From the queen of gothic literature to the king of rock ‘n’ roll, Guillermo del Toro absorbed many influences to create his own version of the legendary monster of “Frankenstein.” The filmmaker detailed them in interviews with the Star:
Mary Shelley “People say, how could she write ‘Frankenstein’ at 18? And I say, how could she do it at any other age? Things were so urgent for her when she was 18 … And it has that energy and that beautifully undisciplined veracity. That’s what I love about Shelley’s book, and also Bernie Wrightson’s illustrations for it, and why it survives after more than 200 years.”
Elvis Presley Del Toro saw Jacob Elordi play Elvis in “Priscilla,” at the urging of his wife, daughter and Netflix boss Ted Sarandos. His eyes opened wide: “I texted Oscar Isaac and I said, ‘We found him!’ Because I was thinking anybody who could play Elvis could really dial into the idea (of playing Frankenstein’s monster). There’s that similar kind of iconic loneliness, you know, because Elvis was a very lonely guy in many ways.”
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Romantic poets “I love all the Romantics, among them Lord Byron and John William Polidori. The Romanticism movement was a reaction to the Enlightenment … These guys were punks. These guys were aware of the fallacies of society. They were iconoclasts. And I think there is something beautiful about emotion, because that’s what they were in favour of. Why do we enthrone reason and we don’t enthrone emotion? I really wanted to have that spirit in the film.”
Classic Frankenstein films “I admire all … the Hammer Studios Frankenstein films, particularly because the Peter Cushing character (Victor Frankenstein) is such a mean sociopath. I love that. I also love (British TV’s) ‘Frankenstein: The True Story,’ which was written by Christopher Isherwood, who is such a great writer and has a really outsider perspective of the myth. It’s a very erudite film. And obviously there are the James Whale films, ‘Frankenstein’ and ‘Bride of Frankenstein,’ starring Boris Karloff, which are the cathedrals of the myth.”
