Hellboy



Did you notice that the video stores and comic book stores were empty this weekend? That's because Hellboy opened, the perfect storm of geekiness, combining a cult comic book hero (Mike Mingola's Hellboy) with a cult film director Guillermo Del Toro (who made Cronos and Blade II).


"No baby, I'm not horny."

I'm not at all familiar with the comic book, but I am a big fan of Del Toro's previous films, particularly The Devil's Backbone (2001). Hellboy is his first go at a large budget film, and he makes the most of it, filling the screen with one visually spectacular set piece after another.

Suffice it to say, I loved the film. Rather that do a review here I thought I'd discuss some the elements that Del Toro uses in all his films. It sometimes seems like Del Toro is recombining the same pieces to form different machines, an analogy I suspect he would quite like judging from his use of...

1. Clockworks. The mechanical insect in Cronos (1993) and the villain Kroenen in Hellboy were both constructed from gears and springs. Kronen had even built a whole clockwork tunnel complex, though I wonder if some of the scope of it was lost in the final cut of the movie. I also think (but am not sure) that Kroenen is not a character from the comic book, meaning this clockwork horror sprang completely from Del Toro's mind.

2. People suspended in water. Showed up in Blade II (2002), The Devil's Backbone, and Hellboy.

3. Ron Perlman. Del Toro has used Perlman in Cronos, Blade II and Hellboy. Incidentally, Perlman was made to play Hellboy. The three seasons he spent on Beauty and the Beast were good preparation for acting under make-up, and he was just able to embody the character without appearing to try.

4. Complicated jaws. I suspect this is a major phobia of Del Toro's. As Ebert put it, Del Toro is obsessed with creatures "that bite you and aren't even designed to let go." See every Del Toro film except The Devil's Backbone.

5. Sheets of transparent plastic. I think Del Toro just likes the way these look on screen. It's been a while since I've seen Cronos or Mimic (1997), so I can't confidently cite specific examples in those two films, but I do remember an attic with covered furniture in the former film and a church under renovation in the latter, so there may have been plastic sheets in those two scenes. In Blade II the entrance to the vampire hangout was through hanging plastic sheets. In Hellboy Del Toro snuck in sheets in two scenes. When we first see Hellboy speaking with Liz all the trees behind them are enclosed in plastic bags (protection against the cold?), and Kroenen's body is laid under a plastic sheet before he comes back to life.

Posted: Wed - April 7, 2004 at      

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