Guillermo del Toro knows Gothic. The screenwriter and director’s films almost all have something of this ethos, with Purple Peak (pictured above) is a comprehensive Gothic experience.

In a recent interview with Vulture, del Toro talked about many things, including the Gothic literature he has read that has shaped his artistic perspective.

“I think I started reading it very, very early, because some people think Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Gothic. I would object a little bit, but it doesn’t matter,” said del Toro, adding that by the time he was 11 or 12 he had already read a lot of Jane Austen, as well as The Monk by Gregory Lewis and 1764’s The Castle of Oranto by Horace Walpole.

When he was young, Ann Radcliffe’s Gothic novels came onto the market in Mexico and del Toro devoured them. “I became addicted to the weird cemetery poetry of these novels, their exoticism and all the dazzling romances,” he says.

Other works that the director praised include the 1864 novel Uncle Silas by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, which was made into a film, he called “one of the great masterpieces”.

He also praised the works of Daphne du Maurier: “At least in her short stories there are many more elements that drift into the uncanny.” Rebecca is atmospheric and haunted by an absence that doesn’t quite qualify it as a gothic romance, but there are elements of it in the work.”

Unfortunately, del Toro was not asked to elaborate on why he does not believe that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is Gothic. However, he said that his upcoming film, Frankensteinwould indeed be quite gothic.