Franco’s Spain meets fairytales in El laberinto del fauno (though Pan’s Labyrinth is the perplexing title for the film’s shipping for the English-language market). Guillermo del Toro’s incredible creation impressively combines heartwarming, hopeful fantasy with surreal horror and brutal period-realism to conjure up a modern masterpiece of cinematic storytelling. Amongst many memorable moments, the sequence featuring the Pale Man is probably the most unforgettable of them all.

As instructed by the Faun of the title, our young heroine Ofelia must complete three tasks before the next full moon in order to prove her essence and take her place as Princess Moanna in the underworld realm. Having successfully surmounted her first challenge (claiming a key from an excellently unpleasant giant toad), Ofelia enters the lair of the odd-looking, child-eating Pale Man to claim an ornate dagger for her second objective.

All is going well, until Ofelia ignores the Faun’s rules and takes two grapes from Pale Man’s plentiful table. The gruesome host - fantastic fleshed out by prince of prosthetics, Doug Jones - subsequently awakens, swallows a couple of Ofelia’s fairy friends and chases the little girl who makes a narrow escape thanks to her magic chalk.

Pale Man’s outlandish appearance with his sagging white skin and eyeball hands adds to the overall bizarre charm of El laberinto del fauno, and his segment provides a prominently shocking and gripping moment amidst del Toro’s magical drama. Ofelia’s exciting encounter with the bizarre monster makes for another terrific sequence in the tremendous Academy Award-winning film from 2006.

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