- Back before genre mashups and H.P. Lovecraft were cool, there was Mike Mignola's immensely creative and often hilarious Hellboy. Mixing all of one's favorite nerdy interests in a blender has since become an increasingly tiresome approach in literature, comics, and film, but there is a certain freshness to seeing it done right with a character who is now over twenty years old. The first Hellboy movie is somewhat of a mixed bag, but Guillermo del Toro was probably the right person for the director's chair given his playful sense of humor and talents with visual effects and makeup. And as for Ron Perlman, well--who else could possibly play a hulking, wisecracking red devil who guns down demons and gobbles down pancakes with equal aplomb?
- The film begins where the comics do, with the cosmically strange birth of Hellboy from a WWII-era Nazi experiment led by a mad wizard who turns out to be Rasputin (Karel Roden). Early warning: if sentences like that irritate you, Hellboy may not be the character for you. At any rate, young Hellboy is saved by the noble intercession of Dr. "Broom" Bruttenholm (played young by Kevin Trainor and in older form by John Hurt) and grows up to become part of the mysterious BPRD, which afficionados know stands for "Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense." Numbered among Hellboy's colleagues are the amphibious and possibly alien Abe Sapien (Doug Jones/David Hyde Pierce) and pyrokinetic Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), although we gather that Liz has been spending time in a sanitarium of late. Lest this all seem too unrelatable, however, the film also invents the character of John Myers (Rupert Evans) as a perfectly normal, and therefore exceedingly boring, government agent.
- The plot of the film follows many, and perhaps all, of the Hellboy comics in that the demonic hero slays monsters, foils Nazis (Bridget Hodson and Ladislav Beran), and battles Rasputin, all while trying to stave off the end of the world. The main creature in this case is something called a Sammael, which looks like what would result if all those Predators and Aliens put aside their differences and had a kid. At any rate, two Sammaels are born each time one of them dies and Hellboy likes to kill monsters: you do the math. Hellboy's ultimate mission is to prevent Rasputin from bringing the decidedly Cthulu-like "Ogdru Jahad" to Earth, despite the fact that his own stony right hand appears to be the key to that event. Plus, he has to keep Liz and John from going on a date because this is Hellboy and you have to retain your sense of humor even in the face of the apocalypse, right?
- One thing this movie gets precisely right is Hellboy himself. He's maybe a little more cranky than in the comics, but Perlman's iconic gruffness and a great makeup job do wonders for a hero whose most quotable line is probably "Oh crap!" Cinematographer Guillermo Navarro also excels at making Hellboy's red countenance pop out in every scene, much as it does in the source material. The rest of the film drags a little anytime Myers is allowed to speak or after the umpteenth Sammael fight scene, but the general impression is one of a loving adaptation that can't be blamed too much for not quite matching the high standards of the comics. A great version of Hellboy in a merely tolerable film still counts as a success in my book, particularly if its hero delivers on his promise to "always look this good" in the sequel.
- I missed mentioning Jeffrey Tambor as BPRD chief Manning and Corey Johnson as an agent.
- Roger the Homunculus gets a cameo in the background of the BPRD.
- Apparently there already is a "Predalien" in movies/comics because of course there is.
