Presiding over the Haunted Mansion Room is a mask of Algernon Blackwood, one of Guillermo’s favorite horror writers. Nearby, the collected Oz books by L. Frank Baum and Arabian Nights mingle with a sign from the Troll Market used in Hellboy II, along with miscellaneous limbs from Guillermo’s films. “This is the hand made for the Prince in Hellboy II, for a close-up with the mechanical egg,” he says. “That’s the leg from Cronos, where he pulls the glass out of the foot.”
Look closely and you can find more personal, less ghoulish talismans, such as Guillermo’s first studio drive-on pass. “This is from my first meeting at a studio for a job—Universal. That would be 1992, ’93.”
Though most items from Guillermo’s films are judiciously placed and “not prominent,” he says, there is one artifact that is given pride of place in the Haunted Mansion Room: the original design for Santi from The Devil’s Backbone. Says Guillermo: “It was important to me for him to be here.”
THE RAIN ROOM
The Rain Room is the house’s heart, for it holds Guillermo’s heart. It is where he comes most often to write, on the big comfy sofa or at the corner desk. Beside the desk is a list of “things I have pending, things that I need to write,” Guillermo says. “I fill it up, and then I sit down and start hammering them out. It’s really ideal working this way. I usually write in the dark. It helps a lot.”
As he enters the tenebrous space, Guillermo flicks a switch. Thunder rumbles and rain from a projector cascades outside a perennially night-lit window. The illusion is perfect and sets the stage for what lies within.
“This is also my library of occult references,” Guillermo explains. Included are volumes of the landmark set Man, Myth, and Magic. “When I was a kid, it was very important.”
As inspiring as the books are, it’s difficult to tear one’s attention away from the lifelike sculptures that inhabit the room. Most dramatic of all is the astonishing re-creation of one of the greatest on-set photos ever: of Boris Karloff, bare to the waist in a makeup chair, his head fully detailed as Frankenstein’s monster, daintily sipping a cup of tea. In the Rain Room, this surreal moment has come to life: a life-size silicone statue of Karloff takes his tea break, the black lipstick from his makeup staining the cup as he drinks. “I love the detail of the cup and the lips,” notes Guillermo.
Attending Karloff is a sculpture of the genius makeup artist Jack Pierce, designer of Frankenstein’s monster, his Bride, the Wolf Man, the Mummy, and the silver-eyed, blue-skinned replicants from Creation of the Humanoids.
A replica of the doll from Night Gallery, sculpted by Thomas Kuebler, also graces this chamber. “The scariest moment of my life is that doll,” recalls Guillermo. “When she appeared on the screen, I literally—physically, biologically—peed my pants. I started screaming and lost control of my bladder.” Joining it are a cane and helmet from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a cover painting from Famous Monsters of Filmland, and stunning illustrations from Bernie Wrightson’s Frankenstein. All are originals.
A custom-made box holds stereoscopic photographs of the maquettes from the as-yet-unmade At the Mountains of Madness, a memento of eight months of intense artistic development and preproduction planning. The original sculptures are too large for the Rain Room. “I’d need a whole Lovecraft room—which I’ll build if we make the movie,” says Guillermo.
The Rain Room also displays the original Good Samaritan gun from Hellboy and Big Baby from Hellboy II, along with Kroenen’s mask and Professor Broom’s rosary.
Not every memento and artwork on the walls recalls the occult. “That’s by a painter from my hometown,” Guillermo explains, indicating a serene painting. “That’s exactly how the light falls in the afternoon in the area where I had my office. So it brings great memories from home.”
And why a room with a storm that goes on forever? “It makes me happy,” Guillermo says. “That’s all I know. I just love the sound.”
CASA DEL TORO
JOHN LANDIS
FORREST J. ACKERMAN, the creator and editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, lived in a big house in the Hollywood Hills known as the “Ackermansion.” There he worked surrounded by his huge collection of books, cinema posters, stills, and movie props. Visiting Forry’s house was a pilgrimage made by thousands of fans over the years, including a certain young Mexican whose visit clearly made a deep impression.
My friend Guillermo del Toro’s passion and enthusiasm for fantasy, horror, and science fiction burns as brightly now as it did when he was a child in Guadalajara. And like the five-year-old Guillermo, who read Famous Monsters of Filmland and made models of monsters to decorate his room, the adult Guillermo continues to create and collect images of the fantastic.
Guillermo now lives with his beautiful wife and daughters in a very nice home in a lovely neighborhood in Southern California. Just a couple of blocks away is another respectable suburban house in which his very large and constantly expanding collection of strange and wonderful objects—books, paintings, drawings, toys, movie props, sculptures, intricate clockwork dolls, and wax figures—dwells. A plaque on the front door reads “Bleak House.”
From the exterior of Bleak House, the only hint of what is inside would be the full-scale working replica of the satanic automobile from the insane 1977 Universal picture The Car, which is parked in the driveway. And there is that life-size bronze of the great Ray Harryhausen standing by the swimming pool in the backyard.
Guillermo’s own notebooks, which he has meticulously kept for many years, reveal the complex del Toro thought process and aesthetic. Drawings, diagrams, and ideas recorded in da Vinci-like detail. And like his notebooks, his collection is in constant evolution. There are works by famous painters, production designers, illustrators, prop makers, and makeup artists; one-of-a-kind statues of every size; mass-market action figures; and garage kits. Every classic monster is represented, plus denizens from Guillermo’s own films and many creatures that only exist within the walls of Bleak House.
There is an entire room to honor the Haunted Mansion attraction at Disneyland. It is filled with Haunted Mansion memorabilia and, like the original, is rigged so that it is always a dark and stormy night outside its windows. A dark and stormy night complete with lightning, thunder, and rain!
Guillermo was an early patron of the extraordinary sculptor Mike Hill, who created the amazingly lifelike, full-scale tableau of Boris Karloff sipping tea while being transformed into the Frankenstein monster by makeup maestro Jack Pierce. Hill’s work is disturbingly realistic, as is the work of Thomas Kuebler, whose sculpture of the midget Hans from Todd Browning’s Freaks lurks at the end of a long hallway. Kuebler posed this exact duplicate of actor Harry Earles so that he is holding an open straight razor. Trust me, this is not something you want to stumble on unawares.