{"id":6869,"date":"2011-11-22T23:32:00","date_gmt":"2011-11-23T04:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=6869"},"modified":"2015-07-24T13:33:17","modified_gmt":"2015-07-24T18:33:17","slug":"cronos-1993-guillermo-del-toro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/6869","title":{"rendered":"Cronos (1993, Guillermo del Toro)"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1536, the official watchmaker to the viceroy flees the Inquisition and lands in Vera Cruz, Mexico. In 1937 a vault collapses, killing the watchmaker. How he lived for 400+ years becomes the obsession of rich, dying businessman Claudio Brook (Simon of the Desert<\/a> himself). When his enforcer son Ron Perlman discovers evidence that the watchmaker’s Cronos Device (which turns the user into a kind of vampire\/addict: see also The Addiction<\/a><\/em>, released two years later) has turned up in an antiques shop, he tries to acquire it from its accidentally-immortal new owner.<\/p>\n

Two dying men, sort of:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

Think I watched this in Paul Young’s after-hours screening series at Tech, but I must’ve slept through part of it, since it seemed mostly unfamiliar. A quality flick – suppose it qualifies as horror, but it doesn’t behave quite the way a horror movie is supposed to, has a classic genre sensibility (horror genre with action\/revenge\/gangster elements) but marches to its own beat. For instance, the old man’s granddaughter Aurora isn’t a spooky ghost child nor a victim, but a witness\/participant, a representative of the spectator with more personality than is usually allowed.<\/p>\n

Perlman, before City of Lost Children:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

Federico Lupi, also in The Devil’s Backbone<\/a><\/em>, is antique dealer Jesus Gris, who has a run-in with Ron Perlman after finding and using the device. Perlman arranges a car crash and attends the cremation of Gris’s coffin – but Gris has escaped from it just in time. After getting himself together he sneaks into the businessman’s office seeking answers about his condition (with Aurora accidentally in tow, a glowstick between her teeth). The businessman is killed, and a rooftop fight between Gris and Perlman leaves them both dead-ish, but Gris is revived by the device, which he then smashes, realizing he’s being tempted to drink Aurora’s blood. He goes home and presumably starves to death in bed surrounded by his family, a strangely beautiful portrayal of a moral vampire.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1536, the official watchmaker to the viceroy flees the Inquisition and lands in Vera Cruz, Mexico. In 1937 a vault collapses, killing the watchmaker. How he lived for 400+ years becomes the obsession of rich, dying businessman Claudio Brook (Simon of the Desert himself). When his enforcer son Ron Perlman discovers evidence that the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[451,909,54,137,56,595,186],"class_list":["post-6869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1990s","tag-guillermo-del-toro","tag-horror","tag-mexico","tag-ron-perlman","tag-spanish-inquisition","tag-vampires"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6869"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10085,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6869\/revisions\/10085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}