Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on March 18, 2004, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
How satisfying it is to see a filmmaker’s dream project fulfilled as successfully as Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy. A virtuoso action/fantasy/horror epic, this adaptation of Mike Mignola’s comics creation is as eye-popping as any genre fan could want, while also remaining rooted in relationships between its unusual characters that prove to be moving in ways not often seen in big-ticket genre fare. Del Toro’s smaller films Cronos and The Devil’s Backbone were distinguished by the sympathy they conveyed for their “monsters,” and that approach finds greater flower here than it ever has before in the director’s Hollywood work.
Fans of del Toro’s camera pyrotechnics in Blade II may be a tad disappointed that they’ve been toned down here, but that’s not to say that the excitement is in any way compromised. There’s a confidence to the director’s work that says he knows he doesn’t have to show off, and that he fully believes an audience can accept a hero who is spawned from hell, colored bright red and whose only weakness is his love for a girl who starts fires when she becomes emotional. His casting instincts have proven dead-on as well: Ron Perlman, del Toro’s first and only choice, is terrific in the title role, conveying all the necessary attitude and emotion from beneath his equally fine makeup.
From the opening scene detailing Hellboy’s creation, del Toro (who also scripted) makes the comic-book world come alive and, just as crucially, allows us to believe it co-exists with our own. (No mean feat given that the mostly New York/New Jersey-set film was shot entirely in Prague.) Having been stranded on our plane after a thwarted attempt by the evil Rasputin (Karel Roden) to literally create hell on Earth during WWII, Hellboy is adopted by the man who helped thwart it, Dr. “Broom” Bruttenholm (John Hurt), head of the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Development. In the present day, young FBI agent John Myers (Rupert Evans) is called in to the BPRD, and through him we also meet the Bureau’s resident telepath, the fish-man Abe Sapien (Doug Jones, voiced by an uncredited David Hyde Pierce) and learn of Hellboy’s ardor for Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), currently residing in a psychiatric ward to protect the world from her firestarting tendencies.
To keep public curiosity (and outcry) at bay, Dr. Broom transports Hellboy and Abe on missions hidden in a converted garbage truck, but it’s not long before Hellboy gets into a very public tussle with a large, tentacled hell hound that has emerged in a museum. The beast is an agent of Rasputin, who has revived and set his evil plot back into motion, and the closer he gets to his goal, the more personal the stakes become for Hellboy and co. Initially a wisecracking tough guy, the big red demon reveals he’s got feelings too, particularly when Myers and Liz seem to be forging a tentative romance and Hellboy gets all bent out of shape about it. It couldn’t have been easy, in the midst of all the action, to stage a scene in which a jealous Hellboy has a rooftop heart-to-heart with a 9-year-old kid and make it work, but del Toro not only pulls it off, he makes it a comic highlight.
Which is not to say he doesn’t take the movie seriously. It’s clear from the beginning that he believes in the story and characters, and invests in their reality completely. The actors are equally committed, and thus their roles’ unusual nature quickly becomes moot. With Perlman effortlessly slipping into Hellboy’s crimson skin, you forget how bizarre he looks after about 10 minutes and accept him as a multidimensional character; similarly, the combination of Jones’ body language and Hyde Pierce’s voice transform Abe Sapien from a gifted “freak” to an empathetic presence. As for those who keep their own faces, Blair’s deeply felt distrust of the world and her own powers plays nicely off of the likably green Evans, while Hurt’s wizened quest for good and Roden’s palpable lust for evil provide another strong contrast.
Del Toro’s deft touch with actors is matched by his skill as a visual wizard, and the spectacular visual feast he delivers is even more impressive given that he achieved it for a relatively low $60 million (the same cost, for point of comparison, as Starsky and Hutch). Guillermo Navarro’s cinematography and the contributions of the various design teams are all sterling, and the visual FX by several houses, Hellboy prosthetics by Chad Waters and Matt Rose from Rick Baker’s shop and the creature work of Spectral Motion are absolutely state-of-the-art. With their help, del Toro whips up a number of rousing battles between Hellboy and his beastly foes, including a literal knock-down drag-out fight in a subway platform and tunnel, as well as a few late-film apocalyptic visions that evocatively channel H.P. Lovecraft mythology. (If Blade II was, as del Toro has said, his “audition” for Hellboy, this movie should jumpstart the green light for his Lovecraft-inspired At the Mountains of Madness project.)
Like the X-Men films, Hellboy proves that the phrase “comic-book movie” need not suggest a lack of intelligence or maturity, and that a film centering on inhuman characters can run the gamut of human emotions. Like Hellboy himself, it’s both fearsome and personable, and it kicks ass. And it makes one anxious to see what new territory the director will explore in his next movie, even as it leaves one happily speculating where he could go with a sequel. Either way, viva del Toro, and viva Hellboy.
