Geometria: Watch Guillermo del Toro’s Very Early, Ghoulish Short Film (1987)

Guiller­mo Del Toro is one of those lucky film­mak­ers, like Steven Spiel­berg and Tim Bur­ton, whose per­son­al obses­sions nat­u­ral­ly seem to align with main­stream movie-going audi­ences. From Chronos to Hell­boy to his Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed 2006 movie Pan’s Labyrinth, Del Toro’s movies are often macabre and fright­en­ing but they are leav­ened by his goofy sense of humor and his incred­i­ble visu­al imag­i­na­tion.

Pri­or to mak­ing his break­out debut fea­ture Cronos, Del Toro direct­ed a string of short films includ­ing his 1987 hor­ror com­e­dy Geome­tria, which dis­plays both his sense of humor and some seri­ous direct­ing chops. Check out the short above and, as you watch, remem­ber that the flick was report­ed­ly made for about $1000.

Geome­tria opens with a recent wid­ow harangu­ing her teenaged son about how he is flunk­ing out of geom­e­try. At the end of the fight, the son vows that he will nev­er fail at the sub­ject again. Instead of hit­ting the books or even hir­ing a tutor, though, the lad turns to black mag­ic. Spoil­er: this proves to be a bad idea.

After draw­ing a bloody pen­ta­gon on the floor, he sum­mons a demon and requests it ful­fill two wish­es: to res­ur­rect his recent­ly deceased father and to help him not flunk geom­e­try again. The crea­ture, who looks a bit like Lin­da Blair from The Exor­cist, grants the teen his first wish. Dear old dad does come back but in the form of a rot­ting zom­bie who imme­di­ate­ly starts to feast on his mother’s neck. From there, as you might expect, things get much worse for the lad.

You can see the director’s cut of Geome­tria below.  Sad­ly this clip does­n’t have sub­ti­tles though the image qual­i­ty is much bet­ter.

Find many oth­er great films in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tim Burton’s Ear­ly Stu­dent Films: King and Octo­pus & Stalk of the Cel­ery Mon­ster

Sketch­es by Guiller­mo del Toro Take You Inside the Director’s Wild­ly Cre­ative Imag­i­na­tion

Time Out Lon­don Presents The 100 Best Hor­ror Films: Start by Watch­ing Four Hor­ror Clas­sics Free Online

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.