The Supernatural Cinema of Guillermo Del Toro: Critical Essays

215 Pages·2015·3.93 MB·English

by  John W. Morehead

The Supernatural
Cinema of
Guillermo del Toro
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The Supernatural
Cinema of
Guillermo del Toro
Critical Essays
Edited by John W. Morehead
Foreword by Doug Jones
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina
LIBRARYOFCONGRESSCATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATIONDATA
The supernatural cinema of Guillermo del Toro : critical essays /
edited by John W. Morehead ; foreword by Doug Jones.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7864-9595-5 (softcover : acid free paper) ♾
ISBN 978-1-4766-2075-6 (ebook)
1. Toro, Guillermo del, 1964– —Criticism and interpretation.
I. Morehead, John W., 1964– editor.
PN1998.3.T583S87 2015
791.4302'33092—dc23 2015016496
BRITISHLIBRARYCATALOGUINGDATAAREAVAILABLE
© 2015 John W. Morehead. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
On the cover: Director Guillermo del Toro and Doug Jones as
the Faun in Pan’s Labyrinth, 2006, Mexico (Photofest)
Printed in the United States of America
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
Table of Contents
Foreword Doug Jones 1
Introduction John W. Morehead 7
The Magical Spirituality of a Lapsed Catholic
Atheism and Anticlericalism
S. T. Joshi 11
At the Mountains of Mexico
The Echoes and Intertexts of Lovecraft and Dunsany
Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr. 22
Slime and Subtlety
Monsters in del Toro’s Spanish- Language Films
Ann Davies 41
Time Out of Joint
Traumatic Hauntings in the Spanish Civil War Films
Karin Brown 58
The Child Transformed by Monsters
The Monstrous Beauty of Childhood Trauma
Jessica Balanzategui 76
The Ambivalence of Creative Desire
Theogonic Myth and Monstrous Offspring
Sidney L. Sondergard 93
Henry’s Kids
Othered Children and Karloff’s Frankenstein Monster
John Kenneth Muir 112
v
Table of Contents
Where the Wild Things Are
Monsters and Children
Alexandra West 130
Bloodsucking Bugs
Horacio Quiroga and the Latin American Transformation
of Vampires
Gabriel Eljaiek- Rodríguez 146
The Birth of Fantasy
A Nietzschaen Reading of Pan’s Labyrinth
Jack Collins 163
Menstruation as Heroine’s Journey in Pan’s Labyrinth
Richard Lindsay 182
About the Contributors 201
Index 205
vi
Foreword
Doug Jones
Guillermo del Toro. A name that makes film fans buckle at the knee
in reverence. A name that has forever changed my life.
I will never forget the day I met Guillermo. It was on the set of Mimic
in 1997. Long after principal photography was completed in Canada with
another actor in the “Long John” bug costume, I had been called in just
to do a few days of p ick-u p r e-s hoots in Los Angeles. I hadn’t actually met
the director the first night, as I was on the roof of a brick building being
pelted by a rain machine and yelled at by a man with a megaphone on the
ground below I couldn’t see through my mask. But my second day, it hap-
pened. I was sitting at the lunch table, and directly across from me, a jolly,
round, scruffy fellow sat down, put his chin in his hands and said, “So tell
me everything you’ve been in before.” This was our director, Guillermo
del Toro, finishing up his first big budget American film, and still unknown
to many Americans like me who hadn’t seen his first Spanish-language
masterpiece, Cronos.
I dutifully listed highlights from my resume that included Batman
Returns, Tank Girl, and Hocus Pocus at the time. Then he wanted to test
his memory for who did the make- ups on me in these films—Ve Neill,
Stan Winston, and, “Hocus Pocus was Tony Gardner, right? Is he a nice
guy?”
His love for monsters and make- ups was readily apparent, and his
love for the artists who create them, even more so. I confirmed that Tony
Gardner is a great guy, as the energy at that lunch table rose to a level that
would make twelve- year-old boys proud. Guillermo told me how he
started in Mexico, making monsters of his own and filming them for tel-
evision and movies there, appeasing his longtime love for all things creepy
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Foreword by Doug Jones
and crawly. We connected as two fan boys, giggling about our love of clas-
sic monster movies, and then remembered we had to go back to “director”
and “actor” when lunch was over that day. Little did I know, that was my
first encounter with the genius who would later create the defining
moments of my career.
He found me again five years later when the creature shop Spectral
Motion was creating the Abe Sapien character m ake-u p for Hellboy. Shop
owner Mike Elizalde, designer Steve Wang, and sculptor Jose Fernandez
were presenting the finished maquette sculpture for director Guillermo
del Toro’s approval. Legend has it, he fell to his knees and quietly said,
“Wow. I am so fat.” We think this means “What a beautiful, thin, aquatic
creature.” It was at this moment when the Spectral Motion guys all chimed
in that the perfect person to play this role was Doug Jones.
“Doug Jones? I know Doug Jones,” he said, as he pulled out of his
wallet the business card I had given him five years earlier at our lunch
table on Mimic. This is the Guillermo people fall in love with—the
Guillermo who keeps people in his stable with whom he remembers cre-
ating magic. I have never known anyone who is better at surrounding
himself with people who inspire him, who motivate him, who can collab-
orate with him, who share his artistic vision, no matter which filmmaking
department they are in.
He doesn’t just meet people. He absorbs them. He studies them. He
wants to know what fibers each of us possess and how they weave together
to make us the people we are. He also absorbs this information from fine
art sculptures, paintings, movies, music, dance, any form of artistic expres-
sion, and the people who create them. He doesn’t just love the original
Frankensteinmovie like most fans. He loves actor Boris Karloff. He loves
director James Whale. He loves the novel by Mary Shelley. And because
of this love, he’s had his own Frankenstein in development now for just
long enough to imply that he doesn’t want to do any of these people a dis-
service by making his own movie before it’s ready to fulfill every childhood
dream he carries to this day. I am attached to play Frankenstein’s monster,
and I have never been so happy to wait.
As an actor, I’ve observed his relationship with actors most keenly.
Those p ersonality-d issecting skills of his enable him to direct each of us
very differently, based on what buttons we have. I noticed this most on
Hellboy II: The Golden Army, watching his demeanor change between giv-
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Foreword by Doug Jones
ing notes to Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Jeffrey Tambor, and me. With me,
he knows he doesn’t have to say much. Like the scene in Hellboy IIwhere I
put contact lenses in my fishy eyes and sprayed my gills with a device that
would allow me to not need my goggles and water- filled breathing apparatus.
After the first take of all that business with those props, he simply said,
“Cut! Cojones! You’re boring me to tears.” He knows that to make me laugh
and give me a o ne-l iner jab, I’ll get the idea and fix it until it’s more inter-
esting. And yes, “Cojones” “with every vulgar double meaning intended,
bless his heart,” is just one of many nicknames he’s called me over the years.
Hellboy II also gave birth to one of my favorite Guillermo quotes
ever. We were a couple of months along in our s ix-m onth shoot … 18
hours a day, six days a week. I have never felt so depleted by sleepless toil,
yet so invigorated by the art we were making. A confusing mix. One day,
between camera set- ups, I was dozing off in my set chair, and I heard his
shuffling footsteps approaching. Like a loyal doggie, I perked up when I
heard my master approaching. He put his hand on my shoulder and gently
spoke. “I know we are killing you, my friend.” I was about to agree when
he continued, “But the good news is, there will be pilgrimages to your
grave.” And right there, he summed it all up. Making immortal art that
will live long after we are gone from this Earth might just be worth the
torment we were all putting our bodies through.
After he hand- picked me to play the Faun and the Pale Man in his
masterpiece, Pan’s Labyrinth, I argued that I couldn’t be the best choice
for the Faun, as I don’t speak Spanish, and I’d ruin his film. But Guillermo
insisted I was the only one who could play the Faun, adding, “You can
count to ten, for all I care, and I’ll dub it over later, but I need you in that
role.” He knows my strengths and weaknesses far better than I do, and he
also knew that given this challenge, I’d never let him film me counting to
ten. So I learned all that Spanish dialogue without a coach. Then in our
second week of filming, he sat with me in a quiet moment between shot
s et-u ps, put his hand on my arm and said, “I know you haven’t heard
much from me, my friend.” And this was true. After I took in all his pre-
production notes, he didn’t offer much o n-s et direction. I knew this was
his way, and he proved me correct when he continued with, “It’s because
you’re simply getting it right.” A dream director, who can see he’s getting
what he wants and doesn’t spoil the soup by over- seasoning it.
This book is filled with very smart essays on del Toro’s cultural, philo-
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