Inside Guillermo del Toro’s Horror Museum
Think you have a vast collection of horror paraphrenalia? Pacific Rim director Guillermo del Toro bought an entire house to exhibit his.
Plenty of Hollywood directors have skeletons in their closets, but none quite so literally as Guillermo del Toro, whose infatuation with the frightening and fantastic informs both his films (“Pacific Rim,” “Pan’s Labyrinth”, “Hellboy”) and his home décor. Bleak House (above), a second residence he bought in Los Angeles to display his epic collection of horror art and ephemera, is the subject of Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s “Guillermo del Toro: At Home With Monsters” (August 1 through November 27). Among his some 500 curiosities are illustrations by Edward Gorey, wax sculptures of syphilitic hands, and a special-effects Rain Room that re-creates thunderstorms. Del Toro traces his obsession to the Mexican-Catholic iconography of his childhood. “The creature of Frankenstein invokes in me a deep emotional and spiritual feeling,” he says. “Some people worship at the altar of icons that are accepted by everyone; I kneel at the altar of monsters.”
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