Cronos (film)
| Cronos | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Guillermo del Toro |
| Produced by |
Arthur H. Gorson Bertha Navarro Alejandro Springall Bernard L. Nussbaumer |
| Written by | Guillermo del Toro |
| Starring |
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| Narrated by | Jorge Martínez de Hoyos |
| Music by | Javier Álvarez |
| Cinematography | Guillermo Navarro |
| Edited by | Raúl Dávalos |
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Production
company |
Fondo de Fomento Cinematográfico
Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía Universidad de Guadalajara Iguana Producciones Ventana Films |
| Distributed by | Prime Films S.L. (Spain) October Films (United States) |
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Release date
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Running time
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92 minutes |
| Country | Mexico |
| Language | Spanish English |
| Budget | $2 million |
| Box office | $621,392 |
Cronos is a 1993 Mexican horror film written and directed by Guillermo del Toro, starring veteran Argentinean actor Federico Luppi and American actor Ron Perlman. Cronos is del Toro's first feature film, and the first of several films on which he collaborated with Luppi and Perlman. The film was selected as the Mexican entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 66th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.
In the year 1536, an alchemist in Veracruz developed a mechanism that could give eternal life. In 1937, an old building collapsed and the alchemist, who has marble-white skin, is killed when his heart is pierced by the debris. Investigators never revealed what else was discovered in the building: basins filled with blood from a corpse.
In the present, an old antique dealer, Jesús Gris, notices that the base of an archangel statue is hollow. He opens it and finds a 450-year-old mechanical object. After winding the ornate, golden, scarab-shaped device, it suddenly unfurls spider-like legs that grip him tightly, and inserts a needle into his skin which injects him with an unidentified solution.
A living insect — entombed within the device and meshed with the internal clockwork — produces the solution. However, Gris is unaware of this detail until later. Eventually, he discovers that his health and vigor are returning in abundance, as is his youth. His skin loses its wrinkles, his hair thickens and his sexual appetite increases. He also develops a thirst for blood. This at first disgusts him, but he eventually succumbs to the temptation.
Meanwhile, a rich, dying businessman, Dieter de la Guardia, who has been amassing information about the device for many years, has been searching for the archangel statue with the cronos device. He has appropriated several archangels already. He sends his thuggish nephew, Angel, to purchase the archangel at the antique shop.
During a party, Gris sees blood on a men's room floor and decides to lick it. Angel finds Gris and tries to beat him into giving up the device. When Gris faints, Angel places his body inside a car and pushes it off a cliff. Gris dies but later revives and escapes from an undertaker's establishment before he can be cremated. He later reads the program for his funeral and opens his mouth which had been sewn shut. He returns to his home where his granddaughter, Aurora, lets him in. He works on a letter to his wife in which he comments on the changes that his body has made and tells her that after completing some 'unfinished business' he will return to her. He notices that his skin burns in the presence of sunlight and sleeps in a box to avoid it.
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Wikipedia