This is the second Hellboy animated film, Blood and Iron, and it features all of their primary cast. Here all of the four principals, Ron Perlman as Hellboy, Selma Blair as Liz Sherman, Doug Jones as Abe Sapien. And John Hurt as Trevor Bruttenholm are here along with Perri Gilpin as Professor Kate Corrigan in a second go around which is great as she’s a delight in this role, sassy and intelligent.
In a recent review of Stephen Brust’s “My Own Kind of Freedom: A Firefly Novel, I noted that it worked better if you were a fan of that series. Same applies here — If you loved the first live action film, you’ll love this as it has the same great writing, great cast, and, yes, wonderful look which that film had. Yes, it’s animated and the characters, as I noted in the Sword of Storms review, look different but I’m sure you’ll be surprised at how likeable it is.
Vampires have been a long fascination of Mike Mignola which is why the story here features vampires, particularly a nasty female one that bathes in the blood of young women she has murdered. That is this is one of the first investigations of a young Trevor Bruttenholm who’s in some Balkan nation assisting a young priest to deal with those same murders. The priest has pretty much lost his faith and Bruttenholm can’t help him with that. They deal with the vampire but it’s another matter altogether if she’s really gone.
The story picks up in the present when the B.P.R.D. is asked by it’s not too bright Director to do a public relations visit to an upstate New York State estate where an influential donor to the Senator who chairs the funding committee for B.P.R.D. is opening some manner of museum. Trevor has a feeling about this, so all of the major leaguers end up going.
Neat bit of change in the animated films is that the B.P.R.D. HQ is now located in the Rocky Mountains, most likely a mothballed Cold War facility. Appropriate as science fiction writer Charles Stross called the battle the B.P.R.D.’s engaged in a Colder War.
Remember that vampire I mentioned before? Well the museum is dedicated to her with many artefacts including both her bloody bath and grisly torture instruments. And of course, the presence of these cursed objects means our blood thirty vampire is back as well. Pretty much all the shit will start flying.
Oh there’s also a pissed off Goddess, vengeful sprits, hags with a bent for torture, and lots of other neat stuff. Al in all, a stellar Hellboy story that all of his fans will throughly enjoy. Oh and the third animated Hellboy film is here as Iron Shoes , a goblin gone bad by murdering travellers near a remorse Irish monastery. It’s barely two and change long but, as Mignola says in his introduction to it, it’s s nice action piece.
(Stars Entertainment, 2007)
