“Staff Picks” is a deeper look into movies that we love here at Video CULTure. Each edition of this column will focus on a single film that we think you should check out, either for the first time or for a long-overdue revisit.
By Patrick Bartlett (Twitter: @alleywaykrew)
I have never cared about Hellboy comics. Actually, I guess that’s not entirely true. Before I read Hellboy comics, I was really excited about them. I didn’t really know stuff that wasn’t Marvel, DC, or Image existed but once I found out about other books being published that I had no access to, I made it my mission to track them down. One of the ones I was most interested in was Mike Mignola’s Hellboy series. I love superheroes. I love monsters. This series is both. It should theoretically be my new favorite thing. Theoretically. In reaity, I just didn’t get it at all. I couldn’t connect with it. However, despite my indifference to the comic, as a huge fan of Guillermo del Toro since (almost) the beginning of his career (and definitely since my adolescent eyes took in “Mimic” and “Blade 2”), my interest in Hellboy returned when I learned it was Del Toro’s dream project. When I saw the film, I finally got it. I understood everything. A perfect fusion of superhero bombast with monster movie aesthetics. I loved it. I loved it then and I may love it even more now, all these years later. What Mignola was going for with Hellboy comics eluded me but Del Toro knew how to take what worked, what he was passionate about and translate it in a way that still excites me to this day.
I will describe the plot but I’m noting first that everything that I can talk about isn’t really the point. The true point of the entire film is the line delivered in voiceover by Hellboy’s adoptive father, Professor Broom, at the beginning of the story. “What makes a man a man?” This film all more or less boils down to that line. It’s immeasurably important. You have a character in Hellboy who is an actual demon from Hell who instead of doing anything you’d imagine a character like that doing is instead fighting other demons and other monstrous beings on behalf of a human race that doesn’t accept him. However, like the X-Men and like the majority of comic book heroes, Hellboy continues to fight for those people despite that fact. It’s a rather beautiful idea. It’s not someone like Superman who looks like us and is indescribably powerful yet is more human than anyone due to his upbringing. It’s not handsome but broken billionaire Batman, forgoing a normal albeit priviliged life and fighting crime to make sure no one else experiences a loss like he had. Hellboy is red-skinned and yellow-eyed. He’s got a tail. He’s got horns that he files down “to fit in”. He has a gigantic stone “Right Hand of Doom”. He can’t blend in. He’s a monster. He’s never allowed to forget that fact. Despite that, he still risks his life to combat dark forces that most people would ever even know threatens them. Hellboy earns humanity through his actions in a way that is taken for granted in almost every other superhero movie.
The actual plot of the film is that the aforementioned Professor Broom and a military platoon come across a Nazi ritual to open a gate to what is essentially a Lovecraftian Hell dimension by a man named Rasputin. Yes, that Rasputin. The Nazis are defeated in the moment but a small creature makes it through the gate before it’s closed. Thinking it’s some sort of a horrible beast, the military initially tries to kill it before Broom determines that it’s just a baby boy …admittedly, a baby boy with the aforementioned monstrous features…but a baby boy nonetheless. Broom raises him as his own while also founding the BPRD (Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense) to “bump back” against those things that go bump in the night. Among the BPRD is Abe Sapien, a psychic fish man and the pyrokinetic Liz Sherman (who, awkwardly, is Hellboy’s ex). The problem is that things are changing. Hellboy is rebelling against hiding away from the world. The professor is dying. Broom brings in special agent John Myers to look after Hellboy after the professor’s imminent death. All the while, Rasputin has been resurrected by his lover Ilsa and mute Nazi killing machine, Karl Ruprecht Kroenen. Rasputin wants to finish what he started and open a gate to Lovecraftian Hell. For that, he needs Hellboy to fulfill his (unknown to H.B.) destiny and use his Right Hand of Doom to open that gate.
I don’t even know where to begin to point out how all that ends up working as well as it does… but I might as well start with Guillermo del Toro. At this point, I’ve just accepted that if anyone could possibly love the things that I love more than me, it’s probably Guillermo del Toro. He manages to take so many of the best elements of monster media and superhero media and in “Hellboy”, synthesizes them into maybe the best possible fusion of the two, which is saying something because his film immediately before this was “Blade 2”, which arguably had way more behind it. As great a movie as “Blade 2” may be, it doesn’t even come close to what del Toro does here. He described “Hellboy” as his dream project and it totally shines through in the finished product. The passion he has for the material is palpable and infectious. It’s beautiful while also being somewhat repulsive, weird without being alienating. It’s a film that almost seems impossible to be created and yet not only has it been, it’s stuck around in pop culture and the collective consciousness. Despite this film and its sequel not setting the box office ablaze, Hollywood tried to reboot the series and there was vocal disappointment at things being rebooted instead of del Toro and his cast not returning. That speaks volumes.
The reason for that is quite simply because as perfect as Del Toro was to bring the material to the screen, the cast is pretty much just as perfect. On paper, Ron Perlman seems visually perfect but too old to play a character described as aging practically in reverse dog years and “barely out of his twenties”. Perlman inhabits the role in a way that can only be described as perfect though. He brings humor and warmth while also being gruff and sullen. All of this brought to the surface even while buried under prosthetic makeup. In short, Hellboy’s humanity is Perlman’s in large part. David Hyde Pierce was brought in for star power (because 2004) to do the voice of Abe Sapien but ultimately refused credit because he didn’t want to detract from Doug Jones’ performance, which is spectacular. There’s a reason that del Toro works with Jones so often and that’s because of his truly underrated acting skill. There’s something special about him that resonates through and brings the creature to life. He reminds me of early monster stars like Lugosi and Karloff in that way. Selma Blair’s Liz is the one member of the trio that could pass for a normal person and at the start of the story is trying to. She’s left the BPRD and is trying to learn to control the impulses that cause her to bring forth fire, only to have that ability exploited by Rasputin to lead her back to Hellboy and the BPRD. Blair brings a sadness to Liz that unites her with Hellboy and Abe and makes their family unit make sense. And then we have John Hurt; I can’t remember ever seeing a bad John Hurt performance and his work as Broom was maybe my favorite role of his. The warmth and class he brings to that character and the way he carries himself resonates through the other characters in a wonderful way. Somewhat unusually (especially for a pre-MCU comic book movie), the villains feel threatening but are really the least interesting characters of the film. I will say though that Karel Roden’s Rasputin is legitimately charismatic and despite having no dialogue or even a visual face for most of the film, Kroenen is a terrifying force. I wish Del Toro got to finish his trilogy to see them return.
I love all of Guillermo del Toro’s work but this is my favorite film of his. Yes, I like it more than the ones that won all the awards. As I said previously, as passionate as he seems to be for all his work, the passion that he had for this project shines through like the sun itself. In addition to that and the fact that it’s a fusion of monsters and superheroes… it’s a truly moving story told by del Toro. It’s about love. It’s about family. It’s about humanity. The superhero elements are great, and the monster stuff is resplendent, but the reason “Hellboy” is important is because of what the story is about and what its thoughts are on the world around us, whether it contains Lovecraftian beasts or not.
To find out where this film is available to stream, click here: Just Watch