From August 2017 – January 2020, Keith R.A. DeCandido took a weekly look at every live-action movie based on a superhero comic that had been made to date in the Superhero Movie Rewatch. He periodically revisits the feature to look back at new releases, as well as a few he missed the first time through.
After two successful movies directed by Guillermo del Toro and starring Ron Perlman, the Hellboy franchise took a turn due to disagreements between creator Mike Mignola and del Toro. Instead, the movie series was rebooted in 2019, with David Harbour replacing Perlman.
Brian Taylor, who was part of the Neveldine/Taylor team that co-wrote Jonah Hex and directed Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, took over directing and rebooted the series yet again, hoping to jump-start a new series of films.
They started with a story that, like the 2019 film, directly adapted one of Mignola’s comic books, in this case the 2008 three-issue miniseries The Crooked Man, which had artwork by horror master Richard Corben.
The comic book was adapted by Mignola and his sometime collaborator Christopher Golden. Golden wrote three Hellboy novels, and also co-wrote the Baltimore series of graphic novels with Mignola. For that matter, Golden and Mignola wrote one of the drafts of the script for the 2019 film, though Andrew Cosby got sole credit.
Like the original comic book, this takes place in the 1950s, so is technically a prequel to the prior three films. Where the original comic had Hellboy wandering the country and stumbling across the situation, the movie has him on a mission for the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, and gives him a partner. The mission is literally derailed, and they wind up in the Appalachians to get involved in the plot.
Jack Kesy takes over the title role from Perlman and Harbour. Adeline Rudolph plays Bobbie Joe Song, the rookie agent accompanying Helboy. The rest of the cast includes Jefferson White as Tom Ferrell, the true protagonist of the story; Leah McNamara as Effie; Hannah Margetson as Cora; Joseph Marcell as Reverend Watts; and Martin Bassindale as the title character.
The movie was released direct to video on demand in the U.S., though it did have a limited theatrical release in Europe. It’s been a moderate success, though not a critical one. It remains to be seen whether or not the series will continue beyond this.
Hellboy: The Crooked Man
Written by Christopher Golden & Mike Mignola and Brian Taylor
Directed by Brian Taylor
Produced by Mike Richardson, Jeff Greenstein, Yanv Lerner, Jonathan Yunger, Les Weldon, Robert Van Norden, Sam Shulte
Original release date: October 8, 2024
“It is dark down there—dark as the devil’s asshole”
In 1959, Hellboy, a rookie BPRD agent named Bobbie Jo Song, and an FBI agent are transporting a supernatural spider back to headquarters. However, as they travel through the Appalachians, the spider grows to enormous size, killing the FBI agent and derailing the train car they’re in. The spider disappears into the mountains. Hellboy and Song follow, trying to find someone with a phone. Hellboy theorizes that the spider was summoned by something evil. Hellboy admits that he felt the same summoning, but was able to resist it.
They come to a house that doesn’t have a phone, but does have a body that’s left unmoving because of a witch’s curse. A man named Tom Ferrell comes into the house at the same time, and he asks if it’s Cora Fisher, and the occupants of the house say that it is. Cora is a witch, and Tom’s ex. Tom offers to go to Cora’s house after visiting his mom, but he’s informed that his mother died, and that nobody’s seen his father in forever. Tom goes ahead to Cora’s, accompanied by Hellboy and Song. They arrive to a deserted house, with Cora’s skin on the bed.
While they wait for Cora’s familiar to return and reoccupy the skin, Tom tells his story. When he was a kid in this town, he started dating Effie Kolb, who was a witch, and who convinced him to become one. He boiled a cat carcass until it fell apart, and then brought it to summon the Crooked Man. Whatever bone he was holding when the Crooked Man showed up would become his lucky bone. However, the sight of the Crooked Man scared him, and he ran, tossing the bone aside. However, the bone always came back to him, even after he fled the mountains and joined the Army. He fought in World War II, and never came to any harm.
He finally returned home hoping to confront the Crooked Man once and for all.
A raccoon enters the house and climbs into Cora’s skin, reanimating her. She says that the witches in town want Tom’s soul and he should leave. Then Effie shows up—not having aged a day since she and Tom dated when they were teenagers—riding a horse. Hellboy manages to drive her off, and when Tom removes its bridle, the horse transforms into his father, who then dies, though he and Tom reconcile before he does.
Tom wants to go to the church to bury his father, figuring that the Crooked Man and the local witches won’t be able to bother them on holy ground. En route, Cora is attacked and killed by a demonic snake, which Hellboy is able to kill. Before it dies, it makes him hallucinate his mother, a human witch who also made a deal with a demon, which resulted in his birth.
They arrive at the church, where the pastor—a blind priest named Watts—agrees to bury the old man. The Crooked Man and a bunch of witches gather just outside the periphery of the church, taunting them. The Crooked Man offers to give the reverend his youth and his sight back if he gives up Tom, but Watts refuses. Tom tries to give the lucky bone back to the Crooked Man, but Hellboy talks him out of it.
The witches see that lots of people who sinned pretty impressively are still buried in the churchyard, and they’re able to resurrect their spirits. However, Watts uses the lucky bone to bless a large shovel, which Hellboy uses on the spirits of the dead sinners and the witches.
The Crooked Man retreats to the Hurricane, an old abandoned mansion. Hellboy and Tom chase after, with Hellboy insisting that Song stay in the church with Watts where it’s safe.
Upon arrival, the Crooked Man torments both Tom and Hellboy with various visions. Song, meanwhile, thinks that the Crooked Man draws power from the (now-long-abandoned) mine. Some of the mining tunnels run under the church, and Song and Watts go down there. She casts a spell that disrupts the Crooked Man’s attack on Hellboy and Tom. This enables them to break free of his visions and destroy him.
With the Crooked Man gone, Effie now looks her actual age. Tom puts the bridle that was on his Dad on the elderly woman, and she transforms into a horse.
Song—who also found the spider once the Crooked Man was stopped—and Hellboy finally find a phone and are able to contact the BPRD for a pickup. Tom paints “BEWARE! I AM A WITCH!” in red paint on the horse’s hide.
“I just like to have some excessively high caliber ammo on hand, just in case”
The script for this movie is a pretty faithful adaptation of the comic book. The main changes are the addition of Song, making Hellboy present because of a BPRD mission gone awry instead of just happening to wander into town, and a much more complicated climax at the Hurricane.
There is, unfortunately, one other inevitable change, and it’s one of several things that completely kneecap this movie. While it’s possible that there is a director out there who can match the intensity of the unique visuals of Richard Corben’s magnificently macabre artwork, it’s pretty clear from this movie that Brian Taylor is not that director. One yearns for someone like Jordan Peele or Nia DaCosta or Barry Sonnenfeld who could do right by the material in general and Corben’s art in particular.
If you haven’t read the original comic book, you’re spared the comparison, at least, but it’s still not a very well-put-together movie, mainly because everything’s so dark. Half the time you can’t even tell what’s happening. To give but one example, the animating of Cora’s skin should be a stomach-churning scene, but it’s so dimly lit you can’t even tell what the heck is even going on.
And then there’s the acting. Jack Kesy is adequate as Hellboy. He doesn’t have the fuck-you charismatic verve of Ron Perlman, but at least he isn’t shouting to the rooftops ineffectively the way David Harbour did. Adeline Rudolph is also adequate as Song, and Martin Bassindale is creepily effective as the titular villain, aided by a makeup job that is the only part of the movie that lives up to Corben’s artwork.
None of the rest of the cast can even say that much, as they’re all trying really hard to stick to their overdone Southern accents, and giving us caricatures rather than characters.
This is the second time in a row that an adaptation of a Hellboy comic book story should have worked and didn’t. The movie was very obviously not burdened with a huge budget (not that it was an issue—this is a very claustrophobic tale with a small cast, so the low budget, at least, worked in this particular story’s favor), so that may mean Mignola et al. will be able to take another shot. Let’s hope for a director that can bring the creepy.
Next time, we look at what is possibly the final chapter of the Venom saga, The Last Dance.
