Monsters on the Move – Guillermo del Toro’s private horror collection to go on tour

in Artwork, Haunted Attractions, Movies

Anyone who’s followed modern horror knows the name Guillermo del Toro.

From Hell Boy to the eventual Haunted Mansion movie (see, Mr. del Toro we’re STILL waiting and counting on you), he has been delightfully terrorizing us with his own brand of madness and monsters. With titles like Crimson Peak, Pan’s Labyrinth, Pacific Rim, the Strain and Don’t be Afraid of the Dark, del Toro’s imagination spans a dark and deeply diverse field of fiendish fun.
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Bleakhouse, del Toro’s home, is renowned for its collection of film treasures, artwork, and unusual collectables acquired over his lifetime of crafting tales of horror. So creepy is the collection that his daughters refuse to have anything to do with it, so the collection serves as inspiration for del Toro, who has turned the location into a work space.  There are over 700 pieces of original art and entire themed rooms (like the Dickens room or Nosferatu corridor) and even a few “secret passages”.

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Once asked by Jimmy Kimmel if would eventually turn the home into a museum, del Toro replied that he did give an occasional tour, but said a traveling exhibition is more likely. Now that will be a reality starting this July when about 500 items from Bleak House will go on tour.

GUILLERMO DEL TORO: AT HOME WITH MONSTERS will open at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on July 31st (through November 27th).  The L.A. museum will get to keep several items for their permanent collection.  Next, according to a tweet by del Toro, the creepy collection will visit Minneapolis (2/26/17), Toronto (9/30/17-1/7/18), Mexico City, Barcelona and New York (though the LACMA says only Minneapolis and Toronto are on the tour).

According to del Toro’s official website, highlights of the tour, which is “organized into eight thematic sections”, include:

  • Childhood and Innocence – exploring the central role children often play in del Toro’s films.
  • Victoriana – loosely referencing the Romantic, Victorian, and Edwardian ages and latter-day interpretation of the Victorian era.
  • Rain Room – a recreation of a favorite spot in del Toro’s personal residence (“Bleak House”) where he installed a false window with special effects to simulate a perpetual thunderstorm.
  • Magic, Alchemy, and the Occult – exploring the many puzzles, talismans, secret keys and quests for forbidden knowledge that appear in del Toro’s films.
  • Movies, Comics and Pop Culture – delving into the scope of his obsession with cinema, from B-movies and horror films to Alfred Hitchcock and Luis Buñuel.
  • Frankenstein and Horror – revealing del Toro’s lifelong love affair with the tale of Dr. Frankenstein and his monster.
  • Freaks and Monsters – considering del Toro’s fascination with monsters of all types, from those found in horror movies to those in nature, literature, myth and art.
  • Death and the Afterlife, which speaks to the disturbing confrontations with death that del Toro experienced growing up in Guadalajara, Mexico, in the late 1960s and ’70s.

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For those who want to dive deeper into the collection (or cannot make it to any of the tour stops), a companion book, Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters: Inside His Films, Notebooks and Collections will be released on July 26 this year.

Story source & images The Mary Sue, Remezcla.com, and deltorofilms.com

in Artwork, Haunted Attractions, Movies

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