Cronos
Guillermo Del Toro's debut sets the tone for a lot of his subsequent films, firstly there is the fascination with Vampires. Not the teen girls scared of mortality, wants to bed a good looking but dangerous guy fascination. More, the same fascination an entomologist would have for a bug. We get the whole life cycle and biological process of vampirism from infection on as an elderly antiques dealer is accidentally stung by an Alchemists Cronos device and becomes infected, ultimately becoming a 'pet' for his seemingly mute granddaughter. Del Toro's approach to vampires is refreshingly different to a lot of modern cinema's, while he seems intrigued and attracted to the idea of the vampire he seems at the same time sceptical. When the Alchemist who created the device is found dying in a collapsed building his final words in Latin translate (and I may be paraphrasing here) 'everything at the right time'. The film is littered with allusions to time from the name Cronos, who was the god of time in the Greek pantheon, to images of clocks and calendars throughout. The director feels that its important to accept that we are going to die and embrace it in order to live to the fullest. The films vampire groupie, the sickly industrialist whose nephew, played by Del Toro regular Ron Pearlman, is providing the muscle to obtain the device lives and isolated and barren existence in an upstairs room of his factory, which itself seems barren of staff aside from his nephew who seems to be waiting for him to die so he can inherit his fortune. Therefore the Vampire in a Del Toro film is also something repellent, most directors and writers spend a lot of time re-writing Vmpire Myth, a lot of which Bram Stoker nicked from Irish Faerie lore, in order to make the idea of becoming a vampire more appealing. Through Cronos, and subsequently Blade 2 and The strain, the vampire is an other, radically different and barely human in the conventional sense. If anything, the prospect of becoming a vampire in a Del Toro film is far less appealing.
Various other ideas resurface in Del Toros work, the films structure, that of a fairy tail would be repeated to a certain extent in Pan's labyrinth and Devils Backbone, both of which also feature a taste for bizarre often surreal creature imagery. In fact even his more 'commercial' Hollywood films manages to fit these ideas in, from the workspace of Hannibal chau in Pacific rim which focuses on the Kaiju Biology, the strange otherworldly menace of the roaches in Mimic, which also features a similar grand parent - grand child relationship along with a strange fascination with creature biology. Blade 2 takes the hip clubbing vampires from the first and mutates them into abominations not dissimilar to the one in cronos and The strain takes that design one step further. The Hellboy films, while based on an existing graphic novel show a fascination with monsters, making them the heroes and similar visual styles for set and creatures are evident, its sequel Hellboy 2 is more like a Del Toro picture with its focus on fairy tale story structure and creatures.
As for the film itself, it holds up beautifully and really manages to feel as fresh as it did back in the early 90's. The effects hold up wonderfully and while some of the more modern audiences may find its pace a little slow in places its still a fantasitc vampire movie.
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