New Books Network Robert Guffey, "Hollywood Haunts the World: An Investigation into the Cinema of Occulted Taboos" (Headpress, 2026)
Feb 4, 2026
Robert Guffey, author and cultural critic who tracks a century of taboo themes in film. He traces how cinema encodes Darwinian ideas, mind-control and UFO stigma, JFK conspiracies, and the shift from coded genre metaphors to overt treatments. Short, vivid dives into horror, westerns, sci‑fi and conspiracy films reveal how marginal art seeds cultural change.
01:05:13
Taboos Hide In Genre Cinema
- Taboo topics often appear first in genre films as disguised metaphors rather than direct treatments.
- Robert Guffey argues film lets creators explore forbidden ideas safely over decades before mainstream acceptance.
Author's Social Media Example
- Guffey recalls Gretchen Felker Martin losing a DC Comics release after a social media post about Charlie Kirk.
- He uses this to show how corporate tolerance for views can swing quickly with political moments.
Evolution As Horror Subtext
- Darwinian evolution was treated as taboo in early cinema and encoded into horror films for decades.
- Guffey traces this trend from 1920s horror through mid-20th-century genre cinema as a cultural workaround.
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Intro
00:00 • 27sec
Why study taboos through cinema
00:27 • 5min
Scope and structure of the book
05:12 • 38sec
Darwinian horror and disguised evolution themes
05:49 • 1min
Lon Chaney, Murders in the Rue Morgue, and subtext
07:09 • 3min
Dr. Miracle and evolution in sideshows
10:21 • 1min
Island of Lost Souls and related films
11:38 • 2min
From metaphors to open discussion
13:15 • 3min
UFOs, taboo status, and cultural stigma
15:54 • 16sec
The JFK assassination as a taboo
16:10 • 38sec
Were We Controlled and early MKUltra clues
16:48 • 4min
Mind-control motifs in 1950s sci‑fi
20:40 • 2min
Ad break
22:10 • 28sec
Obscure films presaging real experiments
22:38 • 4min
Writers, intelligence ties, and hidden knowledge
26:21 • 1min
Temporary autonomous zones for taboo art
27:42 • 3min
Comics, pulp, and underground influence
30:41 • 50sec
How art slowly shifts public perception
31:31 • 7min
Assassination films and the film-within-film device
38:41 • 2min
From coded conspiracies to docudrama openness
40:35 • 36sec
When film produces immediate social change
41:12 • 4min
Western genre as venue for indeterminacy
44:46 • 31sec
Breaking Bad as a 21st‑century Western
45:17 • 10min
Bedeker's influence revealed in Breaking Bad
55:22 • 17sec
Topics excluded and forthcoming essay
55:38 • 5min
Outro
01:00:19 • 1min
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Donovan's Brain
Curt Siodmak
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Hollywood Haunts the World
Robert Guffey
Hollywood Haunts the World deconstructs the most powerful taboos of the twentieth century by analyzing how disturbing and transgressive ideas have been reflected in films.
It covers Theosophy, Gnosticism, Freemasonry, Darwinian Evolution, Surrealism, Freudian and Jungian psychology, race relations, paranoia, UFOs, xenophobia, political conspiracies, the JFK assassination, virtual reality, and alternate dimensions.
The book analyzes both American and foreign films throughout the past one hundred years.
It scrutinizes cutting-edge popular films and TV shows.
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In Hollywood Haunts the World: An Investigation into the Cinema of Occulted Taboos (Headpress, 2026), Robert Guffey deconstructs the most powerful taboos of the twentieth century (and the initial decades of the twenty-first century) by analyzing how disturbing and transgressive ideas involving Theosophy, Gnosticism, Freemasonry, Darwinian Evolution, Surrealism, Freudian and Jungian psychology, race relations, paranoia, UFOs, xenophobia, political conspiracies, the JFK assassination, virtual reality, and alternate dimensions have been reflected in films — both American and foreign — throughout the past one hundred years.
Popular films and TV shows that fall under cutting-edge scrutiny include Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley, Larry Wade Carell’s Girl Next, Matt Shakman’s WandaVision, Anthony and Joe Russo’s Avengers: Infinity War, Scott Derrickson’s Dr. Strange, Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One, Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook, Christopher Nolan’s Inception, Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad, Oliver Stone’s JFK, Mark Frost and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, John Carpenter’s They Live, Alan Pakula’s The Parallax View, John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate, Jack Arnold’s It Came from Outer Space, Edgar G. Ulmer’s The Man from Planet X, Robert Florey’s Murders in the Rue Morgue, Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr., and Victor Sjöström’s The Phantom Carriage.
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