Guillermo del Toro is one of my favorite directors and I’m certainly not the only person in the world who thinks that.
Del Toro, a native from Guadalajara, Jalisco in Mexico, has developed a rock-solid reputation of being something of a huge nerd and an imaginative child in an adult’s body, having been interested in the macabre and other geeky things since his youth in a strict Catholic home. Hobbies would include drawing his own unique monsters and directing various short films on his Super 8 camera, one which is about a killer potato venturing into the outside world – only to get crushed by a car. They truly do start early, don’t they?
Though obviously not as refined as his professional work, Del Toro’s early home films still contained the wildly morbid, darkly humorous, and expansive creativity that has defined the man’s work in both films and shows. A child at heart despite the multiple traumatizing events that he has experienced, Del Toro finds the beauty in the world of fantasy fiction and otherworldly beings with strong connections to his own reality.
It’s this brand of horror and fiction that set him apart from his fellow Mexican contemporaries who dabbled in horror at the time. While his work didn’t have the same level of eccentric filmmaking as the work of Alejandro Jodorowsky, Del Toro favored a healthy balance between an entertaining story and a rich and detailed world full of magical wonder and/or macabre. Drawing from his own upbringing in a Catholic home, Del Toro’s stories are not unlike detailed religious worlds on their own, making way for stories not seen in this form anywhere else.
It’s no wonder that Guillermo Del Toro’s feature length debut, the 1993 vampire classic, Cronos, made an impact on the Mexican film scene, earning rave reviews and even being submitted as Mexico’s entry into the Best Foreign Language Film. It didn’t get in, but a genre film like this one being submitted for Oscar consideration is no easy feat. Even if it didn’t get in, Cronos’ crossover appeal with the casting of Ron Perlman and its imaginative take on the vampire monster stood as a crucial moment in Mexican horror filmmaking, demonstrating what Mexican filmmakers could add to the somewhat lowkey horror genre in the country.
Although many Mexican horror films were distributed internationally by K. Gordan Murray, who was most notable for distributing low-budget Mexploitation horror films, Cronos still stood on its own thanks to Del Toro’s mature story being told within the confines of fantasy fiction. He certainly wanted the audience to have fun, but telling a compelling story was and still is just as important and this is something that the notorious Mexploitation films seemed to lack, despite their immense popularity in Mexico and eventually the United States.
Spoilers ahead for Cronos, so read at your own risk.
With Cronos, we don’t have a masked luchador fighting off some otherworldly evils. Instead, we get a story spanning over 400 years, detailing humanity’s lust for power and youth becoming their own undoing. By no means is this an epic, but the world crafted for the film’s narrative has this grand presence that could easily find its way into a tentpole-budget film from the land of Hollywood. Del Toro crafted this with an estimated $2 million budget, which is already incredibly admirable and impressive.
But Cronos’ best features lie within its story making full use of this world to create a compelling example of the sins of lusting for God-like power. The main protagonist of this vampire tragedy is antiques store owner, Jesus Gris (played by prolific Argentinean actor and future Del Toro collaborator, Federico Luppi), a simple and down-to-earth man of religion who stumbles across a strange device hidden inside a statue in his shop. While he is clueless as to what this device is, the opening narration sets the stage for what is to come.
Over 400 years earlier, an alchemist creates this very device as a means to acquire eternal life, with something in the device granting this unique power to whoever holds it against their bare skin. Jesus unintentionally uses its power while showing it off to his granddaughter, Aurora. While initially painful, he comes to feel a bit younger, demonstrating an energetic vigor he has not felt in ages. Unfortunately, his use of the device causes insatiable greed for continued usage and endless power, all while an American brute named Angel (the legendary Hellboy himself, Ron Perlman) is after the device for his dying and abusive uncle, Dieter de la Guardia.
Many characters and plotlines to cover, yet Cronos makes good use of every one of them to fit into the ultimate starring narrative of the film, which is the greed of humanity falling back unto itself. The characters of this world desire something out of their mortal reach and are willing to suffer and/or make others suffer to achieve it. Jesus, in all his earnestness, desires his youth to make his estranged wife, Mercedes (Margarita Isabel) closer to him once again while feeling full of life all on his own. Dieter, despite his upper-class status, desires eternal life after learning of his upcoming death, while Angel desires his uncle’s inheritance, willing to withstand his abuse to do so.
Despite the dark story of greed being the center focus of Cronos, Guillermo del Toro’s childlike wonder and personality still shine through in the film’s various moments of tender sweetness and humor. Jesus is shown to be playful and passionate about games and puzzles, playing hopscotch on the street and harboring a fascination with the artifacts in his shop. Even as his body begins to transform, there’s a layer of sensitivity to Jesus, preferring to spend time with his family despite his increased craving of blood.
This tenderness is actually the strongest when Jesus is killed by Angel after refusing to give up the device. The inevitable happens when Jesus is brought back from death, only to become a grey-faced vampire craving human blood and burning up at the slightest hint of sunlight. Yet Jesus does not try to satisfy his bloodlust, even with the presence of unaware humans isolated to his advantage. Apart from Dieter at the climax of the film, Jesus contains himself, refusing to give in and become the monster that the device seemingly sets him up to be.
Even in vampire films like Let the Right One In, Nosferatu, and Dracula, any hint of reluctance is gone as soon as blood enters the mix, leaving the fanged beings no choice but to feed off the lifeblood to survive. Cronos has hints of this, most notably when Jesus licks the remnants of his nosebleed off a public bathroom floor, but his humanity takes charge even in his transformed state, where he prioritizes his family’s safety over indulging in their sweet lifeblood.
The heart of Cronos may very well be the reason why the film broke out like it did in 1993. Winning the Mercedes-Benz award at that year’s Cannes Film Festival, Del Toro’s vampire drama was lucky enough to receive international treatment with a limited run in America, a decision that critics at the time and even now have agreed was poor, given the film’s popularity. There was crossover appeal with its heavy use of the English language and the film felt considerably more mature than the various “Wrestler v. Evil” films coming from Mexico in the ’50s and ’60s (though these certainly have value in the timeline of Mexican cinema). There’s a sincere nature to Del Toro’s work and above all else, audiences love to see a film designed to transport them into a world far and away from their own.
Cronos represents an effort from a young filmmaker completely unfiltered and fully embracing the nature of his upbringing, in spite of some of his disagreements with religion. Rich with culture and filled to the brim with an imaginative take on the vampire, Cronos appropriately served as one of Mexico’s finest horror films and is now regarded as among Guillermo del Toro’s best work, including his higher-budgeted projects. Del Toro’s debut feature may be appealing for American audiences, but it did not sacrifice its cultural identity to do so, relying on the film’s tender, but heartbreaking story of the sins of man coming to claim their unfortunate victims.
As Issa Lopez’s Tigers Are Not Afraid has just released in America courtesy of Shudder, it’s important to take a step back and examine the path that Lopez’s modern fairy tale is following, largely paved by the likes of Guillermo del Toro and Alejandro Jodorowsky with their unique and subversive work in the horror genre. Cronos may not have been the first internationally successful Mexican horror film, but it still stands as the point in time when Mexican horror showed what it could do. Lopez is showing off what she can do this year and we have the influence of Guillermo del Toro to thank for that.
