“And I would laugh because it was ridiculous.” “She exorcised me a couple of times - she threw holy water at me,” he says. “I was already into monsters, ever since I was in the crib, so one of the rooms in her house had a sign that said ‘Monster Club, Do Not Trespass,’ and it had a vampire bat that I had cut out of artificial fur.” But there was a darker side to del Toro’s upbringing. “My grandmother would love to hear me talk about my plans,” he adds. Here in Bleak House (as he calls the two connected houses that are his private museum), clad in black, del Toro all but disappears in the darkness until all that stands out are his eyes, looming large behind powerful spectacles. “For the most part, there is a relationship that was very gentle,” he says, easing himself into a well-worn couch, surrounded by bibelots and bric-a-brac, in a room that never seems to have seen the light of day. You have the same questions you had when you were a kid: What are we doing here? Am I fulfilling what I’m meant to fulfill?”
“There’s a moment late in your life when you get the sense that ,” he reflects. They’re present in the two houses in Ventura County that he’s turned into modern-day cabinets of curiosities, each packed with thousands of unusual artifacts (surreal paintings, glass eyeballs, metallic creatures, a full-size Frankenstein creature) that he’s collected over decades, all the more shocking for being hidden behind suburban walls.ĭel Toro doesn’t live in these homes - he occupies a presumably more practical residence just a short distance away - but as he wanders from room to room, showing this visitor his treasures on a crisp October morning, it’s clear this is where his heart belongs, that his connection to the objects and obsessions of his childhood still lingers. Its heightened images and emotions are visible in his extensive notebooks (he always has one with him, in which he scribbles thoughts and sketches in sepia ink), replete with transmogrified souls, grotesque plants and hallucinatory visions that seem to have leaked, unfiltered, from a child’s subconscious. Look at this film and at del Toro’s other work, and it’s hard to believe he’s ever altogether left his childhood behind.
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