My pal Shawn remembered having and being terrified of this book as a kid (bought, apparently, at Toys R Us), so he asked me to track it down for him, I guess so he could be terrified all over again. I got him a copy. And as soon as it showed up, I knew I had to share it with y’all. This book is WEIRD.

I give you: The Tourist’s Guide to Transylvania (1981). Yes, that is Christopher Lee in the flames. No, there is no further connection to Hammer Films. Rather, it is as if the publishers had a pile of random, lurid horror and fantasy paperback cover paintings laying around and decided to figure out a way to publish all of them in one book. There is no real through line or clear art direction here. This is basically a random collection of stuff.

Cool stuff, no doubt! But random. I only recognize two names in the credits – Alan Lee who delivered the amazing title page painting, and Les Edwards, who did the barbarian, the creepy face and the ghoul that will be familiar to Call of Cthulhu players. Terry Oakes is credited for the pig man painting which is clearly the cover of the Sphere edition of William Hope Hodgson’s House on the Borderland. Alan Hood’s hideous carnivorous worms appears to be a clear inspiration for the Dinosaurs Attack “Trilobite Terror” card art.

Possibly the best part of the book is the text and the contortions it goes through to stick to the travel guide pretense while justifying the presence of increasingly un-Transylvanian art. There are a surprising number of Conan-esque barbarians, for starters. I would quote, but there are too many gems and not enough space here. But it is fantastically atrocious.

I will leave you with this: This book was for kids. It was sold in Toys R Us. And it has a gigantic painting of a man being gruesomely eaten alive by earth worms. And that is kind of just the tip of the ice berg. I love the 80s.