Only here you can casually study his ashen complexion and loose, sagging flesh (inspired by Del Toro’s own struggles with weight loss), without fear of reprisal.

His counterpart, the Pale Man, a demon with his eyes in the palms of his hands, is as terrifying in real life as he is in the movie. Mike Hill’s sculpture of Boris Karloff being made up as Frankenstein. “It’s the single thing that I have done that expresses me most completely, more than any of my movies.” The house could never withstand regular public visits but an ample sampling of the collection – including models, sculpture, first-edition literary classics, art work, illustrations and props – have been removed to Lacma for Guillermo del Toro: At Home With Monsters through 27 November, then will travel to Minneapolis and Toronto. “It’s everything,” Del Toro struggles to find the words to describe Bleak House, (actually two houses side by side). While it may seem like the indulgence of a rich Hollywood egomaniac, instead it is the brain trust of the most prolific and distinctive horror and sci-fi/fantasy film-maker working in movies today.

He was talking about the alternative realm into which his protagonist disappears in order to avoid the harsh realities of fascist Spain, but he could have been talking about his own Bleak House, a Westlake Village residence crammed full of mementoes, toys, illustrations, models, literature and art, all centered on the macabre.

When film-maker Guillermo del Toro was directing his 2006 fantasy, Pan’s Labyrinth, he told his art department to conjure a make-believe world more real than the actual world.

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