SOMETHING WICKED
As a child growing up in Guadalajara in western Mexico, Guillermo del Toro visited a carnival and was confronted with a sight that’s haunted him ever since. Before him writhed a beast, half woman, half spider, and it fixed its sorrowful eyes on his own widened orbs as it said, “I was turned into this monster because I disobeyed my parents.” Little Guillermo, as you’d well imagine, did all in his power to be a good, respectful boy after that.
“The spider-woman was not in the book but I put it in the movie,” del Toro tells Total Film, referring to his vividly dark new film, Nightmare Alley, based on William Lindsay Gresham’s 1946 novel. “In the movie, she says exactly that: ‘I was turned into this monster because I disobeyed my parents.’” He laughs, nervously. “That’s exactly what she said, and I never forgot it.”
This traumatic encounter is perhaps the starting point for del Toro’s 10th feature, though those seeking something more concrete should look to a conversation between the famed filmmaker and his favourite actor, Ron Perlman. Del Toro remembers the chat happening in 1990 or ’91, before he’d made his feature debut , in which Perlman appeared as the only English-speaking cast member. Perlman, on the other hand, insists it was “somewhere around 2006”, between the two movies in which
