“Venus... Venus... the planet named after the Goddess of Love.”

A lot of old B Movies I’ve been watching certainly deserve a fair amount of ribbing for bad effects, acting or storytelling, but most of the time it’s of a good natured sort. I don’t usually “hate them” hate them, because with the best cheesy B Movies, there’s at least one or two elements of quality and/or effort involved.

The next film flat out pissed me off. So much so that I almost decided to throw in the towel and quit this entire reviewing project. It was THAT BAD. So instead of doing that, I figured I could try and briefly explain why 1968’s Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women almost did me in.

Story
First, some context. The bulk of the footage is from a 1962 Soviet film called Planeta Bur which features a group of cosmonauts and their robot landing on Venus and fending off various monsters as they explore it. It was dubbed with some new footage of Basil Rathbone dropped in to make 1965’s Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet, and then the new footage was replaced with newer footage of Mamie Van Doren as Venusian leader Moana and a group of bored looking clamshell clad women standing around on a rocky shoreline and all new dubbing.

So basically, this movie is thrice recycled. Which is a bad sign. The plot jammed together from this awful collision is something about American astronauts (with suspiciously red stars on their rockets) trying to rescue a downed exploratory rocket on Venus and as they wander around, one of them thinks he hears a woman singing and frequently gets distracted. The search party eventually shoots down the Venusian women’s pterodactyl god Terah (I wish I was making that up) and after some surprisingly boring gyrating, the women conjure up several natural disasters for the astronauts.

It’s godawful.

Visuals/Effects
So the new shots were directed by Peter Bogdanovich (as Derek Thomas) as one of his early gigs and they look like they were filmed in a day or so. The women are attractive, certainly, but all have that zoned-out, bored look, and they really don’t do much of anything. The original Russian footage is actually of a much higher budget and quality than the new stuff, and includes all manner of costumes, a pretty good robot that gets called “John” and moments that are genuinely interesting.

Writing
Henry Ney is the writer given the unfortunate task of trying to make this mashup make sense. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. It’s obvious that it’s made from two different piles of footage and the things that tie the two together are so stretched that its painful. As a writer, I really feel for the guy, especially since this is the only thing he’s credited for on IMDB.

Sound
Original music by Keith Benjamin and its par for the course. The dubbing is also standard for the Russian parts of the film, but the new footage is completely dubbed over with the excuse that the women are all telepathic. I realize this is probably a workaround for the constant sound of waves crashing against rocks, but it’s still really lazy.

Conclusion
I think what really cheeses me off about this movie is the fact that it was so shamelessly hacked up, repurposed by a new crew that did a bad job of it and still had the gall to call it “their’s.” It’s like a storytelling smash and grab, and it really pisses me off. Sure, showing a Russian Sci-Fi film in the U.S. in 1968 wouldn’t have worked either, but to be totally honest, the original movie looks so much more interesting and better than this bastardized version. And I don’t just feel bad for the original Soviet moviemakers. I feel bad for the American crew and actresses that were hired to try and make this version work. It’s not a matter of stealing ideas, since I think the rights were bought fair & square, but the whole shameless laziness of the whole thing is shameful. But that’s not all. It is painfully clear that the source material is superior and that this edit does nothing but lower it.

Don’t See Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women. Just don’t. It’s not worth it. I really want to make it a point to track down Planeta Bur, actually, and while I haven’t seen the Basil Rathbone version, it can’t possibly be as bad as this.

I am not joking or exaggerating when I say it’s terrible. It’s nigh unwatchable. It is mind crushingly boring. It made me out-hate Napoleon Dynamite, which I never thought possible. This is now officially the worst movie I have seen.

Fuck this movie.

“Men! Every time you search for an answer, you always come up with women.”

Alright, so everybody knows not to piss off wasps, right? They’re like surly bees that don’t make honey for us. Splicing wasp genetic material with human genetic material is recipe for… well, I’m not really sure. I guess you’d get something like 1959’s The Wasp Woman, and it looks nothing like the poster for it.

Story
There’s an expository prologue showing the kindly but clearly mad scientist Dr. Eric Zinthrop (Michael Mark, who was in quite a few of the Universal Horror movies from the 30s & 40s) getting fired from a honeybee farm for conducting experiments on wasps, which is a pretty justified firing. Anyway, he eventually finds his way to a cosmetics company run by Janice Starlin (Susan Cabot) that’s suffering from decreased sales for the simple reason that Starlin continues to be the “face” of the company despite her advancing age. The doc gives her one hell of a sales pitch that deserves a new paragraph. Mark and Cabot both give very good performances, all things considered.

By mixing wasp royal jelly with some enzymes and other science-y stuff, he’s concocted a serum that can reverse the effects of aging dramatically (and turn a guinea pig into a mouse somehow). Janice starts taking the serum with slow results. Unsatisfied, she breaks into the doc’s lab one night and takes a big hit of the stuff and the next morning, all that makeup on her to make her look older is gone. Her employees, Mary Dennison (Barboura Morris), Bill Lane (Anthony “Fred” Eisley) and a couple others start to get suspicious, Janice takes bigger doses despite the increased risk, and Dr. Zinthrop gets put in the hospital by randomly stepping off a curb into traffic (really). All of this leads to the inevitable conclusion of Janice turning into a bloodthirsty were-wasp at night and eating people late in the movie.

Visuals/Effects
Roger Corman is an insanely prolific director and producer who’s been responsible for a staggering number of movies. Look him up on IMDB and you’re bound to see a familiar title or three. Of course, with that kind of volume, there’s bound to be some bad ones, and he was the producer of Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (which almost made me ragequit this project) and I’m not sure I can forgive that one yet. Still, the movie is decent enough on a visual level regarding the normal scenes. The prologue was shot by Jack Hill (uncredited) for a later release. It’s when it comes to special effects that the movie shows its true budget. Any footage involving wasps is actually footage of honeybees, and the wasp woman costume at the end is… well… a mask and two monster hands in bad lighting.
Writing
Story by Kinta Zertuche and screenplay by Leo Gordon, and there was some promise to be had. You have a faded beauty turning to mad science in order to preserve her good looks and things result in tragedy. You have a scientist who is clearly off his rocker but is actually a misunderstood good guy. You’ve got a ravenous were-wasp. But the pacing of the plot is the movie’s downfall. There are large stretches of time where not much of interest happens and the big reveal at the end is fairly brief, doesn’t make much sense, and is shot in pretty dim lighting. I understand that the wasp mask wasn’t great, but for a monster movie, the big payoff is being able to clearly see the monster. Sadly, it takes quite a while for the Wasp Woman (DUN DUN DUN) to show herself.

Sound
Original music by Fred Katz, and it’s par for the course.

Conclusion
As far as B movies go, The Wasp Woman isn’t atrocious. There are some great crazy moments, the lead actors are both quite good and the ending, while brief, is the shot in the arm the rest of the movie needed. It’s quite riffable. Bad, but not un-enjoyable. And yes, I’m ending this review with a double negative.

“The werewolf is neither man nor wolf, but a Satanic creature with the worst qualities of both.”

The end of our journey into Universal’s classic werewolf movies jumps back to the 1930s. 1935 to be specific, with the very first Hollywood werewolf movie, Werewolf Of London (sounds familiar, yeah? Where do you think Warren Zevon got inspired from?). As far as werewolves go, its much different from the classic Lon Chaney one, but is that a bad thing? Well, the box office seemed to think so, since the movie didn’t do well.

Story
What it boils down to is the search for a rare flower, the mariphasa in Nepal. Botanist Dr. Wilfred Glendon (Henry Hull) enters a forbidden, remote valley and finds bit, but is attacked by a werewolf almost immediately. He manages to fight it off, but is bitten in the process. Glendon returns to England with the plant but can’t seem to get it to bloom (it only does so under the full moon). At a party he meets the mysterious Dr. Yogami (Swedish actor Warner Oland who is best known for playing Asian Detective Charlie Chan) who knows an awful lot about the flower and lycanthropy. The flower is apparently able to stave off (but not cure) “werewolfery” during the full moon. Glendon’s obsession with the plant strains things with his wife Lisa (the very attractive Valerie Hobson) and she turns to an old friend Paul Ames (Lester Matthews) for help.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Stuart Walker, cinematography by Charles J. Stumar. Visually, there are a lot of ambitious and impressive shots in this film, particularly during the werewolf scenes. The werewolf makeup by Jack Pierce is radically different from the later Larry Talbot version, with most of Dr. Glendon’s face visible and a passable similarity to some versions of Mr. Hyde. Regardless, I rather like some of the werewolf’s “going out clothes” with the scarf and flat cap. It’s a distinct look.

Writing
Story by Robert Harris, Screenplay by John Colton & the uncredited Harvey Gates, Robert Harris and Edmund Pearson. The movie was compared to Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (and part of the reason it didn’t light up the box office). There’s also some weird word choices, like calling lycanthropy “lycanthrophobia.” Still, it is very much a werewolf movie, just from a time before those things were codified.

Sound
The original music by Karl Hajos works fine but isn’t up to par with the more iconic Universal soundtracks.

Conclusion
Werewolf of London is actually a very impressive and well made movie. I don’t mean to knock the Larry Talbot version because I love watching Chaney as the Wolf Man, but its unfortunate that a gem like this was so thoroughly overshadowed. Thankfully sets like the Universal Horror Legacy Collection corrects this. Wholeheartedly recommended.

“I’d say it was highly unusual. A man being attacked by a werewolf in a London park.”

1946 brought in a different wolf-themed horror movie from Universal. Instead of the familiar faces of Lon Chaney Jr. or Bela Lugosi, She-Wolf of London is completely unrelated to any of the other Universal Horror films and doesn’t figure into loosely connected continuity of them. Is this a good thing? Maybe. The film does tease the idea of a female werewolf, and Jack Pierce did do the makeup for the film, so this might be another forgotten gem.

Story
Phyllis Allenby (June Lockhart) is an heiress with a problem. While on the one hand she’s engaged to marry Barry Lanfield (Don Porter), the park near her London home becomes the site for a series of grisly murders. Phyllis fears the Allenby Curse running through her blood is to blame for her becoming a werewolf and stalking the night. Her aunt living with her, Martha Winthrop (Sara Haden) tries to keep her in bed and feeds into her werewolf delusions by denying them all the time (thanks, reverse psychology!). Meanwhile, Martha’s daughter, the less wealthy Carol Winthrop (Jan Wiley) is told not to see her own fiancée and seems to also disappear into the night.

Scotland Yard sends detectives into the park to investigate and the populace are murmuring rumors about werewolves.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Jean Yarbrough, the visual style is competent but nothing particularly interesting. There are long stretches of not a whole lot happening and to be honest, there are none of the visual or makeup effects you would expect from a monster movie.

Writing
Dwight V. Babcock on Story and George Bricker on Screenplay credits. The plot I listed above is not a bad idea on paper, but the execution did not deliver. While the acting isn’t bad, the characters are pretty flat and its obvious who the villain is from very early on. There’s also a “twist” that is the equivalent of monster movie blue balls that I’ll spoil only because the movie isn’t very good. There is no werewolf, its all just a scheme to drive Phyllis out of her mind so that someone else can inherit her money. That’s it. Again, sounds good on paper, but when the execution is uninspired and you end up with a non-werewolf movie in a Wolf Man boxed set, that lowers my esteem of the movie pretty low.

Sound
An uncredited William Lava on score. The music is fine in that standard 40’s style.

Conclusion
Well, its only 61 minutes, so She-Wolf of London has that going for it. Other than that, this is really not recommended. It doesn’t have werewolves, it doesn’t have good characters or memorable dialogue and its really boring most of the time. Kind of interesting but largely predictable, this is sadly one of the lesser Universal Horror films.

“He is not insane. He simply wants to die.”

1943 ushered in what’s best called the Universal Monster Mashups. Universal had the rights to their big three horror franchises, so it was only a matter of time before they started crossing over with each other. Last year two of those mashups were watched (out of sequence, I might add) but here’s the one that started this ersatz trilogy: Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (which would be followed by House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula in that order).

Story
So, Lon Chaney Jr. reprises his role as Larry Talbot/the Wolf Man, but there’s a bit of a problem, since he’s kind of dead at the beginning of the movie. The movie quickly works around that and he’s up and running again, checking himself into a psych ward seeking either a cure or a way to stay permanently dead. Normal science doesn’t do jack for him, so with gypsy woman Maleva (Maria Ouspenskaya again) in tow, he heads to obscure central/eastern European-ish Vasaria to find the notes of the late Dr. Ludwig Frankenstein (the protagonist from Ghost of Frankenstein). Talbot finds the doctor’s daughter Elsa (Ilona Massey), now the baroness of the estate and a scientist herself. A scientist, Dr. Frank Mannering (Patric Knowles as a completely different character than in The Wolf Man) chases after Talbot, trying to help him, but growing obsessed with bringing the recently thawed/revived Frankenstein Monster (this time Bela Lugosi) back to full strength.

All of this secretive activity doesn’t sit well with the citizens of Vasaria (including a particularly bloodthirsty innkeeper) and the Mayor (Universal Horror vet Lionel Atwill) has a difficult time restraining the torches and pitchforks crowd (which includes Dwight Frye among their number).

Whew. Got all that?

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Roy William Neill With George Robinson as Director of Photography, Jack Pierce’s effects continue to be solid and the werewolf transformations are incredibly impressive. Easily the best scene in the film is the first, where two grave robbers open Talbot’s tomb and accidentally revive him.

Writing
Curt Siodmak once again, and despite the fact that the continuity of the series turns into a complex snarl worthy of any fanboy obsession (you should browse Wookieepedia sometime if you don’t believe me), the fact that Siodmak was able to take two completely unrelated franchises and slap them together with any sense of coherence at all is an achievement. And it still hits all the expected notes of mad science, an angry mob and the Monster & Wolf Man fighting, while adding some new twists.

Sound
Original Music by Hans J. Salter (uncredited) is the standard 40s horror sound that I’ve grown quite accustomed to.

Conclusion
Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man isn’t exactly great and probably marks the downward turn for Universal’s horror series, but its still a lot of fun watching the very first monster mash. Lugosi’s Monster isn’t that great (partly due to script cuts that removed the Monster’s blindness and partly due to the fact he was sixty years old at this point) but it succeeds in giving you exactly what it says it will.

“Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.”

Ah, here we go. Wouldn’t be an Octoverride without some classic Universal Studios pictures. Last year we had Dracula and Frankenstein, this year we’ve got werewolves, starting with 1941’s The Wolf Man.

Story
Upon hearing of the death of his brother, Lawrence Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) returns home to Wales (according to the commentary) after a long absence. So long he’s got an American accent. He reconnects with his father Sir John Talbot (Claude Rains) and the two share a moment about astronomy. The Larry does a little peeping tom action on a room above an antique store in the village and introduces himself to Gwen Conliffe (Evelyn Ankers). She’s engaged to Frank Andrews (Patric Knowles) but that doesn’t stop Larry. They all go out to a gypsy carnival in town, but Gwen’s friend Jenny Williams (Fay Helm) has her fortune read by Bela (Bela Lugosi) and is attacked by a wolf on the way home. Larry beats the wolf to death with a silver headed cane, but is too late to save Jenny and is bitten in the process. As Larry begins to suffer the symptoms of the curse of lycanthropy, the gypsy woman Maleva (Maria Ouspenskaya) tries to help him deal with the affliction.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by George Waggner with Joseph A. Valentine as director of photography, the movie is tightly paced and really well shot. The real visual star is of course the werewolf makeup effects done by the temperamental Hollywood genius Jack Pierce (who also did the makeup for Frankenstein’s Monster and a bunch of other Universal monsters throughout the 30s into the 40s).

Writing
Written by the very prolific Curt Siodmak (he was responsible for many of the Universal horror scripts from the 40s and showed up in last year’s Octoverride), a lot of the lore and mythology of the modern werewolf was solidified or outright invented (like the vulnerability to silver) by Siodmak for this movie. Bluntly, this is THE werewolf movie that all others follow, whether they’re aware of it or not.

Sound
Original music by (uncredited) Charles Previn, Hans J. Salter & Frank Skinner, the score is sweeping, menacing and really good. So good that cues were taken from it for later, lesser Universal movies.

Conclusion
The Wolf Man is top shelf Universal horror and the film responsible for vaulting werewolves into the pop culture gestalt as part of the Big Three of monsters (Dracula & Frankenstein’s Monster being the other two). This is required viewing for horror buffs, werewolf buffs and effects fans.

“You crazy, wonderful zombie!”

And speaking of weird Canadian horror influenced movies, 2006 brought the world Fido, a touching story set in the 1950s about a boy and his zombie. This is gonna be a fun month.

Story
Well, we’re in an alternate 1950s, one where the zombie apocalypse has taken place but humanity endures in fortified, walled cities. Trouble is, anyone who dies can rise as a zombie unless special funerary precautions, such as burying the head in a separate coffin, are taken.

However, there’s a silver lining to this. The zombies are the slow, shambling kind, and they can be fitted with special control collars and trained to do menial labor. What could go wrong?

Characters
Timmy Robinson: K’Sun Ray is our main character, a cheerful lad who’s family gets a zombie

Bill Robinson: Dylan Baker (from the Spider-Man movies and Trick ‘R Treat) is the straight-laced patriarch of the Robinson family who’s kind of a jerk and obsessed with not rising as a zombie when he dies.

Helen Robinson: Carrie-Anne Moss (from The Matrix) is Bill’s wife and not exactly happy with the marriage.

Fido: Billy Connolly is awesome (and barely recognizable under the makeup) as the title character. He really conveys a lot of emotion with nothing but growls, groans and expressions.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Andrew Currie and DP Jan Kiesser the visual look of the movie is pretty much “Leave It To Beaver” meets the Zombie Apocalypse with a little dose of the tongue-in-cheek attitude of the Fallout video games. Makeup effects on the zombies are all quite good too.

Writing
Written by Robert Chomiak, Andrew Currie & Dennis Heaton and story by Dennis Heaton. It’s not as uproariously funny as Zombieland or Shaun Of The Dead, but there’s a more restrained level of satire going on here. There’s plenty of social commentary here, but the bulk of the story is also character driven, so it’s a generally solid storyline.

Sound
Original music by Don MacDonald, the music really plays up the dichotomy of the 50’s iconography and zombie presence.

Conclusion
Fido is a really fun indie zombie comedy with strong performances and a great satirical bent to it. Maybe not the best movie on the Octoverride, but by no means is it bad. It was recommended to me, and here I go passing the savings on to you. Recommended.

“All right. We're gonna do this the scanner way. I'm gonna suck your brain dry!”

David Cronenberg has a reputation for being a mad Canadian filmmaker who makes weird stuff. Stuff like the remake of The Fly or today’s entry, Scanners from 1981. This one’s all about a tiny segment of the world population with the ability to read and affect minds. And, yes, its weird.

Story
So we’re in Canada in a near-future 1980s and a vagrant named Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack) has an outburst of psychic energy and is taken into custody. A government scientist, Dr. Paul Ruth (Patrick McGoohan) informs him that he’s a “scanner;” someone who can mentally merge nervous systems with other people in order to read their minds, make them do stuff or overload them.

Overloading is something a rogue scanner named Darryl Revok (Michael Ironside, with hair!) can do. He’s a scanner supremacist who has an underground army of scanners that hate normals. Revok is our Villain and has that famous scene where he pops the head of a government sanctioned scanner.

Cameron undergoes some training and is sent out to hunt Revok and things go badly for a while. However, Cameron does meet up with another scanner, Kim Oberst (Jennifer O’Neill) who also has a habit of surviving Revok’s attacks.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by David Cronenberg and Mark Irwin as director of photography, the film has a very 80s feel to the look. Effects are sparse but pretty well done, especially the famous head popping scene and some of the later scanner fights. Pacing is a little hit and miss with a lot of scenes where not much happens, but its nothing too detrimental. The whole movie has an air of uncertainty and weirdness that works in its favor.

Writing
David Gronenberg wrote the script, and its full of a lot interesting ideas. The whole concept and nature of the scanners themselves is really interesting, what with their odd origins and the fact that its really not a comfortable thing being a scanner. The script does stretch the willing suspension of disbelief when they talk about scanning a computer, but that’s really only for one scene and leads up to a cool explosion, so I’m willing to let that slide.

Sound
Howard "Lord Of The Rings" Shore on score duty, the soundtrack is full of 80s science fiction-y sounds and odd touches that add to the unsettled vibe of the movie.

Conclusion
Scanners is a really cool movie with a lot of creepy, gory and darkly comedic touches that keep things interesting and the ending was pretty impressive. Recommended.

“Let this remind you why you once feared the dark…”

Hellboy was awesome. More Hellboy should continue to be awesome, yes? 2008 seemed to think so, because that’s when we got a sequel. It promised more “fairy tale adventure” than “Lovecraftian action flick,” but when that’s filtered through the mind of Guillermo del Toro, you’re definitely not going to get the sanitized, Victorian notion of fairies. It's time for Hellboy 2: The Golden Army.

Story
So Hellboy (Ron Perlman), Abe Sapien (Doug Jones) and Liz Sherman (Selma Blair) are conducting business as usual with the B.P.R.D. They stumble across a scheme of the elven prince Nuada (Luke Goss) to activate a mythical force of invulnerable clock punk golems called the Golden Army. Unfortunately for Nuada, his twin sister Nuala (Anna Walton) steals an item vital to that scheme and runs off.

Now, Hellboy is chafing under the policy of staying under the radar and his boss Tom Manning (Jeffrey Tambor) calls up to Washington DC for another agent. That agent turns out to be Dr. Johann Krauss (voiced by Seth MacFarlane) a German ghost in a pressure suit and a stuffy, by-the-book attitude that naturally chafes with Hellboy in suitably amusing ways. (man, no wonder you non-comics fans don't find this stuff accessible).

Nuala runs into Abe, Nuada’s henchman Mr. Wink (Brian Steele) runs into Hellboy and things build to a head where the Golden Army is confronted, Hellboy has a close encounter with the Angel of Death (Doug Jones again) and things get…interesting.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Guillermo del Toro and Guillermo Navarro on cinematography, so we continue with Double Guillermos again. The movie looks great and there are a couple of really nice set pieces that fill out the action quota nicely. Of particular note are the Troll market, the fight with the Earth Elemental, the Tooth Fairies and the fight with the Golden Army. Del Toro continues to use practical effects with computer graphics to supplement things.

Writing
Hellboy created by Mike Mignola and adapted by Guillermo del Toro and Mike Mignola. The story builds on the previous movie in some interesting ways. The franchise is clearly building toward something…apocalyptic, but until a third movie gets made, that’s a big question mark.

There’s also a strong theme of the death of magic and wonder in the world. Nuada even tells Hellboy as much during one of their confrontations.

Sound
Original score by Danny Elfman this time. The music works well for the movie and Elfman’s signature oddness is a perfect fit for a franchise about a demon that fights for the good guys, smokes cigars and says “Aw crap” a lot.

Conclusion
Hellboy II: The Golden Army is a fine sequel. It embraces the mystical and mythical elements of the premise and expands the world in some very ambitious ways while keeping the humor and general eldritch feel of the series.

“Look, Sammy, I'm not a very good shot but the Samaritan here uses really big bullets.”

Greetings, boils and ghouls. So glad to see you’ve survived another year to return this October to Castle RMWC. This year’s event promises to feature all manner of new and horrifying sights for you to lay your eyes on. I hope you can survive the experience.

Let’s start with something big, shall we? A confluence of monstrous, demonic and eldritch forces. Oh, and there’s Nazis. Here’s 2004’s Hellboy.

Story
Back in WWII, a secret Nazi project attempted to make contact with…things that exist outside the purview of our reality in an attempt to get a leg up in the war. Things that words like “gibbous” and “squamous” apply to. The Allies put a stop to it, but something still came through the portal. That something was a little red baby that was taken in by a guy named Dr. Trevor “Broom” Bruttenholm (played in the modern day by John Hurt)

Fast forward to the modern day and there are countless rumors circulating of a secret government department that deals with all manner of monsters and abominations. Agent John Meyers (Rupert Evans) is transferred to this secretive Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense (B.P.R.D.) where he meets the staff, including telepathic fish-man Abe Sapien (Doug Jones & voiced by David Hyde Pierce) and our hero, a big red stogie chomping demon with a giant stone right hand who goes by the name of Hellboy (Ron Perlman under a hell of a lot of makeup). Hellboy ages differently than humans, so by the modern day, he’s only just into his twenties and kind of has the personality of a High School senior. He’s even pining after his ex girlfriend, the pyrokinetic Liz Sherman (Selma Blair) who once worked for the Bureau but quit. It also doesn’t help that Hellboy isn’t exactly keen on staying in the shadows, much to the chagrin of the high ranking Agent Tom Manning (Jeffrey Tambor).

Myers’ job is simple: babysit Hellboy and kind of steer him in a direction that is more…responsible. Of course, this wouldn’t be a comic book movie without villains to smash in the face, which is provided by the resurrection of the guy who brought Hellboy into the world: Grigori Rasputin (Karel Roden). Now, the Mad Monk’s gone through some…changes since he teamed up with the Nazis back in WWII and is trying to summon those same eldritch horrors with the help of the still young and beautiful Ilsa Haupstein (Biddy Hodson) and the crazy awesome clockwork powered, gas mask wearing Nazi ninja Karl Ruprecht Kroenen (Ladislav Beran) and the recently released demon Sammael, the “hound of resurrection.”

You bet your ass its going to be a bumpy ride.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Guillermo del Toro and cinematography by Guillermo Navarro. Double Guillermos, all the way. The movie has an energetic pace and some really slick visuals thanks to del Toro’s commitment to using as many practical effects as possible. CGI is kept to a minimum and the action scenes where Hellboy and Sammael trade blows are a hell of a lot of fun. Color is also used well, with the bulk of the movie taking place at night, so the cool nocturnal tones are contrasted nicely with our hero’s bright red skin.

Writing
Original comic book by Mike Mignola and adapted for the screen by Guillermo del Toro and Peter Briggs. Mignola also worked with del Toro extensively on the adaptation. The result is an adaptation that is respectful to the source material, but also unafraid to go off onto its own direction. Storywise, it is a bit standard issue with the plot points (gang of misfits have to save the world from unspeakable evil), but the real charm comes from the characters NOT being standard issue. The hero is a devil who saws his horns off and carries a crucifix, his best buddy is a telepathic fish man, his girlfriend can make fire and the bad guy is Rasputin himself trying to summon a Lovecraftian Horror. It’s a great comic book adaptation, and it’s a great urban fantasy.

Sound
The original score by Marco Beltrami is moody, atmospheric and creepy, soaring to big action cues at appropriate times. Then its supplemented by some good songs by Tom Waits, Al Green and Pete Yorn.

Conclusion
Hellboy is a great way to kick off this year’s Octoverride, because Halloween isn’t just about being scary. It’s about being creepy and weird and mysterious and often hilarious. Last year I think I called the Octoverride a “Cavalcade of Weird” and I’m sticking to it.