In 1944 during World War II, a team of American soldiers along with their catholic associate, Trevor Bruttenholm, stop Nazis from opening a portal to a paranormal dimension and bringing forth a monstrous creature who can bring chaos to their world. While the portal was open a baby demon, with it's right hand made of stone, made it through. The demon appears to be harmless and so Bruttenholm adopts it and calls him Hellboy. Sixty years later Hellboy works at a secret agency that hunts down evil creatures along with a psychic, amphibious humanoid named Abe Sapien.
Blaine: When Guillermo del Toro came across the comic books he felt it was something unique. It was a combination of the superhero-action genre with a much more human approach and at the same time had trappings of a great gothic fantasy, was full of monsters, full of adventure and Guillermo just fell in love with it. Hellboy creator Mike Mignola never had thoughts of his creation having it’s own movie. He thought “why would someone want to make a movie with the name Hellboy?” But for Guillermo is was rich and powerful. Guillermo and Mike think alike and when they first met, Mike thought this is the only guy who could do the project. Mike trusted Guillermo enough that he allowed him to do whatever he wanted with “Hellboy". Mike and Guillermo put their heads together by discussing their ideas of the look of “Hellboy" and they agreed on a lot of things.
It was clear to Guillermo that Ron Perlman should play Hellboy. Guillermo had worked with Ron Perlman before on “Cronos” and “Blade II” and as soon as Guillermo was attached to the project, he called Ron immediately telling him that he was writing a part for him in his next movie. It took four hours to apply the makeup on Ron and he’s done jobs that have involved him wearing makeup in the past, so he knew what he was in for.
When they were designing the look of Hellboy through sculptures, they found an old cast of Ron Perlman when he did “Beauty and the Beast” and used it to help with the designs. Ron was younger when that cast was made, so there were some problems because Ron was in his 50s at the time when “Hellboy” went into production and they needed to match the designs they did with the makeup. Fortunately makeup designer Matt Rose was able to pull it off. Ron was able to control the wrist movement for the stone arm, but the fingers would be remote controlled by Chad Waters, the mechanical technician and puppeteer. There were different types of versions of the stone arm that would be used like when Hellboy is punching the ground in order to get to Liz and John Myers who are down bellow, that was some kind of rubber arm. It was Guillermo’s idea for Hellboy to have these marks on his stone arm that go up to his shoulder. I love Hellboy because he's this character who can fight and doesn't take shit from anyone, but at the same time he has a bit of a sweet side to him as well.
Liz is someone who has the power to control and create fire, but it’s not always easy for her to control from time to time. She’s someone who I think wants to be normal because even though she has this ability still she looks human on the outside. Liz doesn’t have much of a part in the comics and Selma Blair felt lucky to give the character a whole new personality. Guillermo re-created her from scratch and made her a love interest to Hellboy. Guillermo felt that Selma Blair could bring all that beauty she has physically and all that angst she was able to capture of projecting on the screen.
Guillermo also added a father-son relationship to the story. Mike Mignola never had John Hurt in mind when he first created the character, Trevor Bruttenholm, but the first day he saw John Hurt on set, his thoughts were that he looks like the character in the comics. Guillermo was very happy to get John Hurt because he’s an accomplished actor. John taking on the role made a big difference for Guillermo because the emotional core of “Hellboy”, aside form the love story is the father and son relationship. John Hurt brought a lot of emotional depth to that according to Guillermo.
Director Guillermo del Toro and "Hellboy” creator Mike Mignola made cameo appearances in the film as a dragon and a knight at the Halloween party.
They needed a skinny dude to play Abe Sapien. Doug Jones was everything they were looking for because he was tall and very skinny. Some of the jobs Doug had done in the past involved him hiding behind makeup. Five months after principal photography wrapped the actors had to have their voices recorded in a sound booth to make up for whatever errors they had while shooting like a disturbing noise in the background that made it hard for the microphones to hear the actors on set. But the main thing they needed was to make the dialog sound good. It was a challenge to make the sound of their voices match their lip movements. Doug Jone’s voice was the only one that was replaced by a different actor. The voice of Abe was “Frasier’s” David Hyde Pierce.
My rating on “Hellboy” is five out of five stars.
Director Guillermo del Toro looking at a Hellboy toy to figure out the look
