Jonathan Crocker

Guillermo del Toro loves movies. Loves making them and – maybe even more so – loves talking about them. On the Cronos DVD’s hour-long interview, the Mexican filmmaker’s jaw flaps joyously about… everything. How David Lean’s Wuthering Heights turned him into a horror nut, his Super-8 shorts, the 10-year evolution of Cronos from script-school project to finished film, his collaborators and his influences from Bava to Whale to Argento to Clive Baker. “Alfonso Cauron told me to watch Hellraiser,” recalls del Toro. “‘Yours is round, his is square.’”

Cronos’ circular pulp-gothic vampire riff is where it all started for the then-29-year-old, with crusty Mexican antiques-dealer Jesus Gris (Federico Luppi) discovering an ornate clockwork scarab with the ability to grant bloody immortality – much to the chagrin of a dying miser (Claudio Brook) and his face-thumping nephew Angel (Ron Perlman). Stylishly dusted with musty mysticism, Cronos never sinks its teeth to the bone, but despite some grumbling plot-cogs, del Toro’s hallmarks – tragic heart, splatty body horror, prickly insect-fear – are gestating wickedly. Best of all, though, are some delicious flickers of Bunuelian humour: bad-boy Perlman whistling Christmas carols, Luppi tonguing a nosebleed off an immaculate bathroom floor, being embalmed alive (well, undead) and finding rest not in a coffin but in his beloved granddaughter’s toy chest. Best watched with del Toro’s juicy, ardent commentary on full-yak. Jonathan Crocker

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Read the original article at Total Film.

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