Guillermo del Toro used to stay up late watching TV with his brother when he was a kid in Guadalajara, Mexico. One night, they stumble upon an episode called “The Mutant” from his 1960s science fiction anthology series, “The Outer Limits.” In it, Warren Oates plays an astronaut caught in a radioactive rainstorm on another planet.
“There was a moment when he took off his goggles and his eyes were as big as the goggles,” Del Toro recalled in a recent video interview. The rest of his life was a counterphobic reaction to the horror he felt watching that episode.”
Today, Del Toro, 58, is drawing screams from others with movies like Pan’s Labyrinth and TV series like The Strain. And now he has his own anthology series, “Guillermo his Del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities.” The first season, which debuts Tuesday on Netflix, is an eight-hour collection of horror stories, each directed by a different director, and del Toro handpicked his eight directors to appear in the first season. Some of the world’s greatest horror minds include Ana Lily Amirpour (“Bad Batch”), Panos Kosmatos (“Mandy”) and Jennifer Kent (“Babadook”).
Two episodes are based on original stories written by series creator del Toro. Another two of his are based on the classic tales of spooky master HP Lovecraft. All have very high production values.
“I had to spend all my Netflix money,” Amirpour said in a recent video interview. Her wildly entertaining chapter, “The Outside,” tells the story of a woman (Kate Micucci) who has an unhealthy relationship with a new beauty product.
“When you work with Guillermo, someone who has that level of power, you can really succeed and create something cool,” she added.
Del Toro joined the project as a curator and a fan, with the goal of highlighting the stories, storytellers and filmmakers he loves.
“I wanted to choose stories that I liked, stories that weren’t adapted, or stories that weren’t adapted in a very protective production environment.” I wanted to pretty much bring together a group of stories, curate them, and give them the opportunity to feel all the support and freedom, the final cut, and the resources out there.”
I had a big problem. In fact, “Cabinet” has eight hour-long films such as 1909’s Rural Massachusetts (“Pickman’s Model,” directed by Keith Thomas) and the late 1970s Future Shock (“The Viewing,” “Cosmatos”). book included. The directors were essentially their own showrunners.
“This really feels like my movie,” said Amirpour. “It was a complete creation from the time I modified the script to the completion. It felt so completely and completely mine.
Multiple cinematographers and editors worked on the series, but only one diligent production designer was del Toro regular Tamara Deverell (“Nightmare Alley,” “The Strain”). (Vincenzo Natali in “The Graveyard Rats”) and a crude storage facility (Guillermo Navarro in “Lot 36”).
In a video interview, Deverell recalled that “Cabinet” repurposed the set of Del Toro’s 2021 film “Nightmare Alley” for both “Lot 36” and “Graveyard Rats.” She also pointed out the complexity of executing the vision of eight different filmmakers. But she’s not complaining. She sees del Toro as the perfect collaborator, an artist who knows storytelling is both visual and verbal.
“He understands spaces, ceiling heights, square footage, shapes of things in ways that a lot of directors don’t,” Deverell says. “He makes it so easy. The set is just as important as the actors and the story. It’s part of the same world he’s trying to create.”
Del Toro is an avid collector of books and comics. A stack of books looms in the background as he speaks from his office in Santa Monica, California. He’s particularly a fan of the anthology, the one between the two covers. The first book he bought with his own money was His Anthology of Horror, edited and shown on screen by science fiction writer Forrest J. Ackerman. When I’m not yelling at “The Outer Limits,” I watch “The Twilight Zone,” “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “One Step Beyond,” “Night Gallery,” and “Ghost Story.” I was.
“Those were my favorite things,” he said. “Just like I loved reading short stories more than any other format. I find them immersive, self-contained, and incredibly engaging. Then most collections I collect are anthologies.”
He adores the material and its history, and actor Tim Blake Nelson hasn’t forgotten either. Nelson has also appeared in Dell’s Toro’s ‘Nightmare Alley’ and the upcoming ‘Pinocchio’ film and is the lead in ‘Lot 36′. This is the story of a racist scavenger who raids delinquent customers’ storage bins and sells their belongings. Yes, he gets a scary – and many tentacles – comeup.
For Nelson, del Toro’s passion for the macabre pushes his work beyond genre boundaries.
“Guillermo’s reverence for horror is so deep that I believe it’s no longer horror,” he said in a video interview. You no longer think of it as an occult or a genre, you think of it as a reality, which makes it even more frightening. “
Del Toro was originally set to direct the episode, but the pandemic delayed production of both “Nightmare Alley” and “Pinocchio.” So instead, he offered to host. At the beginning of each article, he roams in the dark, looking like an elaborate model mansion with drawers.
He takes out and introduces an ivory miniature statue of each director. (Originally, the Cabinet of Curiosities contained anatomical specimens, amulets, etc., all of which reflected the curator’s taste and instinct for showmanship.) Hitchcock Presents” plays like the classic opening.
But if the “Cabinet of Curiosities” has a spiritual ancestor, it’s a much more sinister figure. Writer H. P. Lovecraft, who lived from 1890 to his 1937, has inspired memorable films (“The Animator”) and television (“Lovecraft Country”). His story-inspired episodes of “Cabinet” include “Dream of the Witch’s House,” directed by Catherine Hardwicke, and “Pickman’s Model,” about a painter (Crispin Glover) with a dark and satanic muse. is. (“Pickmans His Model” was also the basis for his 1971 “Night in His Gallery” episode that gave this reporter a childhood nightmare.)
Lovecraft, known for what del Toro called “excessive prose and esoteric adjectives,” is also terrifying in his dark outlook on humanity.
“He was cosmically misanthropic,” Del Toro said. “He was an outsider’s outsider. It is very difficult to imagine a more terrifying person. You can’t contain it, it’s just madness.It resonates through the ages.”
By all accounts, Del Toro is not Lovecraft. Although he is a cheerful and supportive colleague, he still gravitates towards darkness. He is on the side of artists and monsters. He’s a happy phobia.
“He never imposes his will on anyone,” said Amirpour. “He’s just trying to help you find the best way to do what you’re trying to do. What really sets him apart is his generous spirit.” It’s kind of like having a courtside seat and having to sit somewhere else.”