The day I met Guillermo del Toro
This isn’t Photoshop.
This isn’t Photoshop.
In the summer of 1816, a group of Romantic writers (Mary and Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Willian Polidori) gathered in a house on the shores of Lake Geneva and told each other ghost stories. These are some of the films inspired by the events.
Guillermo del Toro is a self-confessed fan of the Gothic Romance. I spoke to him about early influences and the pleasures and pains of reviving the genre on screen.
Guillermo del Toro described his recent film Crimson Peak as a “classic Gothic Romance”, a subgenre that has been consigned to oblivion for nearly four decades. But what is Gothic Romance, what makes it different to horror and why did it fall into obscurity?
Old-fashioned, eerie and subtle. These are my favourite ghost films.
A tribute to Paul Naschy, the Spanish Lon Chaney, who dedicated his life to dignifying a genre vilified by Franco and his censors.
A tribute to special effects artist Ray Harryhausen, who shaped the perception of mythical creatures in popular culture.
Image from Famous Monsters #100 (1973) by Tom Simpson