Guillermo del Toro

Yes, as a kid.

A lucid dream for me or waking nightmares used to be called too is you wake up in your dream in the exact environment that you fell asleep on.

But there are elements that are not normal.

I used to see monsters.

I saw a burning figure at the foot of my bed, which is where the burning archangel comes in Frankenstein.

And that figure extended its arms and said, I live.

And I woke up screaming.

When I was a very young child, I used to see a fawn, a goatman come from behind an armoire while the church chimed midnight.

in the neighborhood, and with each chime, the figure would come up, and then you wake up, and nothing is there, and you're covered in sweat, and that's sort of lucid dreaming or waking nightmare states, which are a disruption of the REM cycle on the brain.

But to you as a kid, it's truly harrowing.

Yes, which is why one of the best images in the novel of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is...

had never been rendered on film until now, and it was my favorite moment reading it.

At age 11, I read the novel, and it's the moment Victor wakes up from the night of creation, and the creature is standing at the foot of the bed looking back at him.

As a kid, I held my breath.

I was shocked.

And I prayed for decades that I could make that moment come to life on a film before anyone.

And fortunately, nobody did it.

You are absolutely right.

The first film I saw was...

was William Wyler's Wuthering Heights with Laurence Olivier.