Doug Jones Looks Back at the Creature Magic of Guillermo del Toro’s PAN’S LABYRINTH

Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth remains one of those movies where the creatures don’t simply look incredible, they feel like they could reach right through the screen.

A huge part of that comes from Doug Jones, whose performances as the Faun and the Pale Man helped turn the 2006 dark fantasy into something audiences haven’t forgotten.

With Pan’s Labyrinth returning to theaters on October 9 in 4K, 3D, and HDR presentations, Jones recently joined The Boo Crew podcast and shared some great stories about bringing both creatures to life.

That includes learning Spanish for the Faun, tracking the character’s reverse aging, and biting into blood-filled condoms for the Pale Man. Creature acting can be a glamorous business.

Jones has appeared in six del Toro films, with their collaboration stretching back to Mimic. When del Toro approached him about Pan’s Labyrinth, however, he left out one fairly important detail at first.

“I was terrified when he was offered it to me. He sent me the script in English and, ‘Read this, get back to me by tonight.‘ So I read this most beautiful script I’d ever read in my life, right?

“I’m wiping tears away as I close the last page like, ‘I have to be in this movie.‘ I emailed him back saying, ‘Oh my gosh, thank you so much. You’ll never know what this means to me.‘ ‘Great. It’s going to be in Spanish.‘

“So I told him he got the wrong guy and there’s no way I can possibly learn paragraphs of exposition dialogue as the font in a language I don’t speak.“

Jones understandably wondered why del Toro wouldn’t simply cast a Spanish-speaking performer. Del Toro wasn’t interested in replacing him.

“I got a translation in English, and it was beautifully worded,” Jones clarifies. “He must have done the translation himself because he’s so poetic in both languages. So, it’s going to be in Spanish?

“I told him surely there’s a Spanish actor that can pull this off, and he’s going to be filming in Spain and I was going to be the only American miles around. His answer was, ‘Nope, you can count to 10 for all I care. I’ll dub over it later, but you have to play the Faun.“

Jones could have performed phonetically and allowed his dialogue to be replaced later, but that wasn’t how he wanted to work. He wanted his scene partner to hear the actual dialogue and have something genuine to respond to during filming.

“I want to give her the language that she can respond to. So I buckled down, and I had an English and Spanish translation of the script side by side, and I broke down the sentence structure. I had two years of Spanish in high school, and some of the grammar and sentence structure came back to me, and I did it all without a coach, and I was able to deliver the dialogue on set when it came.“

That commitment was only one part of creating the Faun. The practical creature effects were designed to change as the story progressed, with the character gradually becoming younger and physically stronger. It’s an easy detail to miss on a first viewing, but it’s worth watching for during the theatrical re-release.

“The faun, I guess he was working off the mythical Pan, but he never mentioned Pan in the actual movie. It’s in the title, the English title, but the Spanish title is Le Berinto del Fano, the Labyrinth of the Faun. Pan is only mentioned in the English title and never anywhere else in the movie.

“He’s a keeper of the underworld, and he said he wanted me to play the ambiguity. Is he good? Is he evil? We don’t know yet. Don’t reveal it yet. He gave me notes that every time you see the fawn, he’s going to be aging backwards. So when you go back and see the movie again, my first appearance, I’m older and more gray with stormy, cloudy eyes, and one of my horns is eaten off at the end.

“My movement then went from rickety to more smooth by the end as well. So aging backwards in a film and you’re filming it out of sequence, mind you, so you never know what scene you’re on, what day, with lots to keep track of.“

Then there’s the Pale Man, one of the most disturbing creatures del Toro and Jones have ever put on screen together.

The creature itself was achieved practically, while the fairies he gruesomely devours were added digitally. Jones still needed something physical to bite during filming so the visual effects team could capture the right motion and timing. The solution was wonderfully gross.

“This is going to be disgusting,” Jones warns. “The digital effects people were on set guiding us through how this was going to work because they had to paint those fairies in later.

“Well, to help them get the bite, stretch, and explosion of blood, they filled two condoms with fake blood that I had to act like I was catching, catching, and then bite, stretch until it burst, and then bite and stretch until. Now I’ll tell you, condoms don’t taste delicious.

“I was actually welcoming the blood spurting out because it was at least corn syrup and sweet. It sweetened up the flavor a little bit. But yeah, del Toro gave me notes as the Pale Man to be originally when we first talked about it, to be gangly and disjointed and bounding down a hallway after her.

“We’re rehearsing that scene once we’re out of the table chamber and then down the hallway when she’s trying to make her final escape out of my chamber. She’s running, and we did a rehearsal, and I’m going gallopy, gallopy, gallopy, knees and elbows everywhere.

“He goes, ‘No, Dougie.‘ As though we had never had that talk. He says, ‘No, no, no. More like a George Romero zombie.‘ ‘Oh, well that’s a little different, isn’t it?‘ So that’s why when you see that Pale Man sequence, you’ll see, yes, I was stiffened up and more step, step, step. That slower chase was way scarier than galloping after.“

It’s hard to argue with the result. The Pale Man’s stiff, methodical pursuit is nightmare fuel, and Jones’ story is a great reminder of how much performance, makeup, prosthetics, practical effects, and digital work were combined to make the sequence work.

Now audiences will get another chance to see all those details on a theater screen. Cineverse and Fathom are presenting Pan’s Labyrinth theatrically in 4K for the first time, with 3D and HDR by Barco versions also available. The Barco HDR presentation can deliver up to six times higher peak luminance.

Nearly two decades later, Pan’s Labyrinth still contains some of del Toro’s most memorable creature work, and Jones’ stories make revisiting it even more fun.