Cockroach Vampire Horror: The Case of Cronos

Cockroach Vampire Horror: The Case of Cronos

A key center scene in Guillermo del Toro’s 1993 horror debut, Cronos, introduces the conflicting views of insects presented in fictional film. According to a dying industrialist, De la Guardia (Claudio Brook), a coveted device device prolongs life because a cockroach is trapped inside it working like a “living filter,” attesting to the power of insects. As de la Guardia asks the film’s hero, Jesus Gris (Federico Luppi), who has activated the device, “Who says insects aren’t God’s favorite creatures?” They have survived from almost earth’s beginnings, even when other species have disappeared. More to the point, de la Guardia suggests insects may have qualities that transform them from vile creatures into gods, declaring, “Christ walked on water - just like a mosquito.” In spite of these positive associations, however, we argue that Cronos teaches lessons similar to those in other cockroach horror movies: manipulating nature, even for beneficial results, ultimately leads to destructive ends.   

Although it argues against manipulating nature and transforming insects, Cronos draws on the more positive aspects of the cockroach mythology and anthropomorphism, stressing the roach’s ability to survive as a way to explore humanity’s urge to live forever. Told from the perspective of a revisionist vampire, Jesus Gris (Federico Luppi) and his not-so-innocent granddaughter, Aurora (Tamara Shanath), the film normalizes this urge, as well, highlighting its universality. Jesus unwittingly reactivates a cockroach-shaped gold device built by a 16^th century alchemist, Uberto Fulcanelli (Mario Iván Martínez), who craved eternal life. 

When the device reappears in Jesus’ antique shop more than 400 years later, it prompts the primary struggles of the film; Jesus must overcome inner conflicts between life and death, and between the human and monstrous forces driving his actions. He must also battle a dying corporate magnate, De la Guardia (Claudio Brook) and his American nephew Angel (Ron Perlman), who will do anything to get the device. The resolutions of these conflicts, however, draw on the same ideology as other cockroach horror films: Because the Cronos device exploits the mythologized sense of permanence associated with the cockroach to transform a mortal human into an enduring insect–like vampire, the natural order has been defied and can only lead to failure, death, and devastation.

In Cronos, immortality and the cockroach device that produces it are constructed as immoral and, as del Guardia presents it, evil. Even though Jesus becomes a literal Christ figure with his ultimate sacrifice for the common good, he has merged with the cockroach from which he draws his longevity and must die. As Roger Ebert suggests, “There is always something shameful … about being unwilling to die when your time has come. Cronos adds a religious edge to this moral claim, demonstrating perhaps that an Earthly immortality is a “greater punishment” than death, since our role in this world is “to prepare for the next” (Ebert).  Because this immortality is associated explicitly with the cockroach—both the golden cockroach exterior of the device and its inner insect workings—it too must be destroyed.

Ultimately, however, Cronos also makes a larger statement about humanity’s exploitation of the natural world. In cockroach horror films, such exploitation turns insects into monsters, creating a monstrous nature that must be eradicated. Although the level of anthropomorphizing in these films coincides, to a certain extent, with the quality of treatment the insects receive, whether the film in question highlights the positive or negative qualities of cockroaches seems to have no impact on this lethal conclusion. Unlike insect horror films highlighting less repulsive bugs like butterflies and moths, cockroach horror films anthropomorphize roaches to reveal their monstrous human qualities. Per Persson, Jarmo Laaksolahti, and Peter Lonnquist define anthropomorphism n relation to different phenomena and schools of thought: Primitive Psychology, Folk-Psychology, Traits, Social Roles, and Emotional Anthropomorphism. Primitive psychology includes lower level “expectations about needs, drives, life preservation, sensations, and pain.” Folk-psychology models of anthropomorphism highlight “the ways in which perceptions, beliefs, goals, intentions, and actions relate, and how people in everyday talk explain behavior in terms of such ‘inner states,’” The traits level provides a way to summarize impressions of an individual’s attributes or dispositions, such as shy, aggressive, or selfish. Other levels of anthropomorphism include social roles and emotional anthropomorphism.

But the anthropomorphism included in Cronos does not lead to positive representations. Although some cockroach horror films blame humanity for transforming the lowly cockroach into a flesh-eating monster, none of these films suggest that humanity should be destroyed, no matter how adroitly the insects are anthropomorphized. Cronos takes a more individual approach to cockroach monsters, illustrating, perhaps, what happens when humanity embraces the cockroach and its strengths so vehemently that both cockroach and human are transformed. The levels of anthropomorphizing are amplified in cockroach films such as Cronosbecause of the integral connection between the roaches and their human counterparts. One might argue that Jesus, for example, becomes a humanized version of the cockroach. In spite of this anthropomorphizing, in Cronos, both the human “scientist” or “victim” and the cockroach must be annihilated to eliminate their “evil” influence, a destruction that signifies, perhaps, a desire to eliminate the most monstrous elements of human and nonhuman nature. When monstrous nature becomes anthropomorphized, it may become too human, making it too easy to see us in them.