On display at the just-opened LACMA exhibit “Guillermo del Toro: At Home With Monsters” (8.1 thru 11.26) are dozens upon dozens of props, busts, full-size models, paintings and other recreations and knick-knacks from Del Toro‘s 23 years of filmmaking — i.e, Cronos to Crimson Peak. But I have a soft spot for the recreations of ’30s black-and-white monsters and especially Boris Karloff‘s Frankenstein monster…sorry. Yes, I dropped by late this afternoon. The exhibit walls are the exact same color (dark earthy red mixed with terra cotta) as those at the original Bleak house in Thousand Oaks. These creations are the purest and most vivid realization of GDT’s art, even more so than the content of his films. The acute detail in each artifact pulses and throbs. Each one has a soul, a history, a completeness.

I always thought Elsa Lanchester’s hair in The Bride of Frankenstein was grayish with silver-white streaks, but it’s exciting to imagine it as flaming red, even if it wasn’t.

Outside main entrance to LACMA’s Guillermo del Toro: At Home With Monsters exhibit, Moscow-based director Nick Sarkisov, HE’s own Svetlana Cvetko.

Immaculate tattoo goth girl, Edgar Allen Poe.

The closest I’ll ever get to the actors in Todd Browning’s Freaks.