The Complete... Guillermo Del Toro - Part 3

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First off, sorry it's taken me so long to get to this. I promise to get through future Complete... series faster. Anyway, we left off last time with Guillermo Del Toro freshly confirmed as a bankable Hollywood director who could make a little money look like a lot, and deliver mainstream films that pleased audiences and critics alike. The world was essentially his oyster. Rather than take on a big money job Del Toro finally took the oppurtunity to make a film he's since said would have been his first, had he been able to make it at the time. A sister film to The Devil's Backbone, again setting a fantastic story against the Spanish Civil War.

Pan's Labyrinth [2006]

Del Toro's most clearly personal work, Pan's Labyrinth concerns a young girl, Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), who moves with her pregnant, sickly, Mother (Adriana Gil) at the insistence of her Stepfather (Sergi Lopez), a Captain in Franco’s fascist army, currently concerned with trying to put down a rebllion. In the nearby woods Ofelia discovers a maze, and at its end a faun, who tells her she is a long missing Princess of a fairytale kingdom, and sets her three tasks to complete by the full moon. The synopsis seems fantasy led, but in fact about two thirds of the film takes place in the real world, and deals more with the harsh reality of Franco’s Spain, and the brutality of Captain Vidal. This is a smart choice, because it grounds the film in a grim reality that makes Ofelia’s wish to escape into a fantasy world, any fantasy world, even one so dark as this often appears, easily understandable and seductive for the audience. This also allows the fantasy to work, because by establishing one believable world, and grounding us in it for some time, Del Toro makes it easier for us to believe in the fantasy world.

The design is as stunning as we’ve been conditioned to expect of this filmmaker. Every single shot of this film is packed with detail, things that you hardly notice the first time you see them, but which enrich the experience at both visual and metaphorical levels. One of my favourites is that Captain Vidal’s private quarters are underneath the main building of the mill he and his soldiers have taken over, and his desk right in front the workings of the mill’s water wheel. This is a beautiful piece of composition, especially when Vidal is trying to fix a watch in the same shot, and also fulfils Del Toro’s obsession with villain’s fascination with clockwork, but it’s also a subtle and clever statement about what Vidal stands for – the imposition of regimentation, which Ofelia is trying to escape, both in the real world and by going into Pan’s world.

I was sure, even before I saw a single frame of it that Pan’s Labyrinth was going to be stunningly beautiful. The first teaser poster, showing a tiny young girl walking into a tree whose shape was unmistakably uterine, was so striking, and so unusual that even if the film ended up being bad I was sure from that image that it would never be dull or ugly. It isn’t. There are so many visuals here that will live in the memory that picking out highlights seems almost futile, as if you’re damning the rest of the film by faint praise. Still, things like the backwards opening, the mandrake root, Pan himself, whose appearance subtly changes each time we see him and Vidal sewing up his own cheek in front of the mirror are all indelible pieces of film.

Then, of course, there’s the Pale Man. Del Toro is a master at seducing an audience before scaring the wits out of them, and he’s never done it better than he does here. The Pale Man is the product of your most beautiful nightmares, and the mix of the amazing suit design, the sound effects that make it sound as if his leg bones are breaking with every step he takes, and Doug Jones’ supremely deft physical performance (which he also brings to Pan) makes this five minute sequence, one that isn’t actually particularly integral to the film, perhaps the finest moment of a great film.

Of course the visuals aren’t the only thing that Pan’s Labyrinth has going for it. If Del Toro had a real weakness in his previous films it was as a writer, but this script is clearly a labour of love and everything about it fits together beautifully. The characters are all extremely well rendered; even the supporting characters have dimensions, complex motivations, and purpose within the film. It’s a genuinely moving story, and one that, to Del Toro’s enormous credit, even knowing how it will end, never lacks for impact. This is especially true of the real world portion of the story, which is gritty and violent to a pretty shocking degree, particularly in a scene in which Vidal beats a young man to death with a bottle, this violence is so at odds with the strange beauty and lyricism of the fantasy world that it brings you back down to earth with an unpleasant thud.

Del Toro also draws strong performances from his entire cast. Sergi Lopez, as Vidal, is a true standout. He’s a true monster, scarier than even the Pale Man, because Vidal chooses his evil, but Lopez never makes an unrealistic choice. Everything is underplayed, he never rages, never explodes, his violence is utterly controlled and clinical. It’s this absolute coldness that makes the performance so blood-chillingly memorable. Again showing a facility for directing children Del Toro draws a warm and vital performance from 11-year-old Ivana Baquero as Ofelia, who brings real three-dimensionality to her performance, which is real, but without the distracting precociousness of a Dakota Fanning. There’s also a strong show from Maribel Verdu, whose quiet determination works well for the kitchen maid who becomes a surrogate parent to Ofelia.

I love the ending of Pan’s Labyrinth, because even though the film has a circular structure it still holds surprises, and is moving on a couple of separate levels, it takes a special filmmaker to have you end his movie smiling, and fighting away tears, and yet makes both of those conflicting emotions feel completely natural. This was Del Toro’s first truly great film, showing a total mastery of every aspect of the story he’s telling. It's unlikely to be be his last masterpiece, but it will always be his first.

Pan's Labyrinth was a critical smash, and instantly catapulted Del Toro to the first rank of working auteurs. It collected a mass of awards, including several BAFTA's and Oscars, but missed out, sadly, on the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. It's box office take wasn't going to trouble the Top 10 of the year, but for a subtitled release it did spectacularly well, making almost £2 million in the UK and $37 million in the US, against a budget of roughly $18 million. This really left Del Toro free to pick and choose, and gave him the ability to demand creative control of his next film.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army

In Summer 2008 critics described one superhero film as deep, dark, morally complex and brilliant. Sadly that’s how they described The Dark Knight, the most overrated film of that year, when they should have been describing the most underrated mainstream film of 2008, Guillermo Del Toro’s sadly overlooked Hellboy II: The Golden Army, in those glowing terms.

It is said that in cinema the law of diminishing returns is all but incontrovertible. For every Godfather Part 2 or Empire Strikes Back there are hundreds of Robocop 2’s, hundreds of Speed 2’s. Given that Hellboy was a deeply flawed, if fitfully brilliant, film there was little hope of its sequel being a great movie, but great Hellboy II most certainly is, it is, at last, the perfect coming together of the artistic and the mainstream sides of Guillermo Del Toro’s cinema, as achingly beautiful to behold as anything he’s ever done, and as roaringly entertaining a blockbuster as had been released for years. Make no mistake, this is mainstream entertainment at its very finest.

Most mainstream cinema is stupid, simplistic, or both. Not so Helllboy II, unusually for a summer movie its themes are genuinely thought provoking, the moral dilemmas of its leading character truly thorny, and even as an audience you’re never sure that the ‘villain’ of this piece isn’t in the right, at least in some respects. The backstory, dealt with in a gorgeous opening sequence redolent of the underseen British film Strings, concerns The Golden Army, an indestructible force created for and Elf king’s war against mankind, after much bloodshed the king had a change of heart and called a truce, breaking up the crown that allowed him to control the army and giving one piece to men while keeping two. Thousands of years later, with Elves and their like endangered, the king’s son Nuada (Luke Goss) comes out of hiding to reunite the crown pieces and use the Golden Army to wage a new war.

The great thing about Hellboy II as a sequel is that it appears to have recognised the flaws of its predecessor and jettisoned them, as well as seeing the first film’s strengths, and building on each of those. This is particularly the case with the villain, who at one point tells Hellboy (Ron Perlman) that they should be on the same side, that humanity hates both of them and neither of them belongs to the human world. It’s a fantastic point, one that is undeniably true, and which throws up a whole new side to this film. Hellboy was used as an agent of the apocalypse in the first film, but never when he was in control of himself, here there’s always the possibility that he could come to see things Nuada’s way, because in a lot of ways Nuada isn’t wrong, which makes both the story and the villain much more interesting than in the previous film. Luke Goss is still no Shakespearean actor, but he’s perfectly fine as Nuada, and gives the character weight and pathos, as well as, once again, seriously impressing when it comes to the acrobatic and rather hard hitting fight sequences.

This is also a much more varied film than the first, thanks in large part to an increased budget (increased only modestly though, this film looks as good as any $200 million production, but cost just $73 million), which allowed Del Toro to let his imagination run riot when it comes to monsters, especially the many that populate the outstanding Troll Market sequence. Hellboy II is a constant visual feast, be it the astonishing shopkeeper whose face is a city in miniature, the giant one eyed troll Mr Wink, or the more subtle work on Nuada and his sister Nuala’s (Anna Walton) alabaster skin, there is something in just about every frame to take your breath away. Compared to the endless Sammaels of the first film this increased imagination allows Del Toro to craft a greater range of action scenes, from the Godzilla like sequence with the elemental, which has a genuinely moving and beautiful ending, to the sharp, punchy, fight between Hellboy and Wink, and the battle with the massed ranks of the golden army, to mention just a few.

The returning characters are as compelling as ever. Ron Perlman simply is Hellboy, he’s so good that you never question the logic of the character (which, since he’s an almost ageless demon, is a hell of a trick to pull off) the conceit of this monster as a simple blue collar guy is as funny as ever, and Perlman’s warm and funny performance makes him a truly engaging and entertaining hero. Doug Jones gets a great deal more to do as Abe Sapien this time out, getting to lend his voice as well as his ever impressive physicality to the character this time out. He matches David Hyde Pierce’s performance from the first film well, but it just feels more natural this time, more connected to Abe’s movements, it also allows Abe to develop more of a rapport with the other characters, key to the film’s funniest scene in which Hellboy and Abe, both down about their relationships (Hellboy with Liz and Abe with Princess Nuala) get drunk and sing along to Barry Manilow together. It’s a scene that absolutely shouldn’t work, but it’s extremely funny, and so well played that it becomes one of the film’s highlights. Selma Blair is still the weak link, she doesn’t really have much purpose here, other than as a plot device, but she outdoes herself in her one big moment in the movie, in the sequence featuring one of Del Toro’s most memorable creations – the Angel of Death.

That sequence, which opens the film’s fantastic third act, is one of the best of Del Toro’s career. It’s nightmarish, it’s so beautiful that and frame could hang on a gallery wall, but it is the drama of the scene that makes it so compelling, and the way that it promises so very much for the surely inevitable Hellboy III. The first time I saw this sequence and Liz said “Him” the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

I can’t say enough good things about Hellboy II, it’s just about the perfect blockbuster. It runs at a terrific pace, but makes just enough room for character, so that it never threatens to become empty spectacle. It’s packed with memorable characters and brilliant design (check out the little clockwork mechanism used to give new character Johan Krauss (Seth MacFarlane) expression). It has depth, complex morality and darkness in spades, but it also manages to maintain a fun, light tone, and be on occasion uproariously funny. It’s the complete entertainment package, a film that improves on every viewing, and very possibly the best superhero film I’ve ever seen.

Next comes The Hobbit, a pair of films to be produced in association with Peter Jackson. This makes me nervous, because much of it will be dictated by what Jackson has done before, including some of the casting, and most importantly the look of the film. It’s already been stated that the films will be styled to link up with Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films. That being the case I can’t see why you’d have Del Toro direct them. You hire this great filmmaker for HIS vision, not to interpret and link up with someone else’s vision. That said, I’ll be seeing them, and anything else Del Toro makes, on opening night, if not before.

The Complete... Guillermo Del Toro - Part 2

Part 2: One for me, two for them.

We left part 1 of this retrospective with the poor critical and commercial reception of Del Toro’s American debut, the much interfered with Mimic. We pick up with the portly auteur returning to his native language to make a passion project…

The Devil’s Backbone (2001)

During the Spanish civil war Carlos (Tielve) arrives at an orphanage for boys whose parents have been killed or are fighting in the conflict. He soon discovers that the other children believe the orphanage is haunted, and that they may be right.

As the elder sibling to Pan’s Labyrinth it’s hard to assess The Devil’s Backbone on its own terms. Taken on its own terms there is a great deal to admire in Guillermo Del Toro’s third film, but looking at it now, through the prism of his similarly themed later masterpiece, much also clunks. It’s also unhelpful to The Devil’s Backbone’s cause that since it was released several other films have drawn inspiration from both its look and its story (most notably Juan Antonio Bayona’s overlauded, Del Toro produced, The Orphanage), making it seem less individual than it in fact is.

The main problem is with the pacing. Del Toro is telling two stories here; that of how the war outside the orphanage affects the people in it - teachers Luppi and Paredes and caretaker Noriega, as well as the kids - as much as it does the world outside and a ghost story about a child who officially went missing from the orphanage the same night a bomb fell in the grounds, but failed to explode. The problem is that they don’t balance brilliantly, and for the fifty minutes or so the war story is treading water while the ghost story never really becomes all that interesting, each of its beats staying firmly in the realm of cliché.

The movie does come to life in its second half, hints about one key character start to pay off and the film becomes a real pressure cooker, but one that manages to combine its chills with plenty of emotion, courtesy mainly of Federico Luppi’s beautifully layered turn as Dr Casares. While the ghost story never really shocks the civil war motivated second half certainly does, putting your heart in your mouth several times.

The performances are largely excellent, with the children something of a mixed bag, but the adults acquitting themselves extremely well. Luppi stands out, the sadness behind his eyes deeply moving, but he’s well matched by Paredes and by Eduardo Noriega’s progressively more loathsome and corrupt caretaker.

The one thing you absolutely can’t fault The Devil’s Backbone on is its look. This isn’t an expensive film, but Del Toro gets massive value for money from his budget, with brilliant (if sparing) CGI and awesome sets and props. The gothic look of the orphanage, particularly the cellar which is the setting for much of the second half, is both handsome and creepy; its cathedral like columns and arches lending a haunting air. This is carried through to the dormitories and to the exteriors, giving the film a real graphic identity. Many of Del Toro’s interest also crop up, there may be no clockwork, but Paredes character’s false leg receives much screentime and several loving close ups, while a sequence featuring foetuses in jars showcases imagery that recurs time and again in Del Toro’s films. His use of the ghost character, while seldom unexpected, is beautiful to behold, particularly in the way that CGI is used to make it always appear as if he’s underwater (the floating blood is a lovely touch).

The Devil’s Backbone is brilliant art 24 times per second. It’s not always quite so brilliant as entertainment, but its haunting ending will stick in the mind, and that’s something that you can’t say as often as you ought to be able to.

The Devil’s Backbone was a critical hit, and re-established Del Toro’s reputation after the poor reception of Mimic. An inexpensive film, it also made enough money that it could be considered a resounding commercial success. Then Hollywood again came calling. Del Toro’s next project wouldn’t be one that, like Devil’s Backbone, he had carefully nursed for 16 years, but it would give him his largest budget yet (a still rather modest $54 million) and let him work in a different style, and on a larger scale.

Blade II (2002)

The Blade franchise is a perfect encapsulation of what a Director brings to a studio film. The first film, directed by Stephen Norrington, is largely anonymous hackwork, enlivened by one stunningly executed set piece. The third, directed by franchise screenwriter David S Goyer, is an utter mess, directed by someone with no visual sense and a concept of editing that extends no further than throwing the rushes in a blender. Then there’s Blade II.

Under Del Toro's steady hand Blade II never forgets what it is; an essentially rather silly sequel to a not terribly good comic book movie.  Del Toro sets his ambitions rather lower than he had for Cronos and The Devil’s Backbone, understanding that here he’s not trying to make art, but to craft a rollercoaster ride, and that simple aim he achieves with great aplomb and seeming ease. That he’s not trying to make art doesn’t mean that Del Toro doesn’t, almost inadvertently, end up injecting some of his artistry into Blade II, but the balance is very much tipped in favour of sensation.

The problem with the original Blade movie was that it never came close to topping its amazing opening sequence set in a club with vampires dancing under showers of blood. Blade II starts out in similarly energetic fashion, with an action sequence just four minutes in, but crucially Del Toro manages not to upstage himself early, delivering a series of strong and varied action sequences, courtesy of co-ordinators Donnie Yen and Jeff Ward, at regular and well paced intervals, while never losing sight of the (admittedly slightly anorexic) story. That story involves Blade (Snipes) teaming up with a pack of vampires trained to hunt him in order to go after a new kind of super vampire led by Luke Goss, formerly of Bros, as Jared Nomack.

The Reapers are one of the great triumphs of Blade II. Del Toro excels at monsters, always managing to inject personality, and in this case no small measure of pathos, into his bad guys, making the antagonists in his films at least as interesting as the protagonists (in this case, thanks to Snipes’ rather uncharismatic performance, more so) Goss is clearly no DeNiro, but he makes for a serviceable villain, mastering the martial arts and giving both sides of Nomack’s character – the animalistic killer and the abandoned outsider – believability and weight.

What doesn’t always work quite so well is the CGI. A bullet time style effect, deployed several times in the film, works only about fifty percent of the time, and the computer modelled characters that perform some of the impossible stunts are too putty like (Del Toro knows this only too well, ranting “I fucking hate this shot” on his commentary). Outside of a few CGI issues though the film’s design is awesome. The Reapers are nightmarish creatures that represent an entirely logical next evolutionary step along from vampires (their gaping maws were memorably and graphically compared to a vagina by Harry Knowles, in one of his very worst pieces of writing). Del Toro’s obsessions pop up again, with personal touches in every piece of set and prop design. Most notable is a huge array of foetuses seen in jars at the end of the film, explicitly recalling The Devil’s Backbone.

Blade II isn’t a profound film, and it’s probably not, at most levels, even an especially good one. David S Goyer’s screenplay, for example, is largely as schematic and bland as ever, it overflows with idiotic lines and most of the relationships are very poorly drawn. The acting isn’t great, whether you’re talking about Snipes and Kristofferson’s apparent growling competition, Leonor Varela’s bland love interest, or Thomas Kretchmann’s hammery. What Blade II is, though, is ridiculous amounts of fun. It’s a gorgeous rollercoaster ride that you can’t help but get caught up in, despite yourself. You end up forgiving all of its shortcomings because, from its first chilling moments to its overblown last scene it’s a tremendous entertainment.

Blade II may not be Guillermo Del Toro’s proudest or most personal moment as a filmmaker, but it’s where he honed his craft as a mainstream director, while also learning how to inject at least a bit of his own twisted vision into any movie.

Blade II was a hit, and it made Del Toro a commercially viable filmmaker as well as a renowned one. Studios responded by again bombarding him with offers. Blade: Trinity was waved in front of him, as were Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkhaban and Alien Vs Predator, but again Del Toro opted for a project he’d wanted to make, and been pushing to make without success, his new commercial clout finally allowing him to adapt one of his favourite comic books, and cast one of his favourite actors in the leading role.

Hellboy (2004)

Up until Hellboy Guillermo Del Toro’s career had, intentionally or otherwise, been operating on a ‘one for me, one for them’ basis; alternating between his artier Spanish language films and crowdpleasing, broader, American financed and made would be blockbusters. Hellboy was Del Toro’s first real attempt to unite these two sides of his filmmaking personality, and like most beginnings it’s a little bit messy.

Hellboy is a film that I’ve found myself having quite different reactions to each time I watch it, and I think that’s because its quality is liable to vary so much, often from scene to scene. When it works this  film combines all the great things about Guillermo Del Toro’s cinema with an involving superhero story with a different and charming hero. On the other hand, when it doesn’t work, it can feel like wading through treacle, trudging through exposition and repetitive scenes mandated by the studio or the relatively small ($66 million) budget.

When they first met to discuss casting Del Toro and Hellboy creator Mike Mignola apparently revealed their choice for Hellboy in unison – both said “Ron Perlman”. The studio, perhaps understandably, wanted a star, and suggested Vin Diesel, but Del Toro stood his ground, and it was a fight well worth having because Perlman so completely inhabits the role that you can’t imagine any other actor wielding the right hand of doom. Perlman has an easy charm that allows you quickly and easily to get to like and identify with Hellboy, despite the fact that he’s a rather odd hero, but he doesn’t allow the funny and charming side to take the edge off the character, making the moral dilemmas of the film’s ending more believable than they might otherwise be.

Perlman also has strong chemistry with Selma Blair, playing pyrokinetic Liz Sherman, who acts as love interest for both Hellboy and the main ‘normal’ character, a young FBI agent named Myers (Evans). This love triangle works well. First of all it creates many opportunities for the stars to play a little comedy, but it also helps make the fantastical things going on more relatable, because at the end of the day these characters worries are the same as anybody else’s. Blair takes some warming up to in the role, which is a little underwritten, but she plays it nicely and never lets Liz blend into the background.

The villains, unusually for Del Toro, aren’t particularly compelling. Del Toro is a filmmaker who has always engaged with his monsters, perhaps the problem here is that almost everyone, good or bad, in this move is a monster to some degree and in spending so much time making sure that we go along with Hellboy and the rest of the BPRD Del Toro has slightly lost his villains. This means that the main antagonist – Karel Roden’s Rasputin – is left with a rather poorly defined plot, and there is little urgency to stopping him because he never feels like a major threat. Another of the issues with the villains comes not from any writing problem, but budgetary considerations. Del Toro’s original script called for several different kinds of monster for Hellboy to fight, but when the budget proved inadequate to make that happen he came up with the solution of using the Sammael monster over and over, justifying it by saying that whenever one dies, two are created. It’s a decent monster, but after Hellboy kills one of them it renders the rest rather less threatening, and sucks a little tension out of the ending.

However, one villain works brilliantly. Kronen; an armoured Nazi whose undead body is kept alive (not coincidentally) by clockwork, and whose martial arts and knife skills provide the film some of its strongest action scenes, is a brilliant character. Del Toro knows it too, every time Kronen appears he’s introduced with a proper hero shot, his choreography is fluid and punchy, beautiful and very, very cool. Del Toro has said that the way he used Kronen is one of the things he regrets about Hellboy, that he should have made Kronen the main villain, and had the final fight be between him and Hellboy. He’s right. The fight between Kronen and Hellboy is excellent, but it’s over too fast and too easily, and neither Rasputin nor the giant pile of pixels that turns up at the very end (one climax too many) is a match for Kronen.

There’s a bigger misjudgement in the character of Myers. His purpose is to be the audience, to bring us in to the BPRD and make it easier to relate to Hellboy, Liz and Abe Sapien (an underused Doug Jones, with the voice of David Hyde Pierce). The thing is that he’s just not needed. Del Toro’s script and Perlman and Blair’s performances do that job and they leave Myers, his place in the love triangle notwithstanding, seeming rather redundant. It doesn’t help that he’s blandly played by Rupert Evans, but it’s hard to see what he could have done with the role to make it more compelling.

The action scenes are often excellent, with far better CGI than in Mimic or Blade II. A particularly strong set piece has Hellboy fighting a Sammael in a subway station. Here Del Toro uses the whole of the set inventively to create an action sequence that delivers on the visceral level, advances Hellboy’s character and is very funny.

While it is a patchy film, with parts that clunk alternating with moments that work perfectly, Hellboy has moments, both visual and character based, of real beauty and lyricism. The graveyard sequence is a visual masterpiece, with the snow that pops against Hellboy’s red skin helping to create several genuinely lovely images. It’s the film’s ending, though, that really hits the emotional buttons hardest. It’s rare that you really get to connect with and root for a relationship on screen, but the final moments of Hellboy, and Red’s word’s to Liz after she seems to return to life, are truly touching. I wish that the whole of Hellboy were as good as its finest moments, but its shortcomings end up feeling small because when the movie does get it right (which is most of the time) it is a brilliant and different superhero film.

The Complete... Guillermo Del Toro - Part 1

I was going to do a simple (simple, he says, the last one was over 3000 words and took about 7 hours to research, write and find pictures for) Hall of Fame post for Guillermo Del Toro, but it occurred to me that I had seen and owned all but one of his feature films, and that if I got my hands on Mimic and watched it I could do something even more in depth.

So here it is - in three exhaustive parts - The Complete Guillermo Del Toro, I’ve provided a little biographical detail (there’s really not much available) and whatever background I think is necessary, but the main focus of this feature is the reviews. I’ve re-watched and written brand new detailed reviews for all seven of Del Toro’s feature films, and a preview of his eighth and ninth, the upcoming pair of Hobbit films. I’ve also tried to tie the films together more than in a conventional set of reviews, to give a sense of how Del Toro has progressed through his films.

Ladies and Gentlemen… Guillermo Del Toro

Birth Name: Guillermo Del Toro

Occupation: Writer / Director

Born: 9th October 1964 Guadalajara, Mexico

Age: 44

Family: Wife: Lorenza  Daughters: Mariana, Marisa

Directorial Debut: Doña Lupe (Short, 1985)

Latest Film: Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)

Current Project: The Hobbit (2012)

Raised in Guadalajara, Mexico by his devout Catholic Grandmother Guillermo Del Toro became interested in filmmaking in his early teens, but it was probably his later schooling in special effects and effects make up under Dick Smith, whose work spans 50 years and such films as The Exorcist and Scanners, that helped shape his later work, which dwells on the fantastic stories and monsters that enthralled and frightened the young Del Toro.

Del Toro’s first directorial credit came, aged 21, with the half hour horror short Doña Lupe, which has just seen its first ever commercial release thanks to a Cinema 16 DVD titled World Short Films, and features a commentary which Del Toro apparently begins by apologising for his own film. After this Del Toro plugged away, doing effects for other people’s films, and directing for Mexican television, notably a horror series called Hora Marcada, which also gave Alfonso Cuaron early experience. Then, finally, aged 29, Del Toro made his feature directorial debut with the revisionist vampire film Cronos.

Cronos (1993)

The Cronos device was invented by an alchemist in the 16th century, it granted the user eternal life, but transformed him into a creature allergic to sunlight, with alabaster white skin, and a thirst for blood. In the 1990s antiques dealer Jesus (Federico Luppi) finds the device and accidentally activates it, beginning the process of his own transformation. But other forces want the Cronos device for their own ends, and they’ll go to any lengths to get it.

The vampire myth is as old as the hills, and has been a cinematic staple for close to 90 years. Every now and then some upstart comes along with what they allege is an original take on the myth, most prove to have just juggled a couple of aspects of it and then done largely the same old thing, but Guillermo Del Toro’s take on the vampire is genuinely, breathtakingly, original and utterly compelling. Del Toro does away with most of the established traits of vampirism, Jesus never develops fangs, he never becomes sensitive to garlic or crosses, instead Del Toro creates a vampirism that works more like a disease, altering Jesus beyond recognition; physical and mental. It’s a refreshing take, and early evidence that we are here in the hands of someone with complete mastery of the story and the world he is creating.

That world is also completely recognisable as that of Guillermo Del Toro; many of what would become the director’s trademarks first identify themselves here. The Cronos device itself is the most prominent; a golden thing that looks like a scarab, it works, like many malevolent things in Del Toro’s films, through a clockwork mechanism, and contains an insect of some sort, which feeds on the users blood. Both clockwork and insects are near constants in Del Toro’s work, and here he combines them to eerie effect. The Cronos device is a bizarre and utterly original creation, and the mechanical workings of the prop and the excellent, creepy sound effects combine to make this largely inanimate object decidedly chilling.

Another of Del Toro’s seeming obsessions that raises its head here is the use of children in prominent roles in horrific situations. Jesus’ young granddaughter is the first to discover his condition, and rather than fear him she accepts him for what he was; Grandad. There are all sorts of things that one could read into Cronos. You could see Aurora as Del Toro’s version of himself (he, after all, was raised by his grandmother), or you could take the entire film as Del Toro’s reaction to his Catholic upbringing, this is quite a persuasive idea; the leading character Jesus Gris comes very close to sharing a name with Jesus Christ, and during the film he dies and is resurrected, there is also the fact that blood is, in Cronos, a restorative, and this could be seen as analogous to the use of wine in Catholic mass.

At the end of the day though, interesting as those theories are, they are almost beside the point, because what really matters about Cronos, what really makes it interesting, is simply that it’s a brilliant horror film. Del Toro’s script is a smart and original thing, but he’s a director first, and the film’s imagery is often extraordinary. Besides the device and its use he finds some truly striking shots. Particularly strong is a scene in which Jesus follows a man with a bleeding nose to the bathroom. The way Del Toro makes the vivid blood stand out against the marble bathroom and has Luppi bend right to the floor to lick it up makes for a memorable series of compositions, as does the sequence in which, in front of Aurora, Jesus begins to peel off his grey rotting skin to reveal the vampire beneath it.

The use of special effects, and even blood, is sparing, but strong, and always beautifully designed. The only times that the effects look a touch cheap are when the Cronos device is puncturing Jesus’ skin, but otherwise everything from the blood, which looks impressively real, to the inner workings of the device holds up brilliantly to even quite close scrutiny. Del Toro tells much of this story with images (indeed Aurora seldom speaks) but he never leans too heavily on his effects, never allows them to overtake his story and characters.

The only real problem with the film is that Del Toro’s mastery of the English language is clearly not complete, and that hurts the English language scenes and performance of Ron Perlman, who is more overblown than he need be as Angel De La Guardia, in what is otherwise a rather subtle, even soulful, film. Thankfully Federico Luppi’s performance is spot on, he makes Jesus grandfatherly and avuncular in the beginning, so that as he begins to change we both see the metamorphosis and feel the loss that he and his family are suffering.

Cronos is a masterful debut for Guillermo Del Toro, one that sets out his stall as a truly gifted, and truly different, filmmaker.

Cronos was a critical success, and gained a cult following. It also won awards at several festivals, and at Mexico’s Ariel awards. In 1993 Del Toro reportedly had a meeting with Universal, regarding the idea of remaking Cronos in English, to which he responded with typical wit "Who wants to see Jack Lemmon lick blood off a bathroom floor?".

A new talent with a successful independent debut behind him, this being the mid 90’s it was pretty obvious where Del Toro would go next, and so he went to America, to make his next film for Bob and Harvey Weinstein at mega-indie Miramax. He was offered Hellraiser: Bloodline (on which eventual director Kevin Yagher was so frequently overruled that he took an Alan Smithee credit), but turned it down and opted instead for…

Mimic (1997)

I’ll let Del Toro himself introduce this review: “I remember the worst experience of my life, even above the kidnapping of my father, was shooting Mimic. Because what was happening to me and the movie was far more illogical than kidnapping, which is brutal, but at least there are rules. Now when I look at Mimic, what I see is the pain of a deeply flawed creature that could have been so beautiful.”

Mimic is, as he has recognised and stated, Guillermo Del Toro’s worst film by some distance. It’s the only one that doesn’t indelibly bear his stamp on every frame, the only one that, at the most basic level, simply doesn’t work. Yet, if you wade through the tedious mire that much of this movie is, there are moments; a shot here, an idea there, that hint at what might have been had Bob and Harvey Weinstein simply let Del Toro’s unstoppable imagination run riot. The creatures are well designed and when they appear in shadow they have a frightening presence, sadly on full reveal the monsters work less well, particularly when they aren’t rendered physically.

What really kills Mimic is the fact that the creatures don’t really have a personality, or even much of a purpose. Del Toro’s monsters are often the most intriguing characters in his stories, always layered, always given complex morals and motivations. He loves monsters, is fascinated by them, and it usually shows. Mimic, in its pursuit of convention, does away with that, meaning that the monsters are just that; monsters, and once you know what they are and what they do they become pretty boring.

The people are no more interesting than the creatures, thanks to a bland story and a screenplay that mistakes ciphers for characters. The performances are also dreadful, and not even uniformly so. There are the personality voids that are supposed to be our heroes, played with as little charisma and effort as they can muster by Mira Sorvino and Jeremy Northam. There’s the obnoxious support provided by Josh Brolin (in that difficult period after The Goonies and before No Country for Old Men) and the usually reliable Charles S Dutton. We’re also graced with the hamtastic, English mangling, Giancarlo Giannini and some truly dreadful child performances, a surprise from Del Toro, usually a sensitive director of kids.

However, Mimic, for all its tedium, is beautifully shot and designed. A scene in a church, which sees monsters closing in on a young boy, is stunning, and Del Toro’s insect obsession continues to serve him well. More proof of the tinkering done on this film arrives in the rumour that one stand out shot (hospital beds in endless rows draped in white sheets) was directed by producer Ole Bornedal (who was remaking his Nightwatch for Bob and Harv at the time), and there is an occasional decent set piece; the monsters attacking a subway car in which the characters are trapped being a particular highlight.

It’s easy to see why Del Toro has little love for Mimic, I’d love to see him be allowed to recut or remake the film on his own terms, because the idea of a cure that ends up hunting and killing us sounds like an idea tailor made for him, thankfully the experience of making Mimic led to Del Toro’s willingness to compromise his dark visions slipping, which was all to the good.

Mimic was a financial disappointment on its theatrical release, amassing only a few hundred thousand dollars more than the $25 million it had cost Miramax, however its video and DVD incarnations boosted that significantly enough to make sure that Del Toro wouldn’t be written off by Hollywood, and that Mimic itself would spawn two straight to video sequels.

Del Toro, disillusioned with Hollywood, went back to his favoured themes, and to the Spanish language, for his next project, which is where we’ll pick up in Part 2.