The last time I saw Guillermo del Toro’s debut CRONOS (1992) must’ve been more than thirty years ago. I know I was aware of it before he came out with MIMIC, but I can’t remember if I rented it before or after. So it would’ve been the late ‘90s or earlier. (Only ‘90s kids know CRONOS.)

It’s funny that there’s a movie I like about getting old and it has now gotten old along with me. Del Toro was still in his twenties, making a movie about old men trying to stop aging. I’m not grandpa-aged yet but I’m gonna say he guessed pretty good. At 50 I relate a little bit to this guy getting fucked up about age.

Of course one of the things that’s changed since 1992 is that del Toro has become an institution, a name brand, a celebrity, a best picture, director and animated feature winner. Back then was an obscure makeup artist and director of short films and television, making an impressive feature debut, but only released in 28 theaters in the U.S. When I think about it I could easily picture del Toro having some super low budget calling card movie, like an EL MARIACHI, an ERASERHEAD or an EVIL DEAD. Wouldn’t have to necessarilly start with ‘E,” but it would show the seeds of what he’d become while having its own crude beauty. No, this is more like BLOOD SIMPLE for the Coen Brothers – he seems almost fully formed. He’d quickly get more extravagant with the effects and the sets, but this doesn’t seem DIY in the slightest. It has scope to it, it has style, it has most of his obsessions. A dark-fairy-tale-meets-monster-movie tone, a mystical antique, a weird insect, an innocent little girl, a part for Ron Perlman. No Spanish Civil War yet, but the backstory does invoke the Inquisition.

The tone is set by the opening narration read by Jorge Martínez de Hoyos (THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN), at least in the original Spanish incarnation. For some reason the version I streamed on Home Box Office Maximum has narration in English, but I love how it sounds. It explains how a 16th century alchemist and “official watchmaker to the viceroy” (Mario Iván Martínez) created “an invention which would provide him with the key to eternal life.” The Cronos device is a gorgeously designed, palm-sized golden contraption, kinda like a Faberge egg. 400 years later “a man of strange skin the color of marble and moonlight” (same guy) was impaled to death in a building collapse. The contents of his mansion were auctioned, but “never on any list or inventory was the Cronos device mentioned,” and the camera (guided by cinematographer Guillermo Navarro one year before DESPERADO) shows us that it’s hidden inside an angel statue.

In 1996, Jesús Gris (Federico Luppi, PAN’S LABYRINTH) and his wife Mercedes (Margarita Isabel, LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE) live a humble life raising their granddaughter Aurora (Tamara Shanath) and running a little antiques shop in Veracruz. Some strange people have been coming in, poking around, looking for something. When roaches crawl out of a hole in an angel statue, Jesús takes apart the hollow base and finds the device inside. When Angel de la Guardia (Ron Perlman, POLICE ACADEMY: MISSION TO MOSCOW) comes in the next day and buys the same statue with cash I’m not sure Jesús even realizes that was what he was looking for.

Angel’s uncle Dieter (Claudio Brook, THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL, LICENCE TO KILL, REVENGE) is a terminally ill factory owner who decoded the backwards Latin of the alchemist’s memoirs, saw sketches of the angel, and has had his goons scouring for it for who knows how long. (There are rows of them hanging in his residence.) So it’s a Holy Grail movie. But also a vampire movie.

Jesús doesn’t make the deliberate decision to use the device. It basically stings him. When he’s examining it, it sort of transforms from egg to scarab, its six metal legs popping out and digging into his hand, drawing blood. I love the interior shots of the device – elegantly clicking gears, like clockwork, but with a Cronenbergian, pulsating biological mass in the middle. Later we learn that “An insect is trapped in the device. It’s like a living filter.”

Out of embarrassment or secrecy, Jesús lies to his wife about the cause of his wounds, and hides his sudden symptoms: massive thirst, hunger for meat, torturous itching, heat, the twitches. He’s like an addict overnight. He lets it pierce him again and the next morning decides to shave his mustache to look more handsome. Starts acting cool. Unbuttoning his shirt a little. His wife is into it. This is the part that hits me different now. Yeah, I could still look pretty good, right? I don’t have to be an old man. Nobody has to know.

Of course it turns into a fight for the device. Angel trashes the place looking for it, he won’t give it to them, then finds out he doesn’t even have it because Aurora was worried about him and hid it from him. An intervention. But he gets it back and continues using it, which is great for him until he starts thirsting for blood. The only specific scene I remembered from seeing it before is still a highlight: at a New Year’s Eve party he sees a guy with a nosebleed, can’t keep himself from following him into the restroom, ends up on his knees licking a splatter of blood off of the floor. I can’t imagine many things more pathetic, but he does it so lustfully. It’s almost like a compulsive perversion more than a drug. And his family are left alone at midnight wondering where the fuck he is. That’s the sad part.

It shifts into a different horror gimmick after Angel drops him off a cliff and he pulls a Boone-in-NIGHTBREED, resurrecting and ditching the funeral home before the cremation. Del Toro finds some good dark humor in the art of preparing him for the casket, and Jesús ends up having to pull a shard of glass out of his foot to cut the stitches from his mouth. He returns home in a backwards burial suit that’s basically a bib with attached shirt and tie.

Here’s a cute twist on vampire lore: after he discovers that sunlight burns his skin he sleeps inside Aurora’s toy chest with her doll. There are no fangs or bat imagery though, and they leave out crosses and garlic and what not. And Daywalkers.

Although Perlman was well known from TV’s Beauty and the Beast, this was only his fifth film, after QUEST FOR FIRE, THE ICE PIRATES, THE NAME OF THE ROSE and SLEEPWALKERS. Of course it was the beginning of a long association with del Toro (I count seven movies they’ve done together so far ) and also it was kind of a precursor to CITY OF LOST CHILDREN, another cool international film where he’s the American actor. I like that he’s so very American yet fits organically into these international films. Who else would it be playing that character? Only Ron Perlman.

There’s a climactic fight with Angel on top of the de la Guardia building, under a light-up de la Guardia sign. I wonder if del Toro thought about the duel under the Silvercup sign in HIGHLANDER, another movie about extended life. Also I wonder if they ever considered a futuristic CRONOS II and a syndicated Cronos: The Series shot in Canada. Anyway I like that the sign has a clock on it. The thing de la Guardia is most afraid of.

Yeah, living forever would be a problem. It’s a simple tale of the dangers of greed, an obvious theme, but so true it feels kinda deep. I suppose it’s an upper middle class movie – Jesús owns a shop, he lives comfortably, no economic complaints. But de la Guardia is very representative of today’s billionaire asshole class, who feel entitled to live forever and take what they want from everyone else even though they have no joy or soul or love in their lives and would make the world better simply by leaping into any hole deep enough to never get out of. Even his nephew hates him and only tolerates him for the inheritance. Jesús loves people and is loved by them, he appreciates beauty and history, he isn’t a fucking asshole, so we side with him, even though neither of them should have this device or this extended life. It’s really a tragic circumstance. He would’ve been better off never knowing about that thing, and just letting the asshole have it. But these are the cards he was dealt and we hope for the best outcome still available.

I love this movie. Of course del Toro will always be a god for BLADE II, and I like all of the other ones too, but he started off so strong and then there was a stretch where I was starting to think I’d never love them as much as I wanted to. That’s changing. After NIGHTMARE ALLEY, PINOCCHIO and rewatching this, I’m back on the del Toro Express. Next stop FRANKENSTEIN. I’ll try to keep expectations realistic.

p.s. I totally forgot that the character of Tito the coroner played by Daniel Giménez Cacho returns in the otherwise unrelated WE ARE WHAT WE ARE (2010).

p.p.s. Technically this could be called holiday horror because it’s set at the end of December with some Christmas trees, at least one Christmas song, and an important New Year’s Eve party with countdown and everything.