans will delight in how Guffey cleverly immerses movie monsters in the real world. Film buffs and monster enthusiasts will relish the supernatural characters brought to life in this atmospheric celebration of monster mayhem." 

--PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

"The sensation [of reading BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD] is like being led deep underground while your flashlight grows dimmer and dimmer, until you’re left in total darkness. That’s when the lights of a subterranean crypt flash on to reveal that you’re not where you expected to be, and where you are is far worse than you could have imagined. The result is an ending that left me chilled and took me a few days to fully process. As shocking as it was, everything was set up from the beginning. I know, I went back and checked, and have to give Guffey credit for pulling off a literary sleight of hand that caught me by surprise. I won’t spoil it with more, except to say that like the frog in water that’s warmed so slowly it doesn’t realize it’s coming to a lethal boil, Guffey’s readers face an equally stunning conclusion." 

--TERENCE TAYLOR, NIGHTMARE MAGAZINE

"BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD is a remarkably authentic, hypnotizing interpretation of all the glitz and pure talent behind Lugosi’s fame, as well as the hubris that steered his downfall. Guffey depicts how Lugosi’s Dracula transformed horror from a genre of make-believe to one that spreads the notion that monsters lurk among us."

--HALEY NEWLIN, CEMETERY DANCE

THE OCCULT WORLD OF JACK KIRBY & MY RETURN TO... WHERE DID THE ROAD GO?

I recently returned to Seriah Azkath's WHERE DID THE ROAD GO? to discuss the topic of Jack Kirby and my JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR article, "G-Bomb: Masonic and Hermetic Symbolism in The Incredible Hulk," which examines the often overlooked metaphysical aspects of Kirby's oeuvre. The episode dropped last night! You can listen to the entire interview on YouTube...

Where Did the Road Go? Radio:

Robert Guffey on Kirby and Masonic Imagery (10-18-24)

THE EXPECTANT MOTHER DISINFORMATION HANDBOOK ON GODLESS!!!

Earlier this morning, John Baltisberger (the publisher of Madness Heart Press) released the following announcement...

__________________________________________________________

 

Today is the Godless release of Robert Guffey's new book THE EXPECTANT MOTHER DISINFORMATION HANDBOOK. This is your first chance to read this incredible book, as it will be WEEKS before it's available anywhere else.

When Robert sent me this pitch last year, I immediately fell in love. It was EXACTLY the sort of book I was hoping for when I opened Gutter Mystic Books. It was what I was trying to achieve with the Nafallan Course Catalog anthology, and the Madness Heart Press Employee Handbook, but done so masterfully that I was amazed.

Robert Guffey is truly a master of the craft. Check out this Bizarro and satirical tome TODAY.

________________________________________________________________________________________ 

 

Meanwhile, GODLESS.com posted the following announcement...

__________________________________________________________

 

𝗪𝗛𝗔𝗧 𝗧𝗢 𝗘𝗫𝗣𝗘𝗖𝗧!

Robert Guffey and Madness Heart Press bring a little bit of bizarro to 31 Days of Godless IV with THE EXPECTANT MOTHER DISINFORMATION HANDBOOK.

Part scientifically sound guidebook, part nutso indictment targeting the exploitation of parenthood, THE EXPECTANT MOTHER DISINFORMATION HANDBOOK is wildly different than any other book on Godless.

Be sure to pick up THE EXPECTANT MOTHER DISINFORMATION HANDBOOK today for a BUCK OFF!

𝗚𝗘𝗧 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗘𝗫𝗣𝗘𝗖𝗧𝗔𝗡𝗧 𝗠𝗢𝗧𝗛𝗘𝗥 𝗗𝗜𝗦𝗜𝗡𝗙𝗢𝗥𝗠𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡 𝗛𝗔𝗡𝗗𝗕𝗢𝗢𝗞 𝗡𝗢𝗪!

 
𝗦𝗛𝗢𝗣 𝗥𝗢𝗕𝗘𝗥𝗧 𝗚𝗨𝗙𝗙𝗘𝗬

 
𝗚𝗘𝗧 𝟯𝟬 𝗗𝗔𝗬𝗦 𝗢𝗙 𝗦𝗖𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗠𝗕𝗢𝗫 𝗙𝗥𝗘𝗘!

𝗖𝗼𝗱𝗲: 𝟯𝟭𝗗𝗢𝗚𝗜𝗩

𝗦𝗛𝗢𝗣 𝟯𝟭 𝗗𝗔𝗬𝗦 𝗢𝗙 𝗚𝗢𝗗𝗟𝗘𝗦𝗦 𝗜𝗩

The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook by Robert Guffey.

The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook is part novel, part fabulist encyclopedia. It’s academic research that’s shockingly close to the truth. The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook is a cabinet of wonders disguised as an informational guide for expectant mothers.

Backed up with scientific-sounding footnotes from imaginary obstetricians, this book threatens to raise the paranoia of postmodern motherhood to a new level of absurdity.

Ultimately, this book is a scathing satire on the unthinking commercialization of motherhood, fatherhood, and procreation in general.

The only guide an expecting mother needs, from master of Bizarro Robert Guffey.

𝗚𝗘𝗧 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗘𝗫𝗣𝗘𝗖𝗧𝗔𝗡𝗧 𝗠𝗢𝗧𝗛𝗘𝗥 𝗗𝗜𝗦𝗜𝗡𝗙𝗢𝗥𝗠𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡 𝗛𝗔𝗡𝗗𝗕𝗢𝗢𝗞 𝗡𝗢𝗪!

𝗦𝗛𝗢𝗣 𝗥𝗢𝗕𝗘𝗥𝗧 𝗚𝗨𝗙𝗙𝗘𝗬