Hellboy: The Crooked Man

Hellboy, a half-demon paranormal investigator with the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense (the B.P.R.D.), ends up stranded in 1950s rural Appalachia after his train is derailed by a giant spider. There, Hellboy discovers a community of witches in the thrall of a local devil, a twisted old creature with a dark history.

Originally created by legendary comic book writer and artist Mike Mignola, and first appearing in August 1993, Hellboy was a giant in the alt-superhero/Vertigo comics boom of the 90s. A beloved indie darling from the start, in the time since, including spin-offs, miniseries, one-shots, and intercompany crossovers, his story—often called the Mignolaverse—now spans over 80 trade paperbacks. That means hundred and hundreds of comics. Hellboy has also been adapted into two straight-to-DVD animated films, three video games, and now four movies.

The first film was made in 2004, and it was simply called Hellboy. An overly-lit and too peppy slog by Guillermo del Toro that starred Ron Perlman as Hellboy, who was arguably the best version of the character. The pair returned for the 2008 sequel, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, which a lot of filmheads loved, really loved, weirdly loved, but did nothing for me, as I found it to just be more of the elements from the first film I didn't like. I realize I am almost alone in this, and it's also been a long time since I've seen it, so I don't want to get it into it too much, because all I really remember at this point is not liking it, and I‘m definitely not interested in watching it again, so I’ll I can really say about this film is that it seems to me that if you love the Dark Crystal, then you will love Hellboy II. But me? I hated the Dark Crystal. I fucking hated it. So… hard pass. Then, there was a 2019 reboot film that was also titled Hellboy. This third film was directed by Neil Marshall, and starred David Harbour as Hellboy. This was a film I was excited for. Harbour seemed like a good choice for the character, and Marshall made the movies Dog Soldiers and Doomsday, as well as the Battle of the Blackwater and the Wilding assault on the Wall at Castle Black episodes of Game of Thrones, all of which I loved. But in the end, this movie was a dull wet fart and a failure, widely considered as the worst of all the Hellboy adaptations.

In my opinion, all three of these films failed for similarly rooted, but ultimately different reasons... which was that none of them were quite right. Each one was right in certain ways, each one was definitely an accurate-ish depiction of Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. in certain ways, but in other equally important ways, they weren't at all. They all hit the mark, and also completely missed it.

So, it's been a frustrating experience, for me, at least, being that I'm a fan of the comic. And with the failure of the 2019 version, which was an attempt to make a darker, but still funny, monster movie more tonally in line with the comic version than the previous two films, an attempt that ended up just over-correcting way too hard for sillier, more fantasy-bent previous two versions, I honestly didn't expect to ever see another Hellboy film.

But now here we are, in 2024, with Hellboy: The Crooked Man.

This film is an attempt to make a more low-key version, aiming for the comic's working-man feel of Hellboy's characterization, all with a much less big-budget-flashy vibe, trying to emulate the more horror-orientated slant of the comic. It's directed by Brian Taylor, who made Crank and Gamer, which is a very bad sign, as those two film are both terrible crap—although I did love the show Happy, which he was also involved in—and it stars Jack Kesy as Hellboy. I have no idea who he is, and couldn't pick him out of a line-up if you paid me. He apparently had a minor role in Deadpool 2 as Black Tom Cassidy, and speaking as someone who has seen that film multiple times… he failed to make an impression.

So… spoilers... I don't expect there to be a fifth Hellboy film.

The Lore

Hellboy is the “world’s greatest paranormal investigator.”

A half-demon Prince of Hell, the son of a human witch, who was condemned to eternal torment, and the archdemon Azzael, an Archduke of Hell, amongst the legions of Hell, Hellboy is known as Anung Un Rama, which translates to ”And upon his brow is set a crown of flame.”

Hellboy was summoned to Earth from Hell by Nazi occultists from the Thule Society in December of 1994, in the ruins of an old church on an small island off the coast of England, because the Third Reich hoped to gain a weapon that would win the war for them. The ritual was led by the infamous Russian mystic, the Mad Monk, and seemingly immortal agent of Hell, Grigori Rasputin, who had a secret agenda of his own… which was to kick off the end of the world.

But before it could be completed, the ritual was interrupted by an Allied commando raid led by the WW2 era superhero, The Torch of Liberty.

The Torch of Liberty is an indie comic Captain America-type of WW2 Super Soldier character, who was crossing over from his own title, which was owned and created by the even more legendary than Mike Mignola comic book writer and artist, John Byrne. It was meant as a fun little cameo appearance that would’ve heralded a small semi-shared universe, but things change and now a crossover like this will never be repeated or even referred to again because of legal rights and all that shit.

Anyway, the Torch of Liberty, some Allied soldiers, and a handful of paranormal investigators show up and start killing them some Nazis, which is always a good thing, and hopefully becomes a national pastime once again in the near future.

The commando team defeated and/or scattered the Nazi bastards, but soon discovered that even though it had been interrupted, once the ritual was started, it was too late to stop it. A sudden fireball exploded in the center of the ruins. When the flames cleared, in the center sat a red-skinned, monkey-like child with a tail, horns, cloven hooves, and a huge right hand that looked to be made of stone.

Professor Trevor "Broom" Bruttenholm dubbed him “Hellboy.”

Said to smell of dry-roasted peanuts, Hellboy is gruff and sarcastic, smokes constantly, has an ironic sense of humor, and deep, deep love of pancakes. He’s well-meaning, loyal and heroic, and is more than willing to sacrifice himself for others. He seems to have none of the malevolence one would assume there to be upon seeing his demonic form. He's long-lived, possesses superhuman strength and endurance. He doesn’t get sick, he’s hard to hurt, and if he is, he heals quickly. And because he’s part demon, steeped in the world of magic, he’s also able to comprehend ancient and magical languages.

Hellboy is known to reliably have on him a strange and random mix of various magical and supernatural items. Random holy relics, lucky horseshoes, magical totems, various herbs, silver, salt, and iron, and maybe a hand grenade or two can be found in his utility belt and jacket pockets, all sorts of weird shit for all sorts of weird situations.

He also carries an oversized revolver made from the iron of a church bell—a weapon that the del Toro movies dubbed the "Good Samaritan.” However, he’s a notoriously bad shot, and mostly prefers to fight monsters using sword or spear or anything at hand really, or to simply go hand-to-hand with them, especially with that massive stone fist of his, known as the Right Hand of Doom.

But the problem is, looming over everything like a big apocalyptic elephant in the middle of the room, is the fact that possessing the Right Hand of Doom brings with it a terrible fate, a dark destiny that Hellboy defiantly refuses to accept.

An ancient and powerful relic, The Right Hand of Doom once belonged to the Angel Anum, the being responsible for the creation of the Ogdru Jahad, a world ending destructive force in the shape of a seven headed dragon. When Anum was destroyed, only his right hand remained. It fell to Earth, where it was kept and protected for a long time by the Hyperboreans, the first race of man.

Eventually, the Right Hand of Doom ended up in the possession of Azzael. In the year 1574, the demon grafted the relic onto the newborn Hellboy, after bringing his still-pregnant witch-mom to Hell, and then burning her body away to ash.

He did this because the Right Hand of Doom is said to be the key to unleashing the apocalypse, the catalyst that will bring about Ragnarok. 

Attaching the Right Hand of Doom to Hellboy was the first step to bringing about the end of all things. It is the beginning of the prophecy of Anung Un Rama, Urush Un Rama, which translates into “Destroyer of Worlds, Creator of Worlds.”

This prophecy says that Hellboy will one day use the Right Hand of Doom to free the Ogdru Jahad, who slumbers in its cosmic prison. Freeing the Ogden Jahad will awaken the armies of Hell, who will storm the Gates of Heaven, waging a war that will burn all of Creation to cinders. It was only because to Azzael was then betrayed by rival archdemons, and imprisoned in ice in the depths of Hell, that this calamity was delayed. Delayed being the important word here, though, as the prophecy was not stopped, because when it comes to prophecy, much like the summoning ritual that first brought Hellboy to earth, once begun, it was too late to stop.

That’s the problem with prophecy, it’s inevitable…

Still, Hellboy refuses it, and instead, works for the B.P.R.D.

Started by Professor Bruttenholm, the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense is an international non-governmental agency intended to be the first line of defense against the monsters and the shadows. As an organization, the B.P.R.D. stands against the dark forces of the world, whether it be Nazis, witches, sorcerers, death cults, robot gorillas, elder gods, tentacled monsters, giant frogs, ghosts, mad scientists, or any number of creatures from the mists of folklore, myth, or legend, from the long-lost places here on the Earth, or from out of the long darkness in the far reaches of the cosmos.

Following his first fiery appearance, Hellboy was taken by the United States to an Air Force base in New Mexico, where he was then raised by Professor Bruttenholm in a somewhat normal home environment. In that environment, it was inevitable that he would one day join the B.P.R.D., his father's organization. Finally, in 1952, after Hellboy was granted status as an "honorary human" by the United Nations, he officially joined.

He's watched over us ever since.

Alongside other human and quasi-human agents who have been pulled from law enforcement, the military, universities, and the clergy from around the world, as well as "scholars of the weird" and some of the unfortunate few that society might call freaks or monsters, Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. investigate the weird, the strange, and the dangerous, defending the people who live in the light of day, from the things that go bump in the night.

Besides Hellboy, this sometimes includes people like Kate Corrigan, a professor of folklore from NYU, or Abe Sapien, an amphibian humanoid who was named after Abraham Lincoln for… various reasons, or Liz Sherman, a young pyrokinetic, or Roger, a Homunculus who was created by medieval alchemists from blood and herbs which were stewed in a jar and incubated in horse manure, or maybe Panya, an ancient mummy, or Captain Benjamin Daimio, a were-jaguar, or Johann Kraus, a man turned into ectoplasm during a seance gone wrong who is now confined to a human-shaped containment suit, or Ted Howard, a B.P.R.D. agent who made the mistake of touching a broken old sword and is now melded with the spirit of Gall Denmark, an ancient Hyperborean warrior, or sometimes even the ghost of long-dead WW2 era mystery man, Lobster Johnson.

It's an eclectic crew that occasionally joins him on his adventures, as Hellboy is basically a paranormal Indiana Jones, chasing myths and legends and all new kinds of danger across the face of the globe, a strange and interesting twist on the pulp hero trope.

One of the many things Hellboy has in common with Dr. Jones is that their adventures are often presented out of order, different years, different locales, different adventures. One may take place in the 70s in England, the next, in the 90s in Japan, and after that the 60s in Canada. They jump around.

The story of the Crooked Man takes place in the 50s, in the mountains of rural Appalachia. This is a fitting place for a story about ghosts, witches, old magic, and even older devils, as these mountains are old. Very, very old. Almost the oldest on Earth. They were first formed over 480 million years ago with the birth of ancient Pangea, when Laurentia collided with Gondwana, which means that these peaks were here long before even the North American continent was, and their stoney roots reach deep into the earth and into history, formed in a time long before the Age of Humanity.

This is why you don't whistle after dark in the Appalachian mountains, btw...

The Film

In the 1950s, B.P.R.D. agents Hellboy and Bobbie Jo Song are transporting a toxic supernatural spider back to headquarters via train. It's an uneventful trip, even a boring one, but then the tracks wind their way up into the Appalachian Mountains.

The spider suddenly grows to monstrous proportions, and the resulting fight overturns their train car, derails the training, and allows the spider to escape. This means two things... One, they have to recapture the spider. Two, Hellboy knows that the reason the spider suddenly grew to such a threatening size is because of the influence of something evil haunting these mountains, and he knows this because he heard it calling out to him too.

And so, Hellboy and Bobbie Jo set out into the woods.

Along the way, they meet a man named Tom Ferrell, a former soldier and local hedge-witch who has recently returned home to atone for past sins. They follow Tom to speak with a woman he knows named Cora Fisher, a witch and Tom's ex-girlfriend, who may have answers about both the spider and the local goings-on. But when they arrive, they find that her house and Cora's body are empty. 

She's just an empty bag of skin laying on the bed.

Apparently this isn't all that uncommon of a thing for a witch to do, and they understand that this means that Cora has simply turned herself into her familiar, and is out doing witchy stuff.

So, they make themselves at home.

While they wait, Tom regales Hellboy and Bobbie Jo with the tale of how he once knew a local witch named Effie Kolb, and how Effie is the one who originally led him into witchcraft, and how she was the one to convince him to make a deal with a local devil known as "The Crooked Man," and how, at Effie's suggestion, Tom used a cat carcass to summon the Crooked Man, and that when he did, whatever bone he was holding when the devil arrived would become his lucky bone.

However, the sight of the Crooked Man terrified Tom so much, he ran away to Europe and straight into the war. He discarded the lucky bone many times, but it would always return to him, and as long as he had it, he was safe from harm. Tom tells Hellboy and Bobby Jo that he has finally returned home, after all these many long years of wandering the planet, because he intends to face the Crooked Man once and for all, to return the bone and break the curse that clings to him.

(Note: I don’t understand what’s so bad about being hard to hurt and basically immortal, but whatever, this is the story.)

Anyway, that's when Cora's familiar returns.

Her familiar is a raccoon, and it squirms its way into the mouth of her empty skin suit and refills her body. After a whole bunch of gross noises and movements, Cora is back, and she tells them that the local witches are after her soul. 

And then, speak of the very devil, as they say...

Effie Kolb shows up, bloody and riding a pale horse, to collect Cora's soul. Words are exchanged, as well as a few punches, and Effie leaves unsatisfied. Tom removes the pale horse’s bridle, and it transforms back into Tom's father. He and his father briefly reconcile before the old man dies.

The next morning, looking to bury Tom’s dad in the land of his birth, Hellboy, Bobbie Jo, Tom, and Cora hike all the way up the mountain to a lonely, dilapidated church, where we meet it's keeper, the blind preacher man, Reverend Watts.

Cora is attacked along the way, and killed by a demonic snake. Hellboy then kills the snake, but during the fight, the snake bites him. He swoons and sees a vision of his mother Sara, a witch who made a deal for power with the demon Azzael, and was condemned for Hell for it on the day she died, which was also the day Hellboy was born.

That night, they are confronted by the Crooked Man and his servants.

There's a big fight, lots of punching and shooting and leaping about. The Crooked Man does the classic temptation route on everyone, and finally, using Tom’s lucky bone, the Reverand Watts blesses his shovel, long ago consecrated from years of burying the faithful in holy ground, and Hellboy then uses it to beat the tar out of some devils. This weakens the Crooked Man, driving him off, and scattering his screeching horde of witches.

Hellboy and Tom chase the Crooked Man to an abandoned mansion with a dark local history, and are assaulted bytraumatic visions. Meanwhile, Bobbie Jo is in the old mines running all through the mountain, believing that they are the source of the Crooked Man's power, and disrupts it with a spell. This frees Hellboy and Tom from the visions and together, and they destroy the Crooked Man. 

With The Crooked Man gone, Effie Kolb ages rapidly, and Tom places the bridle that had turned his father into a horse on her. Hellboy and Bobbie Jo are able to recapture the now more normal sized spider, and call BPRD headquarters to come pick them up.

All is right in Appalachia... for now, as a white horse wanders by, wearing nothing but a bridle, and a warning written on its side that says: "Beware! I am a Witch!"

The Response

So, is this version better than the first two Hellboy movies? Maybe, yes, depending on your taste. Is it better than the third One? Definitely.

But to me, these are all low bars and mostly nuance-based. Really, they're all the same. Not good. Not great. Not bad. Not terrible. Mostly just dull and forgettable, which upsets me. I want better, but I really don't know if it's possible at this point. Maybe the truth is that Hellboy is just better as a comic book?

To me, one of the most noticeable and most consistent problems that all three of the live-action versions share is Hellboy’s face. None of them are quite right. It’s not craggy enough, maybe? Maybe it’s got angles to it that human faces just can’t imitate? I don’t know, but it’s not working. I’d suggest that future adaptations maybe try animation instead, but they have, and those didn’t work either. When you look at all these different versions, it’s fair to say that they're noble failures, and they're definitely close to being right, and the skill of the make-up artists is obviously really impressive.

But still... they're all missing something, an important piece that would make them actually be Hellboy, instead of just "pretty close."

This is a microcosm of the problem with all of the films...

And it’s particularly exemplified here, in this relatively low-budget reboot with a decidedly different tone feel from the other films, one that is much more like the horror noir feel of the comic. With this one, I feel like we have now tried all of the options possible when adapting Hellboy.… the peppier muppet-like action comedy tone of the first two films, the more grim and gritty heavy metal monster flick feel of the third, and here, with the fourth film, the creepy horror version, and the truth is, none have really worked. They almost do, but… nope.

At least, not for me.

Obviously, I’m in the minority here when it comes to some of these films. I know a lot of film fans love these films, especially Hellboy 2. And I’m not saying that a lot of them are not being sincere, but let’s be honest here, film heads have a couple of sacred cows, indisputably talented favorite creators they are always willing to give a pass to, should they stumble on occasion, and without a doubt, one of them is Guillermo del Toro, so I’m not saying that they’re all giving a pass too that film, but I will say that a lot of them went into it prepared to love it.

Regardless, just judging by the current state of the franchise’s live-action films, like them or love them, unfairly or not, I think it is fair to say that none of them are exactly beloved of the masses, so at this point, with your fourth strike, maybe it's just time to give up.

Maybe some things are just better as comics.

But all the greater questions about the future of this franchise aside, this film is just… not that good. It’s too quiet and too slow, and not in the sense that it’s not flashy enough, but in the sense that the good guys aren’t very exciting, the bad guys aren’t that interesting, and the conflict is all-around not engaging.

In short, it’s dull.

Weirdly, the most unrealistic thing about Hellboy in this movie is Jack Kesy’s smoking. He’s clearly not a smoker. And they have clearly done several takes of each scene. This is all fine, but together it means that he pulls on the cigarette too often and too fast, so it doesn’t seem natural at all, like a nervous teen trying to fit in at a party. If you ever watch this film, which I wouldn’t suggest, pay attention in the first couple of scenes and watch how many times he takes a drag.

The Crooked Man itself, not to mention Effie Kolb, are such non-starters as far as bad guys go, at least, cinematically.

Then there’s Bobbie Jo.

Like the whole train fight/spider thing in the beginning of the film, Bobbie Jo isn’t from the comics either, and I have to wonder why the filmmakers bothered to add her. Not because I’m a staunch and unrelenting advocate for 100% fidelity to the source material either, but because she barely does anything in the film. Bobbie Jo is present in almost every scene, but she barely contributes anything, at least, not in any way that would justify her addition. Obviously, she’s supposed to provide a wide-eyed innocent’s point of view into this world of monsters and magic and half-demon paranormal investigators, but much like her general role in the greater plot of the film, she just doesn’t do much there.

And then there’s the fact that there’s no need for this role. Does the audience for this film really need a “every man’s point of view“ into this weird world? Who the hell is walking into a Hellboy film at this point who isn’t already totally willing to accept whatever weird shit they see on the screen? It’s a niche genre film, who else is going to go except people who already understand these rules? Especially in this day and age of mega-franchises? I think general audiences pretty reliably speak the language now, right? And really, who is even watching the fourth Hellboy film who isn’t already completely familiar with the world of Hellboy?

Plus—as all Hellboy franchise fans already know—the biggest mistake that the first film made was that they inserted an original character into the story, a young FBI agent John Myers. The intent was to use him as the audiences’ eyes, someone who didn’t know this supernatural world, as a way to introduce the audience to it at the same time. The fans hated him. The fans hated him so much in fact, in the sequel, they made a quick throwaway joke early on in the film of how Hellboy had screwed Agent Myers over by getting him transferred to the worst assignment possible, like, in Greenland or something, in order to explain why the character didn’t return for the second movie.

So why would they repeat that mistake here by adding the same character? Especially when you already have the ex-soldier and local dabbler in withcraft, Tom Ferrell—acting as a kind of Appalachian John Constantine—and the blind shaman on the mountaintop, Reverend Watts? Why add a third character just to pull more focus away from your main character?

I don’t understand the thought process.

The film isn’t all bad, of course. I did enjoy the holy shovel, that was just cool in general. And the whole sequence where the Raccoon refills Cora’s empty skin suit, that was great too. There was some good spooky atmosphere to the film at times too. I also really liked the normalcy of the world, and the way Hellboy would just be standing there, looking like a classic red devil, and everyone is mostly just like… “hey, aren’t you that one guy? I saw you on tv.” That was pretty fun. I really liked the inference that this was a “normal” world, but it was also a world that was much more familiar with magic and monsters in general. That was a much better way to do things than the way they did it in the first two films, where they had Hellboy as a government secret to be brought in to deal with monsters and other supernatural threats, but was otherwise kept out of the eyes of the public, which I think was part of the reason why he seems like an overgrown 15 year old in those films.

In the end, Hellboy: The Crooked Man isn’t exactly a bad film, but there’s also not a lot going on in its favor either. If you’re a fan, it’s worth checking out, I guess, but I’d say it’s best to do it for cheap, or even better, for free. It’s an admirable attempt, overall, but ultimately, much like Salem’s Lot, it’s pretty clear why it was dumped to streaming. It’s a good try, but it’s forgettable.

It’s definitely not anywhere as good as this…

That’s just good comic booking, people.