VHS : Hellboy (Dol Slip)

Rating: - Hell Boy: Recommended - great special effects!
Hell Boy was born in hell, but is that the end of it?

Can it be that it's not how a person begins their existence,
but how they choose to end it that makes the difference.

Fantastic special effects. Does Hell Boy become a Christian?

Watch and see...

(..)

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Rating: - "TWO HORNS UP!"
The best comic-based movie i've seen; unlike its predecessors this one's consistent and away from hero's cliches. Funny & intelligent. Gracias Memo paisano!

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Rating: - Horns & Cigars & Baby Ruth Bars: Raising Hell!
Big. Red. Boasts a pair of char-blackened horns growing up from his skull, surmounted by the eternally burning Crown of the Apocalypse. For millennia his coming has been foretold by Prophets and dreaded by visionaries. He is called Anung un Rama, "The Beast of the Apocalypse", bearer of Right Hand of Doom and opener of the Gate between Hell and Earth.

He's also known as Hellboy, and he has a soft spot for Baby Ruth bars, stogies, and cats. Oh, and did I mention he's the Good Guy?

Christened "Hellboy" by the Allied dogfaces who rescued him from the ruins of the Nazi occult Project Ragnarok, this Demon princeling and child of the Pit is now in the care of the Bureau of Paranormal Research & Defense---though as Hero or Prisoner it's not quite certain---to track down the forces of Evil and Darkness, and whack it upside the head. Hard.

Fans of the graphic novel wondered whether Del Toro, who had directed "The Devil's Backbone" and "Blade 2", could manage to conjure the magic of Mike Mignola's masterwork---replete with elaborate chiaroscuro illustrations and obscure historical allusions and references (the Thule Society, Grigory Rasputin, the slumbering beasts culled straight from the Lovecraft mythos)---into a studio-produced feature film---and not drown the flick in hours of exposition?

Del Toro pulled it off brilliantly, working ferociously with Director of Photography Guillermo Navarro to bring Mignola's high style and potent brew of lumbering star-spawned monsters, diabolical Nazis, undead assassins, grave-bound liches, international plots, and brutal secret societies up on the big screen.

Del Toro plunges us down onto a rain-spattered storm-besieged Scottish island in 1944. The Third Reich is collapsing under the relentless Allied onslaught in the West and the Soviet steamroller in the East. Desperate, Hitler's Thule Society dispatched former Russian "Mad Monk" Grigory Rasputin (Karel Roden, channeling the crazed ascetic) to rip open a portal into another dimension, unleashing the slumbering eldritch beasts of the Ogdru-Jahad---slavering demons---upon the Allies.

American G.I.s break up the party, but too late---something slips through: a fire-engine red little Imp with a taste for Baby Ruth bars. The dogfaces name him "Hellboy".

From there we cut to the present, where Hellboy (Ron Perelman, who just owns the movie) is all growed up into a full-fledged Demon, doing Hellboy things: pumping iron, surrounded by legions of his beloved cats, smoking a stogie, eating pancakes.

Oh, and he files his horns down. To "fit in".

The young Professor "Broom" Bruttenholm (the flawless John Hurt), who discovered Hellboy, has also aged---but Hellboy clocks his birthdays according to Hell's timetable. Bruttenholm is pushing 85 and looking for a successor.

The candidate: young FBI Agent John Myers (Rupert Evans, doing a good job of looking nervous), who serves Hellboy his pancakes and rides with him and telepathic Fish-pal Abe Sapien (body by Doug Jones, voice by David Hyde Pierce, fondness for raw eggs) on a five-alarm demon-stomp at the Museum of Natural History.

The rest of the flick is a wild, sleekly visual, hyper-kinetic Devil's hayride of Cool, High Style, and demon-on-demon action. It's not a big surprise when Hellboy's battle royale with "Hound of the Resurrection" Sammael leads the BPRD to grimmer stuff: a global plot headed up by sinister plotters thought long dead: Rasputin, his yummy Teutonic squeeze Ilsa (Biddy Hodson channeling Eva Braun), and undead Nazi killer Karl Ruprect Kroenen (Ladislav Beran, who steals every scene he wheezes, slices, and dices through), who makes up in razor-bladed carnage what he lacks in conversation.

"Hellboy" is 360 degrees of cool. Stop the tape a minute: let's rewind to that scene on the remote Scottish island. Look at the windswept, ghoul-haunted ruins; check out Rasputin's jerry-rigged Hand of Doom, ringed with crispy globules chittering and crackling with electricity; marvel at the waves of darkness as the nervous G.I.'s scramble across the slick black rock, while white-suited insect-eyed Nazi scientists gear up the machinery to tear Hell wide open---and glance nervously into the hungry shadows.

Note the way that krieg light slips into the well between the worlds, spins in a graceful balletic arc toward the slumbering crystallized Elder Gods, and bumps against it, startling open a drowsy demon eye. Nice. Del Toro is also consummately in control of his sound, moving instantly from pandemonium to dead silence.

Guillermo keeps an iron hand on his little railroad to the Apocalypse: the direction is tight, neat, furious, fast-paced. The acting is all superior: Ron Perelman lives and breathes Hellboy. Jeff Tambor maintains deniability and smokes his stogie like a champ as the BPRD chieftain and uber-honcho.

I've never liked Selma Blair: I find her google-eyes and over-large hands more Abe Sapien than sex-kitten, and she comes across as thoroughly disjointed and completely messed up. Given that her character is equally psycho, she works.Karel Roden growls and snarls and menaces effectively; Kroenen rocks the world without saying a word.

But the real star of the show is Guillermo Navarro's flawless cinematography and Del Toro's tight directorial hand. Grab the Director's cut of the DVD: not only is it stuffed with extras you'd need a demon's lifetime to appreciate, but the extra footage and transfer add considerably to the final cut. Time to raise some Hell.

JSG

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Rating: - Give it a try !
Hellboy (Director's Cut)3 disc Set is One of my Favorite Movies
I HAVE THIS 3 DiscSET Edition 'tis Perfect :)

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Rating: - I thought this movie was original
I heared that Hellboy was off a comic book. Hellboy is near classic of great proportion as played by the underrated Ron Perlman (Beauty and the Beast) Perlman is an actor you probley wouldn't recognize as he has had to wear so much facial make up in his career. Also he played in a lot of low budget movies. He imbues 'Hellboy' with a real humanity and a scathing wit. How am I ever gonna get a girl when I drive around in a garbage truck? John Hurt as his father has a little to do but that he loves Hellboy there is no doubt having to rescued him on the night he came from hell. Dr. Broom adopts the boy and they live at the Center For Paranormal Studies in New Jersey with a fish like creature and a fire starter girl who Hellboy loves to pieces.