Del Toro’s earliest professional work on screen was for the Mexican horror/sci-fi TV show La hora marcada (1986–89), and he returns to the medium with his fourth foray into series television—after The Strain (2014–17) and Trollhunters (2016–20)—with Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities. Following in the tradition of Rod Serling’s beloved (if short-lived) Night Gallery (NBC 1970–73), Del Toro’s anthology show presents eight dark fantasies of the macabre and supernatural. Appearing on screen to introduce each film, he identifies their stellar, handpicked directors in the form of doll-like figurines. The monsters, which he took a personal interest in developing for each episode, are state-of-the-art and quite identifiably Del Toro’s.
Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities: Lot 36. 2022. US. Directed by Guillermo Navarro. Teleplay by Guillermo del Toro and Regina Corrado. With Tim Blake Nelson, Sebastian Roché, Demetrius Grosse, Elpidia Carrillo. In English. DCP. 41 min.
This episode, based on a story Del Toro wrote from personal experience, follows a greedy speculator who invests in the contents of a presumably abandoned storage unit and inherits the curse that comes with it.
Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities: Graveyard Rats. 2022. US. Written and directed by Vincenzo Natali. Based on the short story by Henry Kuttner. With David Hewlett, Julian Richings, Nabeel el Khafif. In English. DCP. 38 min.
In this gothic period piece, stealing from the dead has worse consequences than the morbid master Edgar Allen Poe himself might have imagined.