UFOS & the AIAA Initiative

From Bryan Bender's 10-19-22 POLITICO article entitled "'New Territory': America’s Top Aerospace Sleuths Join UFO Hunt":

The country’s largest organization of government and private sector technical experts is launching a project to study “unidentified aerial phenomena,” after concluding that recent incursions by mysterious craft pose a safety hazard to military and commercial aircraft, according to people involved in the effort [...].

Meanwhile, new legislation moving through Congress, as part of the annual defense and intelligence policy bills, goes further.

The National Defense Authorization Act passed by the House in July would establish new procedures for current or former government officials to come forward with any information they may have about UFOs without fear of reprisal.

The proposed intelligence bill also directs the Government Accountability Office to undertake a historical recounting of government efforts involving UFOs over the past 75 years, including any recovery of UFO technology or government efforts to spread disinformation about the subject [...].

The AIAA [American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics] initiative is focused primarily on the flight safety implications of unannounced craft intruding into protected military airspace or traveling dangerously close to commercial flights.

[Ryan] Graves [a former Navy fighter pilot and defense contractor] cited as an example the 11 “near misses” since 2019 — involving UFOs coming within 500 feet of an aircraft — that Scott Bray, the deputy director of naval intelligence, reported to Congress in May during its first public hearing on the topic in more than five decades.

To read the entire article, click HERE.

Three Orion Spacecraft

From Stephen Nakrosis' 10-20-22 MARKETWATCH article entitled "Lockheed Martin Gets NASA Order for Three Additional Orion Spacecraft":

Lockheed Martin Corp. on Thursday said the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration ordered three more Orion spacecraft for upcoming Artemis missions.

The cost for the three additional Orion spacecraft missions for Artemis VI-VIII missions is $1.99 billion, the company said. 

The Artemis program is intended to establish a sustainable presence on the Moon and pave the way to missions for Mars, NASA said.

To read the entire article, click HERE.

Happy 140th Birthday, Bela Lugosi!

 

On what would have been Bela Lugosi's 140th birthday, I urge you to check out the book I coauthored with Gary D. Rhodes, BELA LUGOSI AND THE MONOGRAM NINE, an in-depth analysis of the nine Poverty Row films in which Lugosi starred during World War II. You can hear Gary and I discussing this book at great length during the October 22, 2019 episode of Roejen Razorwire's PROJECT ARCHIVIST. And if you're not completely Lugosied out by that point, why not take a deep dive into my Rondo Award-nominated novel, BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD?

PRAISE FOR BELA LUGOSI AND THE MONOGRAM NINE:

"BELA LUGOSI AND THE MONOGRAM NINE, by Gary Rhodes and Robert Guffey, critically and wonderfully examines a series of no-budget films made by no-budget Monogram Studios in the 1940s featuring Lugosi that are among the most wonderfully odd cinematic follies ever made--surrealistic, straight from the subconscious, sometimes stupid, at moments seeming to spring from the mind of Bunuel, and in the next, an idea Ed Wood would have discarded as too unbelievable. But, movies always unlike any others, and at their best seeming like fever dreams through which Lugosi calmly walks in evening clothes carrying a flaming blowtorch. I highly recommend this book." 

--JACK WOMACK, author of RANDOM ACTS OF SENSELESS VIOLENCE and LET'S PUT THE FUTURE BEHIND US

"Gary Rhodes has become my favorite nonfiction author, while the subject of some of his writings, Bela Lugosi, has long been one of my favorite actors. Now Gary has teamed up with co-author Robert Guffey to present, for the first time, a collection of in-depth and insightful essays evaluating those lesser ‘classics’ that comprise the so-called ‘Monogram Nine.’ If you are a Lugosi fan and also a fan of old ‘B’ horror films, you will love this book."

--DONALD F. GLUT, filmmaker, Marvel Comics writer, and author of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK novelization

"An extraordinary volume. Rhodes and Guffey refract these films through the lens of surrealism, detailed genre study, auteurist-informed close readings, star studies, and vigorous historicism to name a few of the kaleidoscope of methods employed. This book provides a breakthrough model for serious work on films that have to date received very little scholarly attention.”

--MICHAEL LEE, Ph.D. (University of Oklahoma), editor at the journal HORROR STUDIES

"It would require an enthusiastic writing team such as Gary Rhodes and Robert Guffey to bring respect and probing inquiry to these Lugosi films from Monogram Studios. Are the films minor miracles or minor masterpieces? This book is food for thought in that area. For too long, 'the nine' was considered throw-away entertainment. Watch it once, then forget it. The authors of this book demur [...]. I encourage every monster fan to get this book. You’ll love it. The treasure chest of Monogram classics is shown knowledgeable evaluation and context at long last."
 
--MICHAEL COPNER, MONDO CULT ONLINE

"Containing several chapters offering different variations on its subject matter, Rhodes and Guffey explore the films Lugosi made at Monogram with an open-minded approach, an intelligent appreciation, and a historical knowledge. Even those of us long familiar with these films will be enlightened by the further information provided in these essays [...]. The reader's understanding of film history, production, and promotion will be enhanced by this exceptionally intelligent text.

"BELA LUGOSI AND THE MONOGRAM NINE is a book that needs to be included in any library, research center, or personal collection that even hopes to be considered at all comprehensive. For fans of film history, of Lugosi, of the horror genre, or of B movies, BELA LUGOSI AND THE MONOGRAM NINE is an absolute must." 

--JAMES L. NEIBAUR, author of THE MONSTER MOVIES OF UNIVERSAL STUDIOS

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

Devin Stone: "Alex Jones's Billion Dollar Bad Day"

Thanks to Mark Evanier's entertaining and informative blog, NEWS FROM ME, I came across this recent video in which "Legal Eagle" Devin Stone breaks down the true severity of Alex Jones's "Billion Dollar Bad Day"....

Alex Jones's Billion Dollar Bad Day (And Why It's Going To Get Worse):

Alex Jones: Goblins and Frogs

To commemorate Alex Jones being ordered to pay nearly one billion dollars in damages to the families of eight Sandy Hook shooting victims, I suggest watching Mr. Jones deliver the following two rants on his INFOWARS internet show (remixes courtesy of Placeboing)....

 

Gay Frogs (Alex Jones REMIX)

Goblins (Alex Jones REMIX):

 

Meanwhile, FORBES has published an extensive article about the state of Jones' assets. Here's an excerpt from Jemima McEvoy's 10-13-22 article entitled "Alex Jones Likely Doesn’t Have $1 Billion. He Does Own Five Homes In Texas, Though.":

The far-right radio host Alex Jones was handed a staggering punishment on Wednesday when he was ordered by a Connecticut court to pay $965 million to families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre for a years-long misinformation campaign centered around a lie that the deadly elementary school shooting was an elaborate hoax.

It’s very unlikely that Jones, who runs the conspiracy-theory riddled website InfoWars, has a ten-figure fortune to spare. In fact, while reacting to the verdict on his radio show on Wednesday, Jones claimed he’s worth no more than $2 million and quipped, “That’s hilarious… Do these people really think they’re getting their money?” Because Jones lacks the funds to pay his fine, legal experts say his personal assets could be on the line, including a significant real estate portfolio owned by the InfoWars host in Texas.

Forbes identified five homes collectively worth an estimated $7.5 million linked to Jones in Austin, including two condos in the downtown-adjacent South Lamar neighborhood; a luxurious waterfront property overlooking the Colorado river with a private boat dock, sauna and basketball court; a four-bedroom home just outside the city; and an almost 5,500 square foot Spanish villa style home overlooking Austin’s famous Barton Creek Greenbelt.

As The New York Post first reported in August, Jones transferred ownership of the most valuable of these properties, the Spanish-style estate by Barton Creek, which is worth an estimated $3.5 million, to his wife Erika Wulff Jones, in February as multiple defamation cases against him neared trial. One of the two condos in South Lamar has Jones’ father, David Jones, listed as a beneficiary. (Neither Jones’ lawyer, Norm Pattis, nor InfoWars, responded to requests for comments from Forbes.)

Outside of his real estate, it’s not clear how much Jones’ other assets are worth. Bernard Pettingill, Jr., a forensic economist who testified in a separate defamation case against Jones earlier this year in Texas, estimated Jones’ net worth to be between $135 million and $270 million due to the strong financial performance of InfoWars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems. According to Pettingill, InfoWars averaged $53.2 million in annual revenue between September 2015 and December 2018, and brought in $64 million in 2021. The economist said Jones was at one point paying himself $6 million a year.

To read McEvoy's entire article, click HERE. 

In related news, journalist Spencer S. Hsu published a report in the 10-6-22 edition of the WASHINGTON POST entitled "First Proud Boys Leader Pleads Guilty to Jan. 6 Seditious Conspiracy," brief excerpts of which follow:

A lieutenant of longtime former Proud Boys chairman Henry “Enrique” Tarrio became the group’s first member to plead guilty to seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot on Thursday, deepening the government’s case against an organization accused of mobilizing violence to prevent the inauguration of Joe Biden.

Jeremy Bertino, 43, of Belmont, N.C., agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department against Tarrio and four other Proud Boys leaders with ties to influential Donald Trump supporters Roger Stone and Alex Jones. The Proud Boys defendants are set to face trial in December on charges including plotting to oppose by force the presidential transition, culminating in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

At a hearing before U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly in Washington, Bertino pleaded guilty to that count and to one count of illegal possession of firearms as a former felon, punishable by 51 to 63 months in prison at sentencing under advisory federal guidelines, prosecutors said.

In a sign of the sensitivity and potential importance of Bertino’s testimony, prosecutors agreed that in exchange for “substantial cooperation,” they could seek leniency at sentencing and enter Bertino into a Justice Department witness protection program.

In plea papers, Bertino said Proud Boys leaders “agreed that the election had been stolen, that the purpose of traveling to Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, was to stop the certification of the Electoral College vote, and that the [Ministry of Self Defense] leaders were willing to do whatever it would take, including using force against police and others, to achieve that objective.”

He admitted that at least two days earlier he received encrypted chat messages indicating that members of the Proud Boys leadership group who called themselves the Ministry of Self Defense “believed that storming the Capitol would achieve the group’s goal” and would require using violence [...].

Bertino’s testimony could implicate Tarrio, a former aide to GOP strategist Stone, and co-defendant Joe Biggs, a former employee of Jones’s online Infowars show. Stone and Jones are two prominent right-wing figures who promoted Trump’s incendiary and baseless assertions that the election was stolen.

To read Hsu's entire article, click HERE.

TOD BROWNING'S THE REVOLT OF THE DEAD

I just received my contributor's copy of TOD BROWNING'S THE REVOLT OF THE DEAD (edited by the inimitable Gary D. Rhodes), which includes my long essay "'We Didn't Lie to You, Folks!": The Thin Line Between Deception and Foma in the Worlds of Tod Browning." This book will shine some much-needed light on many essential lost and/or forgotten Browning projects. Because Browning's legacy has been defined by such groundbreaking horror movies as DRACULA (1931) and FREAKS (1932), equally fascinating films like THE MYSTIC (1925), THE SHOW (1927), THE UNKNOWN (1927), and WEST OF ZANZIBAR (1928) are rarely, if ever, discussed by modern film fans. This volume will rectify that situation.

Here's the publisher's description of TOD BROWNING'S THE REVOLT OF THE DEAD....

 

“THE GRAVE WILL GIVE UP ITS OWN, UNTIL THE WORLD WILL BE FILLED WITH THE WALKING DEAD.”

London throbs with terror when the dead rise from their graves and walk its streets. The city will soon be overrun. The horror of it all is driving residents to madness and suicide. One victim suffers possession, stigmata and crucifixion. With occult forces at work, civilization may be doomed!

Decades before Night of the Living Dead (1968), The Exorcist (1973) and other industrial-strength shockers, Tod Browning’s 1932 screen treatment and script The Revolt of the Dead anticipated their horrors – and at the same time echoed Browning’s Dracula (1931) by featuring duplicates of several of that film’s major characters. Enter an unexplored corner of Browning’s universe as the Scripts from the Crypt series world-premieres this ultra-rare work, along with background information unearthed by the redoubtable Prof. Gary D. Rhodes.

To delve deeper into Browning’s storytelling process, Professors Rhodes, Nathaniel Bell, Will Dodson and Robert Guffey examine multiple script drafts of Browning’s Freaks (1932), Mark of the Vampire (1935) and The Devil-Doll (1936) and document the step-by-step evolution of those macabre tales.

The cinematic universe of Classic Horror’s “darkest” director is about to get weirder, wilder and more shocking!

 

"We justifiably gnash our teeth over what might-have-been had George Romero's sadly unfilmed 1980s Day of the Dead screenplay been made as Romero intended—anticipating as it did so much of what followed, including The Walking Dead TV series—but far, far more mind-blowing is this rediscovery of this lost screenplay to Tod Browning's unfilmed horror epic Revolt of the Dead. Expanding upon Abel Gance's hallucinatory march-of-the-WWI-dead climax to the 1919 J'Accuse, transforming William Seabrook's localized Haitian zombie scourge of his 1929 bestseller The Magic Island into an apocalyptic pandemic, what Browning intended to bring to the screen in 1932 would have scandalized & devastated audiences, rocketing the horror genre decades beyond what was considered even remotely possible at the time. Revelatory, relentless, essential reading!"
- STEPHEN R. BISSETTE (Swamp Thing, Taboo, Studio of Screams, Midnight Movie Monograph: David Cronenberg's The Brood)

 “A trove of fascinating materials that sheds light on Browning projects made and unmade.”
— MURRAY LEEDER, Horror Film: A Critical Introduction

 

You can order TOD BROWNING'S THE REVOLT OF THE DEAD through Amazon.

BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD: THE PERFECT READ FOR SPOOKY SEASON!

Now that we're officially into Spooky Season, you're no doubt searching for something appropriately weird and macabre to read as we hurtle our way toward All Hallows' Eve. Why not try my Rondo Award-nominated novel, BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD? None other than Alan Moore, author of V FOR VENDETTA and WATCHMEN, gave BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD the following endorsement: “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.”

The unabridged Audible Audiobook of BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD is also available! It's brilliantly read by the talented SAMUEL E. HOKE. Hoke was so dedicated to nailing the audio version that he contacted me before he began narrating the novel to make sure the accent of a particular character was exactly correct. He also went out of his way to research some of the films and documentaries about the real people and events upon which the novel is based. If you're interested, you can listen to a sample of the audiobook right HERE!

 

“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