Guillermo del Toro says his Los Angeles-area Bleak House — filled with creatures, curiosities and ghoulish props, paintings and costumes that he collected during his life — is safe so far amid the wildfires sweeping across southern California.
“Brief check in — Bleak House was so far, spared,” the Oscar-winning Shape of Water helmer said on Bluesky. “We hand carried over 100 pieces out of the collection. Many friends lost their homes. Helping them now. Will be absent here for a while. Stay safe.”
The director added he visited Bleak House to check on the property and thank first responders working to battle the blazes. “Stopping by to thank everyone helping, supporting or encouraging friends, neighbors or brave safety and firefighters out here and there… Back to it,” he added in a second Bluesky post.
Del Toro’s update comes as the death toll in the fires that are ravaging Los Angeles County this week has risen to 10 as firefighters struggling against high winds are hoping for a reprieve on the fourth day of seemingly unstoppable blazes that have destroyed entire neighborhoods and over 10,000 homes and buildings as residents flee for their lives.
A number of objects from Bleak House were included in a 2016 LACMA exhibition, Guillermo del Toro: At Home With Monsters.
The curiosities featured included a replica of the ghost of Santi from The Devil’s Backbone, complete with blood (red smoke) streaming from a head wound, an immense head of Frankenstein’s monster looming over a walkway and the comic books that inspired del Toro’s Hellboy films.
“This is a religious place for me. See, to me, everything that surrounds us is not a collection, it’s relics. It’s relics or it’s talismans. Whatever you want to call them, they have a spiritual hold of who I am essentially,” del Toro said in a 2016 LAist story about Bleak House and his personal collection.
Bleak House is separate from another Los Angeles family home del Toro has, as his private collection had grown to the point his wife intervened when he hung a decidedly creepy Richard Corben painting too close to the kitchen. He recalled in the LAist story: “My wife says, ‘That’s too close to the kitchen, the kids are gonna be freaked out.’ And inside of me something cracked and I said, ‘I’m gonna get my own place.'”
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