THE HORROR LIBRARY
To the right of the Foyer is one of Bleak House’s many libraries, where a full-size—and utterly convincing—figure of H. P. Lovecraft stands perusing a volume. Lovecraft is one of Guillermo’s most cherished icons, a spiritual godfather, and Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness is Guillermo’s most-longed-for, unmade film project.
The Lovecraft statue was sculpted by Thomas Kuebler. “I had it commissioned,” Guillermo says. “I approved every stage of the sculpt. People think his likeness is very easy; it’s actually very difficult. He has a few quirks, the fold by the mouth, the lantern jaw. They can be cartoonish.”
The Lovecraft figure stands watch over Guillermo’s beloved books on horror, including the first book he ever bought—an anthology edited by Forrest J Ackerman, which Guillermo purchased in 1971 when he was seven. The Horror Library is filled with classic stories by such outré and macabre authors as Arthur Machen, M. R. James, and Sheridan Le Fanu. “Everything that is in Spanish means that I bought it when I was very young,” Guillermo explains. Ravenous for knowledge, Guillermo began teaching himself English as soon as he could, so he could read more broadly: “I was very young. I was less than ten, and I was bilingual. I started with a dictionary and all the movies from America, which were subtitled, not dubbed.”
In the Horror Library, Prince Nuada’s sword from Hellboy II rests quietly a few feet away from the baby bug prop from Mimic. “And that’s one of the real Golden Army soldiers, life-size,” Guillermo says. “Next to it is the chopped-up head from Blade II.” Another familiar figure from Guillermo’s oeuvre stands out. “That’s the first concept maquette ever done of Hellboy,” Guillermo notes. “That was done by Matt Rose. And this is the Cronos device on one of the silicone hands we used in the movie.”
Guillermo avidly collects items from cherished movies and TV shows, including the Devil figure featured in Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. “That’s my favorite character in the whole movie,” Guillermo says. Scattered throughout the room are also visual touchstones from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Phantom of the Opera, Lost in Space, and Night Gallery. The replica figure of Baron Boris von Frankenstein, based on Boris Karloff, from the stop-motion-animated Mad Monster Party was made for him by the animation crew on Blade II.
This library also holds a miniature scene from Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Disney, in particular, has been a towering influence on Guillermo. But to really appreciate that, we need to stroll down the hallway and find a certain bookcase, which slides to reveal a secret room….
THE DOWNSTAIRS HALLWAY
The downstairs hallway of Bleak House is lined with a cornucopia of wonders, gathering together framed insects, cameos, nineteenth-century anatomical drawings, a fake mummified rabbit, weird objets d’art, and stunning artwork. These pieces include concept art for Sleeping Beauty by famed children’s illustrator Kay Nielsen, original work by science fiction and horror illustrator Michael Whelan, and illustrations by Charles Doyle, the father of Arthur Conan Doyle.
“These are my magic books,” Guillermo says, pointing to tomes on the art of illusion, prestidigitation, and misdirection from across several centuries. Then he gestures toward a row of busts depicting famed magicians: “And these are Thurston, Houdini, Chung Ling Soo.”
Favorite works of literature also line the shelves—volumes by Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, Jorge Luis Borges, and Edgar Allan Poe, among others.
Guillermo indicates a large framed insect. “That’s the bug I bought as a kid when I first visited New York. I always wanted to use it in a movie, and it ended up in Pan’s Labyrinth.”
Nearby are other touchstones of Guillermo’s life. “This is my grandmother’s cameo, which I’ve used as a prop in a couple of movies, and which I want to use again in Crimson Peak. And this is the first model kit I painted as a kid, Pirates of the Caribbean.”
THE HAUNTED MANSION ROOM
“I first went to Disneyland when I was three years old,” Guillermo recalls. “It was life-changing for me. My mind became what it is. I’m a big Disney fan. I believe the man changed the way we tell stories. He was doing transmedia before anybody talked about transmedia.”
The Haunted Mansion Room—also called the Fairy Tales and Folk Tales Library—replicates many elements from Disney’s unique attraction, including the wallpaper from the mansion’s foyer by Bradbury and Bradbury, gargoyle sconces, and Marc Davis’s original acrylic painting of Medusa. Also notable is the life-size figure of the Hatbox Ghost, a ghost no longer seen on the ride. “It was on the Haunted Mansion for only a few days, then they took it down,” Guillermo relates. “The legend was that it was too scary. The reality is, it wasn’t working.”
Recently, Guillermo committed to make a new film version of the Haunted Mansion: “With Disney, when I took Haunted Mansion, one of my conditions was that they would let me tour the mansion by foot and that they would open the vault, so we could see all the preproduction art by Marc Davis and Rolly Crump and all the Imagineers. So we did. I spent the morning there like a kid. Amazing stuff.”
Guillermo had Spectral Motion construct “The Ghost Theater,” which resides here. It’s a miniature tableau of a ghost whose head vanishes from his shoulders and reappears in a hatbox, while thunder rumbles and music from the Haunted Mansion ride plays. Guillermo has long been a fan of dioramas. As a child, he built a sprawling scene in his walk-in closet from Planet of the Apes, with sixty-five figures, AstroTurf, and an illuminated moon.
“That was, in many ways, my first Bleak House,” recalls Guillermo. “I art directed that room within an inch of its life. Back then I had drawers full of Plasticine props and ‘makeup effects’ for the action figures: prosthetic wounds or gouged eyes; set dressings; monsters; horses; and a slew of Russ Berrie jigglers (my favorite toys growing up). I mended, patched, and repaired everything as needed. I still do! I keep my ‘hospital’ at Bleak House busy, repainting, gluing, or patching anything that breaks in the house. I am pretty good at restoring toys, statuettes, and books in equal measure.” The dark corners of this room are havens for all sorts of eerie things, but some Guillermo found in unlikely places. For instance, he stumbled upon a macabre illustration of death on a horse, subtitled Sooner or Later, in a Hallmark store.
