The sunshine-sweet and lemonade-lovely days of summertime are not a time for beasties and baddies and things that go thumpity just after midnight.
We count on Count Dracula to stay away during these bright days, and ghosts to go, and villains to vamoose.
Which all goes into making the July 31 debut of the monster-iest retrospective in town all the more devious and delicious.
"At Home with Monsters," a large-scale Los Angeles County Museum of Art exhibit, will look at director Guillermo del Toro's whimsical work on movies like "Pan's Labyrinth" and "Cronos" and "Pacific Rim."
Drawings, paintings, maquettes, and "objects from his vast personal collections" will fill the cinema-cool show, which will boast over 500 items in all (including a few dozen objects from the permanent collection at the Miracle Mile museum).
Mr. del Toro is famed not only for his movie work but for his devotion to the genre of elegant horror. The Guadalajara-born helmer has been hailed for his incredible affection for the many directors, writers, actors, and artists who've worked in the fright film field for the last several decades.
His knowledge of horror is impressive, in short, something sure to be reflected in the skin-prickling, spine-tingling show.
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A show that will be "the filmmaker's first museum retrospective," let's add. Mr. del Toro has a home in Los Angeles -- it's the macabrely monikered "Bleak House" -- and a LACMA exhibit feels like the perfect, and perfectly terrifying, tribute to someone who tells eeky stories even while living in our sunbeam-filled city.
And while the last day of July seems an offbeat day to launch such a spooky show, consider these two things. One? That's the weekend of Midsummer Scream, the huge Halloween convention in Long Beach.
Scares'll be everywhere, in short.
And two? "At Home with Monsters" wraps on Nov. 27, 2016, making it a perfect Halloween season exhibit to see -- if you so dare.
