Guillermo Del Toro Thinks Four Of His Past Movies Were Actually Frankenstein Stories

“Only four?” If you’re asking that after this headline, you’re not alone. Guillermo del Toro has finally made the wonderful Frankenstein movie he’s wanted to make since he was a child. However, you can see echoes of Mary Shelley and James Whale in every film del Toro has directed. His trademarks as a storyteller are misunderstood monsters and troubled father-son relationships, the hallmarks of any iteration of “Frankenstein.”

In a recent appearance on the “Indiewire Filmmaker’s Toolkit” podcast, del Toro listed four of his films that he believes are particularly close to “Frankenstein” — “Cronos,” “Mimic,” “Blade II” and “Hellboy.”

“Cronos,” del Toro’s first feature film, stars Jesús Gris (Federico Lope), an old Mexican man turned vampire. Not through a bite, but through a clock device created by an immortality-seeking alchemist (someone just like Dr. Frankenstein). Jesús’ pale, vampire-like appearance resembles Boris Karloff as the creature. “The scar is Frankenstein’s scar on his forehead,” del Toro told IndieWire.

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In del Toro’s “Frankenstein,” he adds a new dimension to the torment of the Creature (Jacob Elordi); He can’t die, so there is literally no way for him to escape a life of rejection and pain. Del Toro adds a breathtaking scene in which the creature steals a stick of dynamite from his creator (Oscar Isaac) and tells Victor to light it. The creature holds him close, praying the small spark on the fuse will be his salvation. Unfortunately, the dynamite explodes and his body recovers as it always does.

“Cronos” is another film about the pain of eternal life, a film in which the sun (the curse of vampires) represents life. One of the major changes del Toro made to Frankenstein was to end the story with the creature’s acceptance of himself, symbolized by him standing in the warm sunrise.

“Mimic,” del Toro’s second film and first in English, reflects the mad science aspect of the “Frankenstein” story. Dr. Susan Tyler (Mira Sorvino) has created the “Judas Strain” of insects to kill a strain of cockroaches that spread diseases. Within a few years, she and her colleagues learned that Judas bugs never stopped evolving. Living in the sewers of Manhattan, they have become human-sized and are threatening to overrun the city.

During the production of “Mimic,” del Toro clashed with Miramax studio heads, the now-disgraced brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein. His experience with the Weinstein family was apparently so bad that del Toro compared it in 2017 to his father’s kidnapping in 1997. “The kidnapping made more sense, I knew what they wanted,” del Toro joked to IndieWire.

“Mimic” is therefore not the film del Toro intended (although he released a director’s cut in 2011). You can see it in how the movie no Treat monsters as majestic; Judas vermin are frightening and terrifying, a pest that must be exterminated.

Del Toro’s next studio picture, “Blade II,” just got better. Blade (Wesley Snipes) is forced to ally himself with his vampire prey to hunt down Jared Nomack (Luke Goss). Nomak carries the Reaper virus, which makes vampires more feral to the point that they feed on other vampires.

Chapter Three reveals that Nomak is the son of vampire master Eli Damaskinos (Thomas Kretschmann), who experimented on his son to create a vampire without the usual weaknesses of his kind. Damaskinos is Dr. Frankenstein and Nomack is the creature, but as in del Toro’s “Frankenstein,” the father is the real monster, not the son.

After “Blade II,” del Toro adapted Hellboy, the gothic comic book hero by artist Mike Mignola. Summoned to Earth in 1944 by the Nazis, Hellboy was raised by Professor Trevor Bruttenholm (“The Broom”) and now works as an agent for the Office of Paranormal Research and Defense. Although he is a harbinger of the apocalypse, Hellboy is a good-natured (albeit rude) man.

Del Toro’s “Hellboy” is visually faithful to the comics, and Ron Perlman is perfectly cast as Hellboy. However, del Toro also presents a lonelier and more emotional mood. In doing so, del Toro turns Hellboy into a pariah like Frankenstein’s monster. As he later did in “The Shape of Water” and “Frankenstein,” del Toro can’t resist making his heroine choose the monster over the man.

In the comics, Hellboy is a public celebrity. Sometimes he feels that he does not belong among people, but these feelings are brief and faint. In the movies, Hellboy worries about having to hide from people just like the creature did; He even watches his father’s funeral from the shadows. Talking about del Toro’s ‘Hellboy’, it focuses on the turbulent father-son relationship between Hellboy and Brom (John Hurt). In the comics, Brom dies in the first “Hellboy” arc, “Seed of Destruction.”

Del Toro’s film ended up having a reflexive influence on comics. In the “Hellboy” miniseries “The Storm and the Fury” (written by Mignola, drawn by Duncan Fegredo), Hellboy recalls Brom reassuring him that he was not a monster like Frankenstein’s creature.

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Mignola is another “Frankenstein” fan, but that’s another difference between him and del Toro. To del Toro, Hellboy He is Such a beast and this should be celebrated.

Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein” is streaming on Netflix.