Film buffs will tell you that Frankenstein, the newest tale from writer/director Guillermo del Toro, is the movie he’s been working on his whole life. And the filmmaker, who just turned 61 last week, confirms it.

“That’s very easy,” he says when I ask for his earliest memory of the Frankenstein story. “It was on a Sunday. I was seven, and we went to church at 8:30 … and came out of church, bought lunch and went home.”

Del Toro grew up Catholic in Guadalajara, Mexico. “And in my hometown, Channel Six from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. … they showed movies, American movies. And I don’t know why, but the Universal Monsters were on all the time.”

He still remembers the first entrance of Frankenstein’s monster in the 1931 classic, backing through a heavy door before turning to his left so the light c

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