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The Man Movie Encyclopedia: Hellboy

May 17, 2019 | Posted by Caliber Winfield

What is good, beautiful people.

Not much to say here in the preamble other than Endgame was amazing, and easily the greatest movie experience of my life. I can’t imagine I’ll ever have this again, as it took over 10 years, and over 15 movies that ranged from “absolutely incredible, some of the greatest movie making ever” to “That was pretty good” and never anything lower. It’s going on 3 weeks, so if you haven’t seen it, you can’t yell at me for this spoiler, but when Cap lifted the Hammer, man…easily my all time favorite moment in movies. I’m a huge mark for Cap, and that…fuck that was perfect.

OK, on with the show, ya’ll…

HELLBOYheader

We open up in Scotland, 1944, during WW2. The Nazis are up to their old tricks, black magic, occult stuff, the usual. Which, you know, I don’t blame Hitler for using all that time, money, and resources to search for the supernatural shit. I would have done the same.

Colonel Caliber Winfield: So, how are we doing on the mission to find me the man I want for Secretary of Defense?
Soldier: Well, not so good, sir. It’s not exactly easy. We don’t even know if—
CC Winfield: Oh not this crap again. I saw him in a piece of footage! Don’t be an asshole! Hell, I already ordered up his desk-name-plate [pulls it out and places it on the desk]
Solider: *reading * Secretary of Defense – Mr Bigfoot. Yes, that’s quite nice, sir. We’ll head back to the woods.

They attempt to open a portal in order to awaken some ancient evil dude, with the help of none other than Rasputin. Yes, the same. He’s able to open the portal, but a team of American soldiers with a British professor of the paranormal, Dr. Broom, are there to stop them. They do, causing Rasp to get sucked into the portal. We also see Hitler’s top assassin, a bad-ass dude with blades that is seemingly immortal. We also meet a devoted follower of Rasp, a blonde Nazi chick.

HELLBOYassassin

After the troops bust up the party, they then discover something came through, a baby demon. Naturally, he’s now known as Hellboy. We fast forward to the present day of 2004, and over in Moldavia, Hitler’s top assassin dude and the Nazi chick are at a temple, where they’ve resurrected Rasp.
Elsewhere, we head to the HQ of Hellboy and his crew, the Bureau of Paranormal Research & Defense, as a new FBI agent join’s their team, a cat named John Meyers. He meets Broom, and we’re introduced to a man named Abe Sapiens, an aquatic creature with human features but breathes water, and is also telepathic.

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He then meets Hellboy. Who ages a year for every 2 human years, so he’s about 30 years old. Whilst meeting HB, they get a call at a local museum, where an alarm was set off. What weirds me out is there’s a huge crowd and news cameras for this. Why on Earth would they give a shit about an alarm being pulled at a museum? I’d have just assumed someone was able to do that cool “avoid the lazer” deal and snagged a diamond.

HELLBOYhb

Well, in this case it ain’t no diamond, it’s a resurrected monster who is pretty damn bad-ass. They did a great job with the effects. HB and Sammy, as he’ll be known from here on out, have a great battle & chase that ends with Hellboy electrocuting it to death on some subway tracks. However, what he doesn’t know is that once dead, 2 shall take it’s place. Heil Sammy.

HELLBOYsammy

Dr. Broom and Abe find out what happened here. Rasp and his crew cracked open a statue, took the insides, apparently salt from angel tears, then Rasp used his abilities to conjure up Sammy. Else where, HB goes rogue to visit a girl, Liz, that he’s in love with, and also happens to have once been on the team and also has abilities to start fires with her mind. Later in the night whilst she sleeps, Rasp visits her and uses his power to make her mind go bonkers and basically blow up the hospital she’s staying at, in order to get her back into the Paranormal Bureau
Back at said Bureau [honest to God, I misspelled this word EVERYFUCKINGTIME], they discover that Sammy lays eggs, and when one dies, 2 souls, or life-essence, something, floats out and finds the eggs,. So, the crew suits up and heads back to the subway in order to track down Sammy. They find an area that’s underwater where Abe goes and collects Sammy eggs, which there appears to be a ton of. Abe has a tussle but is able to get some where safe. Meanwhile, HB sees the knife-wielding assassin of Hitler who’s creeping around the subway as well. Well, HB gets pulled in one direction with a fight with one of the Sammys, and has a hell of a fight. Great shit. Unfortunately, it dies when it gets hit with a subway train, and thus spawns 2 more. Meanwhile, Clay, who is HB favorite human at the bureau is pin-cushioned by the assassin.

HELLBOYblair

Clay is on life support, while Liz, comes back to the bureau, much to the absolute delight of Hellboy. Unfortunately, appealing to the opposite of delight is the fact that John, takes Liz out for coffee, and HB follows them. However, while he’s out trying to c-block John, and doing a great job, Rasp and the assassin, Carl, are inside the Bureau and kill Broom, after showing him what their future is gonna be after they used HB to open up the portal for good.
So, the gang figures out that they need to head to Moscow, in order to find Rasputin’s tomb. They do, and discover it has many layers and deep tunnels. The crew gets separated, leading HB and the Bureau’s leader to have a brawl with Carl, the assassin. HB beats the shit out of him, then throws him onto spikes and slams a giant gear down onto him. I dunno, the guy doesn’t exactly seem like the type to be put down with just that. I was under the idea that he was immortal.
Welp, John & Liz find the nesting place for Sammy, and thankfully so does HB at the last minute. Sammy starts to over power him, so Liz flicks her bic and torches everything. However, it incapacitates everyone, allowing Rasp and his ladyfriend to chain-up HB in a stockade with an inscription that can only be broken when HB recites what his true name is. At first HB won’t do it, so he threatens Liz’s life
which still doesn’t do it. HB is a better dude than me. Because I would have done it had this guy said he was gonna erase all of Phoenix Marie’s content from xvideos. Not that I know that xvideos is a website. I went there once, but only to figure out a way to get away from it. Anyway, Rasp says that Liz is now on the other side, and if HB opens up the portal and let’s the ancient evil in, he can be with her again. He starts to open it up, but then decides against it, and starts kicking ass again. He kills Rasp, which then brings to life a monster that was living inside of him. Ain’t no thang to HB, as he lets the monster swallow him, just as he pulls the chord on a big ol’ grenade belt, causing the creature to turn into blue goo. He catches up with John & Liz, and is able to bring her back to life, as they start making out to end the movie. Suck it, John.

MAN MOVIE TALLY:
1-Liners: 1
Guys Beat Up: 1
Guys Killed: 18
Swear Words: 1
Boobies: 0
Explosions: 3
Chase: 2
Broken Bones: 0
Fight/Shoot-Out At Motel?: No
Guy Get Girl? Yes
Guy/Girl Smoke?: Yes

MAN FACTS:
The actor who plays Abe is a man named Doug Jones. However, the voice belongs to none other than Sideshow Mel himself, David Hyde Pierce. He felt that the performance was completely all about Doug, so he refused a credit.

Apparently when the creator of Hellboy and director, Guillermo del Toro met up for the first time to discuss the film, they both revealed who the other had in mind for Hellboy, and both said Ron Perlmen.

In 2012, Ron was the ultimate cool dude as he got into the Hellboy costume again [which takes 4 hours] in order to spend the day with a 6 year old that had cancer, and was part of the Make-A-Wish foundation.

C’MON BENNETT, LET’S PARTY!:
Hellboy is a fucking blast. I loved it. Hellboy is pretty much exactly me if I were a superhero. You wanna know what Caliber is like, just watch Hellboy. The characters are all interesting, all get a perfect amount of screen time, the fight scenes are fantastic, the humor is on point, CGI is used only when needed, as we get a generous amount of practical effects that are fantastic and fit perfectly in the atmosphere created by Del Toro. There’s just a lot to like about this movie, and I demand you check it out pronto, as it is available on Netflix as of May 2019.
****1/2 Head-Butts out of 5

Any questions, comments, drunk-ramblings, feel free to send them my way, I always dig hearing from you, the beautiful people.
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