It feels like this film was made a long long looooooong time ago, but what with everything that has happened to me... well, I’m running on Dog Years.
When CRONOS came out I didn’t go see it. Why? Well at the time the local newspaper that I read (THE AUSTIN CHRONICLE) was on my shit list because they claimed that Dario Argento’s SUSPIRIA was the scariest film every made. I hadn’t seen it, so I went and rented it and... I was not scared. In fact, I hated the film because it was soooo unscary. (Years later I saw it and liked it because I saw it as an atmospheric piece)
Anyway, the same people were hailing CRONOS as a great horror film. Yeah... Right I thought. Suuuuree... My grandfather had always told me not to get kicked twice by the same mule, and dammit, I wasn’t falling for their damn tricks.
So I didn’t go see it.
Years flash by. Around September of last year I began getting email from a fella named Guillermo Del Toro. He had liked my review of MIMIC and told me to go see it under better conditions (Go Read MIMIC review) I had liked the film, but I didn’t see it on a big big screen and I didn’t hear it with THX or Digital Sound.
Around this time I began writing and talking with Guillermo. He seemed like a fairly real fella. As much as you could tell via electronic communications. He sent me a laser disc of CRONOS.
I put it on thinking it would probably be... ok. Oh sure it won that award at Cannes, but that place can be a bit weird sometimes. I gathered up a buncha friends and we went to Glen’s house to watch it... you see I didn’t have a laserdisc player at the time. (I do now)
Wow. The film was a wonderful take on the vampire legend. It was a Grimm’s Fairy Tale. It had atmosphere, it told a story and it was fleshed out. It created an entire mythic universe that the events could happen within.
All of a sudden I understood the person in my emails. He was someone that loved old movies, that wasn’t regurgitating the last 15 years of film. I liked this guy.
Time passed and Guillermo moved to Austin. I openly campaigned him with tales of the Alamo Drafthouse, food places, etc. He’s friends with Robert Rodriguez, and when he wanted a community to move to... well Austin was just right.
When I first met Guillermo it was absolutely uncanny. He is me. We look like brothers. It’s scary. Guillermo is the Mexican Harry and I am the american Guillermo. We speak in the same pentameter, we both have a penchant to bullshit for hours at a time, we both are twisted sick fucks. Well, this sort of sets you up for the review. This gives you a look into who I am, and my perspective in looking at this film and event. Guillermo is my friend, actually quite a close friend.
CRONOS at the Dobie Egyptian Room with Guillermo...
I arrive with the whole gang. Sister Satan, Tom Joad, Johnny Wad, Copernicus, RoRo, Quint, Hooper, Father Geek and maybe a couple of others. We were standing around because allegedly Guillermo had some sort of arrangements for us. Boiling oil no doubt.
The area around the Dobie had balloon arches and festive decorations. This was the world of Austin’s Hispanic Community. The world of Mexi-Arte. The celebratory nature of this group is far more tangible than most of the other groups in Austin. You don’t feel the political maneuvering, instead you just feel welcomed.
Soon we see Guillermo heading our way.
“Heeeeeeeey my FRIEnd,” he bellows out, slapping Quint on the back, giving me a bear hug, kissing my sister, shaking everyone’s hands and with a fiery look in his eyes.
I introduce Guillermo to Tom Joad and then we begin talking about strange porno titles. You see Tom Joad had recently rented “UP YOU ASS WITH NO LUBE IV” Everyone chimes in with the rudest and crudest porn titles they’ve heard in their lives. Guillermo tells a story of a cabbie in Mexico City that redefined the word TABOO. Ahhhhh.... regular shooting of the shit. At no points were the words, “What are you doing next?” “So how’s the project going?” That is unimportant. Instead what we had coming up was this screening.
We get in, I grab my favorite secret hiding place seats with recliners. I ask Guillermo if he wants to join me. But it turns out that Guillermo... well he’s not comfortable watching his movie with an audience. He gets extremely nervous. You’ve got to be kidding me. I was shocked. I’ve known Guillermo for over a year now, and I NEVER EVER got the idea that this would be the case.
But it is. Then it dawned on me. Guillermo cares. He’s not a hack, he literally still cares how each audience sees his films. Even though CRONOS won awards all over the world, he’s worried about how THIS audience will think of it. He still cares about a movie he did 5 years ago. I love that. I’m seeing a new side of him, that I have never seen before.
So he goes up and does a quick introduction where he talks about putting everything he was and had up to the altar to make this film. He mortgaged his house, he campaigned for money, he went into serious debt all because he wanted this movie to turn out right.
He formed an effects company in Mexico 6 years prior to the film with the express purpose of having an effects company to make CRONOS with. Then he leaves the room to go pace outside.
So the film begins.
If you haven’t seen this film and you love the world of horror films. Not slasher films, but horror. Movies like the UNIVERSAL films or the world of VAL LEWTON. If you like movies with atmosphere and characters... well then this is a movie you should enjoy.
CRONOS is a strange wonderful creature in the modern horror genre. It seems when most people conjure images of Horror in the last twenty years, it has been gore, serial killers and slashers. But for the prior 80 years of horror... well it was a different beast.
It wasn’t about teenagers. It was about horrific situations. They were films based on simple horrors... like that of growing old and dying. Of watching your grandparents, parents and loved ones dying.
In this film, you get the idea that it isn’t so much a vampire film, as much as it is someone dealing with the issues of watching and wishing for anyway to keep a loved one alive. And well, vampires live forever...
I remember I was living at my house here in Austin in 1978. My mother was screaming in tears and my father was on the floor gagging, turning blue, unable to take a breath. I was there staring at him. Slowly realizing the reality of the situation. My father was dying. He couldn’t breathe. I went into my room and looked around. My childish brain trying to think of anything to make him live. I saw my nerf rocket launcher. My kid brain thought, “It pushes air. Dad needs air. Rocket save Dad”
So I picked up the little device and I pushed mom out of the way. I shoved the tube down my Father’s throat and I began squeezing the thing that make the rocket launch. Dad began coughing. I removed the tube and Dad started breathing. That little nerf rocket thing was my Cronos device. Blue tube with a yellow rubber squeezee thing. No little bug, no gold gears, but it put life back into my father.
Ultimately this film is that simple. But it’s much deeper than that. I found myself lost in the film. Watching Jesus Gris discover that which makes him feel younger. A bit like watching your Grandparents with little kids. It’s addictive, it’s exhilarating. It feeds life into them like a drug, like a device. Sure it isn’t pure vampirism, but in a way.
Another aspect of this film is the attention to detail. The alchemist’s book. Look at it in the film. Aged paper, detailed drawings, strange fold out pages. I’ve held that book. I’ve looked at it. It is an amazing treasure, and you really do get the idea that the secrets of life and death lay within.
BUT I’VE GOTTEN FAR AWAY FROM THE POINT.
This movie is wonderful because it isn’t about cheap thrills with the latest pop artists shitting on the score. It’s not about fresh faces. It’s not about a twist at the end. It’s not about a score sounding like HALLOWEEN or SCREAM or I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER. The film is about CRONOS. It’s about it’s own story. That’s really quite remarkable when you get right down to it.
It is about creating a place and a time that this story could be told that will heighten the audiences ability to fall into it. Ya know, alot of people don’t get that in Hollywood.
People will look at a genre script and then pull up a list of the previous years successes and say, “Which of these is it like?” “How can we get it to be more like this?” “Will the people that saw that want to see this?”
Those are the wrong questions. It’s not about the last successful genre film. It’s about the script sitting in your hands. It’s about the film you are watching. It’s about marketing a new vision, a different story.
I could write for days about what’s wrong and how a film like this is right. But when you get right down to it. This film works because it does. The planets were aligned. The bones said so.
When the film was over, Guillermo came back in. On the dot. He knows how long the film is. And he went up and did a fantastic Q and A. He chatted about everything concerning the film. And a sign the movie was wonderful was... Nobody asked “What’s next?” Because they were sated.
Don’t see a ‘dubbed’ version, rent a subtitled version. It’s real important. The mixing of English and Spanish is significant to the feel of the film.
