jeriendhal (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jeriendhal) wrote2008-03-03 12:02 pm
jeriendhal) wrote2008-03-03 12:02 pm
Short Review: Hellboy, Blood and Iron (No Spoilers)
This the second animated Hellboy movie released to DVD. The first, Sword of Storms suffered a bit in my opinion due to some poor voice work on Selma Blair's part and a fairly plotless story (Big Bad appears, Hellboy gets sucked into a alternate dimension to have random encounters with Japanese mythology, meanwhile Abe and Liz suffer through the B-plot being menaced by waves and large marine critters.)
"Lady, I was going to cut you some slack because you're a major mythological figure - but that? That's crazy talk."
Blood and Iron is a vast improvement. This time around Blair's readings are dead on and the plot is pure Mignola gold involving Hecate, a blood soaked vampire based on the Baroness of Bathory, menacing wolves and a house in Massachusetts haunted by a few hundred East European peasant girls. It also has some lovely characterizations between the BPRD team, bringing up the respect they all have for Professor Broom (voiced by an ancient sounding John Hurt) and his own father-son relationship with Hellboy.
The negatives on the story are light. Early in the animation process the production team figured out that the story was running too short for a 90 minute feature, so they expanded the opening featuring a young Professor Broom in the 1930's to a series of reverse order flashbacks to pad things out. And while it is nicely done (and has perhaps the nastiest moment of understated horror I've ever seen in animation) it is padding and doesn't add much to the main story. But it's a nice look into the Professor's early monster hunting days, when he was at the top of his form.
"Lady, I was going to cut you some slack because you're a major mythological figure - but that? That's crazy talk."
Blood and Iron is a vast improvement. This time around Blair's readings are dead on and the plot is pure Mignola gold involving Hecate, a blood soaked vampire based on the Baroness of Bathory, menacing wolves and a house in Massachusetts haunted by a few hundred East European peasant girls. It also has some lovely characterizations between the BPRD team, bringing up the respect they all have for Professor Broom (voiced by an ancient sounding John Hurt) and his own father-son relationship with Hellboy.
The negatives on the story are light. Early in the animation process the production team figured out that the story was running too short for a 90 minute feature, so they expanded the opening featuring a young Professor Broom in the 1930's to a series of reverse order flashbacks to pad things out. And while it is nicely done (and has perhaps the nastiest moment of understated horror I've ever seen in animation) it is padding and doesn't add much to the main story. But it's a nice look into the Professor's early monster hunting days, when he was at the top of his form.