"He thinks it will help him live longer."
“Cronos” is one the most unique vampire movies I have ever seen. It’s never called out in the film and it stays away from some of the troupes of the genre, but still shows the ones that give you little doubt that you are seeing the classic monster, though viewed through a skewed prism.
Jesus Gris
(Federico Luppi) discovers a gold scarab-looking device in the hollow base of a
archangel statue. When activated it
sprouts spider-like legs and punctures Gris injecting him with a chemical of
some kind. This begins to reverse his
internal clock as he gets younger and has acquired an insatiable need for
blood. At the same time Dieter de la
Guardia (Claudio Brook) and his nephew Angel (Ron Perlman) are looking for the ancient
device and are ruthless in their pursuit to attain it.
This movie
is visually impressive for a first feature by Guillermo del Toro. Who would later bring his exceptional vision
to films like “Hellboy”, “Pan’s Labyrinth”, “Blade II” (the best in that
series) and the underrated “Pacific Rim”.
When watching “Cronos” you can see the artist’s imagination striving to
be given a bigger budget as well as better actors to tell the story. That is one of the few drawbacks, the performances
are not all that they could be, probably from a lack of understanding the
material. There still remains some
classic moments throughout the film, with the sunlight scene, a not gory but
equally unnerving blood-licking scene, along with some decent gore. Ahead of his time is what del Toro is here,
few in the early 90’s twisted the genre like he did. They were mostly of the Bram Stoker or Anne
Rice persuasion, and most of us would like to forget 1995’s sad attempt “Vampire
in Brooklyn”. Robert Rodriguez and
Quentin Tarantino would make a more memorable impact the same year in “From
Dusk til Dawn”. “Cronos” had them beat
by a couple of years and this is a great film to go back to if you are a fan of
del Toro’s work.
--Robert L.
Castillo
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