The Supernatural Cinema of Guillermo del Toro This page intentionally left blank 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 1 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- 2 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- 3