NINJA CHEERLEADERS (2008)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

Despite the title, there's not a lot to distinguish NINJA CHEERLEADERS from a lot of light-hearted adventure flicks. The best comedies try to keep up a constant barrage of jokes and pratfalls, but writer-director David Presley seems to think it's side-splitting just to have three hot girls running around beating up guys and wielding katanas. Oh, and they get dressed up in ninja outfits at times, which is the only metaphenomenal content here.

The "cheerleader" part is misleading. The three girls-- April, Courtney and Monica-- are indeed freshmen who perform a few cheerleading routines at a community college (do those institutions even have football teams?) But they spend more time earning college money dancing at a go-go club run by an old fellow who's both their boss and their sensei Hiroshi (George Takei). Given the fact that their cheerleading has nearly nothing to do with the story, why not NINJA GO-GO DANCERS? 

The girls don't have any real challenges for their great fighting-skills beyond punching and kicking mooks who get fresh with them. (One of them is seeking to get accepted by a good college, which subplot will rate a big Who Cares from everyone who would watch a film with the title NINJA CHEERLEADERS.) Then a crime-boss (Michael Pare) gets out of prison and he wants to reclaim the go-go club. He kidnaps Hiroshi, so the girls seek to rescue their mentor, when they can find time away from championing Girl Scouts against rude customers. The ninja-girls clobber a lot of Mafioso types, very rarely getting hurt in the fights, so the crime-boss enlists one female Asian fighter (Natasha Chang) to take on all three ninja-girls. The henchwoman does very little until the climax.

There's nothing noteworthy about the fight-scenes, but at least Presley provides a fair number of them, so that puts him ahead of the putz behind SOUL OF THE AVENGER. There's a little nudity, naturally not provided by the three main actresses, zero characterization, and a couple of moments where the script just throws continuity-logic out the window. For George Takei and ninja completists only.

OGON BAT (1966)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*

I don't know the conditions under which the streaming version of OGON BAT was produced, so that both the English title and the subtitles refer to this venerable (dating back to 1930) hero as "Golden Ninja." Since there are no ninjas of any kind herein, why didn't the transcribers just use the direct translation of the hero's name, "Golden Bat?" 

To be sure, Ogon had a rather unique origin in terms of his medium: in the Japanese medium of kamishibai (paper theater). Thus Ogon's adventures weren't formally copyrighted, and so many different hands contributed to the hero's mythos. Only the most exacting expert in Japanese pop culture might know whether Toei Studios borrowed from this or that narrative when the studio produced this 1966 black-and-white "origin story."

Twenty-something amateur astronomer Akira, the film's initial viewpoint character, charts the path of a rogue planet, significantly named "Icarus," and observes with horror that this heavenly body is on a collision course with Earth. Akira tries to inform a couple of sedate older astronomers and they brush him off as a non-expert. However, someone takes Akira seriously, for a quartet of "men in black" seize the young man and take him to their leaders.

Happily, Akira is recruited by a benevolent organization, the U.N.-sponsored Pearl Institute. In quick succession the youth meets the four key members of the group: twenty-something Naomi, middle-schooler Emily (who I think was a relative of someone), Doctor Yamatone (a pre-STREET FIGHTER Sonny Chiba), and Doctor Pearl (played by the movie's only non-Japanese actor). Akira is clearly there to provide the audience with a gateway character, the means by which the other characters explain their raison d'etre of defending the Earth from evil forces. However, once that explication is done, Akira just becomes another face in the crowd. It's slightly ironic that Middle-Schooler Emily (Emiri Takami) will become the new "spirit of youth" that can bring an ancient hero to life.

Out in space, presumably a little while back, we see the entities who caused Icarus to plummet toward Earth: Lord Nazo and his army of black-clad humanoids. Since their ship is out in space one might presume that they're all aliens, though no one says so outright, and Nazo looks markedly different from his humanoid henchmen: some sort of lop-eared, four-eyed creature with a metal claw for a right hand. (The claw-hand reminded me slightly of the villain from 1937's BLAKE OF SCOTLAND YARD.) And the ship-- which Nazo uses to impel the planetoid into its collision course-- looks like a big rotary drill, topped by a pointy head with two eyes. (One critic calls the head "squid-like" and I don't disagree.) If I didn't see the ship in space, I might have assumed that Nazo's weird race came from some underground kingdom. In fact the movie includes two quick scenes where the drill-ship is seen tunneling up from beneath the earth's crust for no stated reason. Maybe this striking image was borrowed from a story in which the drill-ship had some more practical function.

Back at the Pearl Institute, Yamatone informs Akira that Pearl has a super-laser with which they can disintegrate Icarus when it gets close enough. However, the scientists need a special, unnamed mineral to make the gun work. They've sent out at least one reconnaissance team to look for this key element. And no sooner does Akira agree to join Pearl than Yamatome gets a distress message from the away team. Into a flying "super car" climb the uniformed heroes, including Young Emily, and they're off.

The distress signal guides the team to an uncharted island. Landing, the Pearl team finds the dead bodies of their comrades, and they also behold a number of archaic monoliths around; structures that Yamatone believes to be Atlantean. Nazo's drill ship pops out of the ocean and the fiend sends his minions, armed with ray-guns, to kill the explorers. The Pearl operatives take refuge in a vast underground labyrinth.

The heroes stumble across a sarcophagus with Egyptian glyphs and the symbol of a bat. Yamatone reads an inscription that indicates that if someone places water on the skeletal figure inside the coffin, a great defender will come to their aid. Yamatone is more preoccupied with a crystal held by the mummy, for it's the very mineral the team came looking for. The henchmen attack, and in desperation Little Emily follows the inscription's instruction. Ogon Bat-- skull-headed, long-caped, and utilizing a cane that can sometimes shoot ray-beams-- comes to life, disposes of all the minions (who can't seem to use their guns against his superb athleticism), and drives off the drill-ship. Ogon Bat then tells Emily that because she revived him, she alone can summon him by speaking his name, He also instructs the Pearl Team to get back in their ship and depart, because the Atlantean island is about to sink back into the ocean. (There's a slight impression that the island, which contained both the key element and an avenging hero, may have risen specifically to save Earth from planetary doom.) The good guys pile into their super car and return to base, while the island sinks and Ogon Bat disappears.

None of the rest of the film equals the pulpy goodness of the origin-section. Nazo witnesses the Pearl-scientists testing the super-laser and sends his minions (along with three named hench-persons, one female) to attack the institute. The assailants manage not only to steal the laser device (though not the vital key element), they manage to kidnap Naomi and Doctor Pearl, leaving duplicates in their place. This comes in handy when Nazo needs spies to find the missing element, so I guess he was pretty far-sighted. Emily calls Ogon Bat a couple of times, but he doesn't stick around between victories. He apparently shows up first in the form of a very small bat, because in one sequence the bad guys manage to trap the bat before it can become Ogon. Eventually, after various seesaw battles, it comes down to a face-off between Ogon and Nazo, and Icarus is destroyed with minutes to spare.

I've found no credit for the stuntman in the Ogon costume, whose voice was supplied by another actor. The fights are passable but nothing special, and Ogon's use of his cane is somewhat less than awe-inspiring. However, his skull-like visage-- which may or may not be his real face-- bears some resemblance to the "Red Death" mask utilized by the Phantom of the Opera in the 1925 movie. No one can prove this, but if true it would stand as one of the more interesting cross-cultural influences in the days of early superheroes. Most previous starring heroes (and some villains) in costumes were "uncanny" types with no super-powers, while those that boasted either personal physical powers (John Carter) or super-weapons (Fu Manchu) were not costumed. Whatever influence or influences guided the original creators of Ogon Bat will never be known positively. But maybe some world-wide archetype was springing forth just like sunken Atlantis, given that a Japanese crusader appeared the same year as the technical debut of The Shadow, first of a long line of American costumed crimefighters.

ADDENDUM: Another candidate for "first costumed superhero," albeit without powers, is The Laughing Mask, who appeared in the mostly lost Pearl White serial THE IRON CLAW, issued three years before Johnston McCulley published the first ZORRO story.

PAN (2015)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

In PETER PAN J. M. Barrie provided the perfect mythic representation of the child's desire to be free of all parental constrictions and go seeking adventures. Barrie clearly showed that this desire was ambivalent, as the Lost Boys do miss the blandishments of home life. Nevertheless, Peter Pan still incarnates all the rebellious aspects of male childhood-- vanity, quarrelsomeness, and even a tendency to "edit" his memory to erase experiences that don't suit the young hero. A prototype of Peter was a very small child, but clearly, in both the play and book, Barrie aged the official version up, since it would hardly be credible for anyone younger than a preteen to go around crossing swords with pirates.

One's enjoyment of PAN may be affected by the viewer's insistence on all versions of the title character following the Barrie template in terms of character, for the Peter of director Joe Wright and writer Jason Fuchs lacks any vanity, adventurousness, or lapses in memory. Fuchs apparently decided to invert Barrie's idea of Peter Pan's origins, in which Peter deserted Earth for Neverland because he thought his mother had left him alone. In this movie, infant Peter is left on the doorstep of an orphanage by his mother, who has a complicated history of her own. This Peter (Levi Miller) grows to ten years of age under the control of corrupt and greedy nuns, but he always remains steadfast to the idea that his true mother will someday come for him again.

In the film's most confusing plot-thread, it's suggested that the nuns are in cahoots with the pirates of Neverland, who stage a raid upon the orphanage one night. From the deck of their ship-- able to fly around the Earth-skies thanks to fairy dust-- the pirates cast down sky-hooks and simply snatch several boys from their beds. 

However, the flying pirate ship is under the command of a captain named Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman), who's never expressly said to be identical with the 17th century buccaneer. Blackbeard and his crew of rowdies (among whom is comic-relief character "Mister Smee") periodically kidnap young boys to work in the Neverland mines. Within these mines are deposits of Pixum, concatenations of fairy dust which confer the power of flight upon Blackbeard's ship and some degree of youth upon the captain. The script never elaborates upon the exact relationship between the race of fairies and these mineral deposits.

While Peter and his fellow orphans work the mnies, Peter meets Indiana Jones. Okay, it's James Hook, but actor Garrett Hedlund plays him exactly like the Harrison Ford character. Hook seems to be the only adult in the mines, but he never says how he came to be in Neverland. Peter and Hook manage to escape with the help of Smee.

All three are captured by a tribe of "savages" who are perpetually at war with the pirates. (The producers made this tribe loosely multi-racial and elided all representations of their being Barrie's Native Americans, clearly seeking to avoid any negative blowback-- which they got anyway.) Princess Tiger Lily (Rooney Mara) requires Hook to fight the tribe's best warrior before all three will be put to death. However, though Hook acquits himself well the trio are saved by a token suggests that Peter may be a predicted savior called "The Pan."

Peter's true origins here are even more wildly revisionist than his relationship with James Hook (which had seen a better revision in 2011's NEVERLAND).It turns out that that his beloved mother was a mortal brought to Neverland by her lover Blackbeard. (The nature of their relationship remains as murky as any accounting for the pirate captain's gaining access to the Never-verse.) However, the mother, name of Mary, fell in love with a male fairy, and the two of them conceived Peter. The fairy perished as the result of his having assumed a human form (curiously, neither Peter nor the script is the least bit curious about Peter's pater). Mary took shelter with the savages, and at some point managed to return to the Earth-realm, where she left infant Peter on the orphanage's doorstep. Then she was accidentally slain by Blackbeard, though the aggrieved Peter later manages to see his mother again, after a fashion.

All of these revelations are a set-up for an admittedly rousing conclusion, in which Blackbeard and his horrible hearties invade the fairy kingdom to gain more Pixum. Peter and Tiger Lily seek to warn the fairies while Hook deserts them, trying to find a way to his own universe. Peter and Tiger Lily fall afoul of Blackbeard, but they're given respite by Han Solo. Okay, it's Hook reprising the Millennium Falcon rescue from STAR WARS, but with a second flying pirate ship to match that of Blackbeard. This long climactic sequence-- during which Peter finally master his nascent ability to fly, here an inheritance from his fairy father-- is easily the best part of the movie, and does a lot to redeem the script's many plot holes. Some critics complained of too much CGI, but really, how else but through computer animation could anyone bring to life the sight of two flying frigates having a dogfight? Alas, while I found PAN to be good popcorn entertainment as long as one ignored the plot holes and the non-traditional characterization of Peter Pan, the film tanked.

I ventured my considered opinion that probably the main reason the filmmakers elided Native Americans from this PAN adaptation was to avoid controversy. Given all the belated condemnations of Disney's PETER PAN for its use of "redmen," there's nearly no chance that PAN could have dodged recriminations no matter how "respectfully" they chose to depict the tribe. So the PAN tribe becomes an unspecified polyglot, with White actress Mara assuming the role of Tiger Lily-- and this got the film accused of "whitewashing." There are real incidents of whitewashing worth citing, but here the casting had nothing to do with denying some Native American actress the role, but with trying to rework the whole tribe to stem the tide of controversy. As it happens, Tiger Lily is a strong enough role that any Native American performer ought to have considered it honorable to play the character (and indeed, few Tiger Lilies in film-history have been real Native Americans). But I can well understand the producers not wanting to take the chance. In any case, Mara's shipboard duels with Jackman's Blackbeard are one of the highlights of the movie. It's also of passing interest that both Hedlund and Mara, whose characters have a maybe-romantic interaction, were both about thirty years old in 2015, so there's no sense that this Tiger Lily will ever become Wendy's potential rival for an older Peter. Also, it's interesting that the Princess claims to have been trained in fighting by the deceased Mary, which gives Tiger Lily a slightly maternal resonance re: Peter.

THE ZEBRA KILLER (1974)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

Once more a streaming service has unearthed a specimen of "weird cinema" for all interested parties, one that, from what I've heard, has never received an American VHS or DVD release.

Slightly before he directed the well known "blaxploitation" film ABBY, grindhouse veteran William Girdler (a White guy, incidentally) made this obscure low-budget psycho-thriller, starring Austin (ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13) Stoker. The city of Louisville is plagued by a serial killer, but with a difference. The killer not only executes various victims with no known connection to one another, he uses different murder-methods each time. Stoker's character, Black police detective Frank Savage, is assigned to find the killer, alongside his cheery White partner. Strangely, even though the police captain is constantly raging about the need to end the threat, there's only one mention of the possibility of other cops pursuing the case, and nothing, least of all a task force, comes of it.

As I recall, the big reveal turns out to be the old "killing off the jurors who sentenced his father" trope, though Girdler, who also provided the script, doesn't spend much time on the murderer's motivations. Even less well explained is his peculiar disguise. Though the Zebra Killer (never called that in the film) is a White guy (James Carroll Pickett, who only acted in two other films, both directed by Girdler), during his crimes he dons blackface and a big Afro, and affects a stereotypical Black accent. To complicate things further, Zebra Killer holds a grudge against Savage. Zebra not only calls Savage to berate him with racist insults and to give him clues, he kidnaps the detective's girlfriend and threatens to kill and/or rape her. Zebra has one long scene where he rants at his captive about race relations, but nothing he says possesses any psychological heft, and he doesn't even try to assail her in any way. Did Girdler, without saying so and perhaps losing his grindhouse audience, want to imply Zebra had some negative compensation issues? The world will never know. But Zebra's attire and varied killing methods make him an uncanny psycho, even though none of the methods themselves are uncanny.

In contrast to the majority of American films in this subgenre, the script treats Zebra's racism as an unusual deviance. Savage gets along fine with his White partner, and they toss racial barbs at one another like a low-budget Culp and Cosby. Savage is a cool, laid-back hero even though it takes him a really long time to get anything done. Girdler shows a scene of Savage practicing karate at a dojo to foreground a later battle (though not a climactic one) in which Savage nearly beats the stuffing out of Zebra. Possibly Pickett simply didn't know how to do anything in a staged fight but fall down? This means that Girdler, after giving Savage several chances to overcome his opponent, then has to let Zebra whip out a hidden knife and wound the detective, so that the killer can escape for the final reckoning later.

It's an odd movie, which invokes racial tension verbally but barely shows any incidents. In fact, Savage even shakes down a Black guy purely on suspicion, which most blaxploitation heroes would never do. There's a comic scene in which the two detectives come across a pimp (familiar face D'Urville Martin) who's being beat up by five of his hookers. The cops' solution is to call a paddy wagon, pile the pimp and the hookers into the same van, and let the girls continue beating their victim. Nevertheless, I rate the film's mythicity as "fair" simply because it captures some of the sociological dynamics of the period.

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES (2014)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*

I seem to remember that this reboot got an unusual amount of fan-hate back in the day, though I admit I didn't see it in the theater. I stated my opinion the TMNT franchise back in my review of the 1990 live-action adaptation-- that it's fun but lightweight. As long as the four jive-talking terrapins and their rat-daddy keep their standard characterizations consistent and there's lots of high-octane action, what's to hate?

Possibly 2014 got some hate just because it's become standard for critics to despise anything produced by Michael Bay. I've seen my share of Bay films that were so hyper-active that they were visually incomprehensible. But 2014, directed by Jonathan Liebesman and scripted by three writers that seemed to get the Turtles mythos pretty well, was quite easy to follow. Of course, the conflict is standard Supervillain 101. This time, the Shredder (Tohoro Masamune) isn't interested in petty matters like seducing young teens to a life of crime, as he was in 1990. He, his Foot Clan, and a new mad scientist (William Fichtner) go straight to the city-blackmailing option, planning to unleash a radioactive mutagen on New York. 

Of course, being the righteous reptilians they are, the Turtles start assailing his operations, and this attracts the attention of reporter April O'Neil (Megan Fox). In fact, 2014 somewhat improves upon the usual origin in which April has no common backstory with the five mutants. Here, she's the daughter of a scientist who was involved in the experiment that created the mutagen, and he was killed by colleague Eric Sacks (who has "bad guy written all over him from his first scene). In April's first encounter with the vigilantes, she recognizes their names, having known all five experimental animals in her dad's lab. It's pretty improbable when the script claims that rat-sensei Splinter actually remembers April from before he was mutated, but since I liked a lot of the humor (particularly the joke about the "99-cheese pizza"), I'll give that one a pass.

I also thought that all the big honking action-scenes were well done though not exceptional, and commensurate with what Michael Bay's fans expect of his films. The script is weak on the motivations of both Shredder and Sacks; they shake down cities just because they can, and Shredder's daughter Karai (Minae Noji) is reduced to the role of a bare functionary. Shredder wouldn't make my list of great comics-villains, but on occasion he does have a grandiose quality. 2014 just turns him into a human Transformer for the big fight-scenes.

Fox makes a decent support-heroine here, and Will Arnett provides a lot of "confused guy over his head" humor. I take away a few points because the Foot Clan aren't dressed as traditional ninjas, which is really about the only charm they have. The film was a box office success but the follow-up was less so, killing this reboot series, though another would appear seven years later.

HELLBOY: THE GOLDEN ARMY (2006)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

HELLBOY 2 picks up some time after the conclusion of the first film, which ended, in part, with the decision of Liz Sherman (Selma Blair) to accept Hellboy (Ron Perlman) as her lover. Guillermo Del Toro, who wrote an original story with the franchise's creator Mike Mignola, is careful to follow through on all the emotional beats established for the hero and his cast of support characters, including amphibious Abe Sapien (Doug Jones) and fastidious manager Manning (Jeffrey Tambor). Unfortunately, I don't think Del Toro paid nearly as much attention to the main conflict of his story.

The first HELLBOY had a rough unity, in that the hero loses his adoptive father therein and then must overcome a sort of "bad father," an occultist who brought the young demon into the Earth-plane. The conflict once again has apocalyptic consequences for the survival of mankind, but Del Toro's script fails to give his basic idea any deep resonance, and I give the film a fair mythicity only for its romance-elements with respect to both Hellboy and Abe Sapien. 

It seems that in antiquity there was a great battle in which archaic humans attempted, for reasons unknown, to exterminate all the various supernatural beings of Earth, such as trolls, ogres and fairies. Balor (Roy Dotrice), King of Faerie, has his smiths create an unstoppable army of golden clockwork soldiers (not fully seen until the film's last half hour). This "golden army" decimates the human forces, who are saved only because compassionate Balor spares the race. A truce is forged between the humans and their supernatural opponents, and it endures until the early 21st century.

Contemporary humans are only marginally aware that supernatural entities still exist-- except for those working for the B.P.R.D., such as Hellboy-- and it's dubious as to whether any of them even remember the truce. But surprisingly, it's a Prince of Faerie, Nuada (Luke Goss), who decides that he wants to activate the Golden Army and expunge humankind. Why? He references human expansion and their repugnant "shopping malls," but clearly Del Toro didn't bother giving his villain a strong motive. In any case, Balor doesn't want to make war on humans, so his son kills him. Nuada's twin sister Nuala (Anne Watson), despite her somewhat diffident affection for her brother, flees the faerie court with a device Nuada needs in order to activate the killer robots.

I'm not clear on why Nuada releases various boogiemen into the Earth-plane, such as a swarm of tiny horrors called "tooth fairies." That might make sense if Nuala was hiding on Earth, but we later learn she's hiding in a corner of Faerie called "the troll market." It looks like the only reason for various monsters to show up on Earth is so that the B.P.R.D. has something to investigate, and so that Hellboy and his buddies have someone to fight. The incursions cause the occult-hunters to check out the troll market, find Nuala, get the lowdown on Nuada's plans, and start making counter-plans. Oh, and both Nuala and Abe Sapien fall for each other. (There's a very light incestuous current between the twins, mostly evidenced on Nuada's side, but Del Toro does not develop this element dramatically.)

Instead of building up the main menace, the director piles on the workplace drama and comedy. In addition to various flareups from Liz (who has a bun in her oven and doesn't know it initially), Hellboy also has to cope with a new commander. This is Johann Kraus, essentially a ghost who speaks with a German accent despite inhabiting a suit of armor. Krauss, ostensibly based on a separate Mignola character, adds some good tension to the mix, but regrettably he also supplies more evidence that Del Toro was more taken with doing his character-scenes than with building up the plot.

In contrast to most other cinematic menaces, the invincible Golden Army, or a couple of soldiers thereof, are only activated for a few minutes, which doesn't help to sell them as a major danger. Hellboy, after coping with a near-death wound, enjoys a climactic duel with Nuada. But though he saves the world from the Golden Army, his victory costs Abe his first love.

Even when I saw ARMY in a theatre, I was underwhelmed. However, in 2006 it made a substantial profit, so obviously the audience as a whole liked it, and even critics were reasonably positive. Yet for the next thirteen years up until the 2019 reboot of the franchise, Del Toro couldn't get a sequel greenlighted. I speculate that some unfathomable office politics kept HELLBOY III from happening. According to Del Toro's statements, he might have followed through on some of the ideas alluded to in the first film, regarding Hellboy's special destiny. But there's no knowing if that take would have been good. Wiki supplied a writeup of other ideas Del Toro considered for Number Two before settling on the clockwork army, and all of those ideas seem fairly pedestrian. I'm clearly in the minority in my preference for the 2019 effort, since that film flopped at the BO. Still, all the "special destiny" tropes are still ripe for harvesting, so Del Toro's failure to pursue that notion doesn't mean it will never be realized.

HELLBOY (2004)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

The first adaptation of Dark Horse's HELLBOY franchise is loosely based on HELLBOY: SEED OF DESTRUCTION, a rough "origin-story" produced by creator/artist Mike Mignola and writer John Byrne. The movie script by Peter Briggs and director Guillermo Del Toro improves on the original in many ways, improving on the dramatic dynamics of the principal characters. 

The titular character is a humanoid demon with horns and a tail, discovered in child-form by his adoptive father Professor Broom in 1944. Sixty years later, the adult Hellboy (Ron Perlman) is a big, swaggering fellow who, due to his not blending well with common humanity, has devoted his life to the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense. Broom is at once the director of the agency and a nurturing but demanding father. In addition to various human agents, the BPRD, dedicated to investigating paranormal phenomena on Planet Earth, are two other super-powered individuals: pyrokinetic Liz Sherman (Selma Blair) and amphibious Abe Sapien (Doug Jones). 

As it happens, in 2004 one of the occultists responsible for Hellboy's presence on Earth-- none other than a very long-lived Grigori Rasputin (Karel Roden)-- is bringing about a plot to unleash a world-destroying demon, the Ogdru Jahad. This involves having a lesser demon, who looks like a cross between The Alien and The Predator (but bulkier than the "Predalien" of three years later). This demon, Sammael by name, also lays eggs to produce duplicates of itself, though the only real function Sammael serves is to give Hellboy a heavy-duty sparring partner.

Nevertheless, precisely because of the rough family dynamics of the Briggs-Del Toro script-- which includes a possible romantic relationship between Liz and Hellboy-- the rock-em-sock-em battles possess good human context, as well as some lively humor. (The "no tongue" line is among the best.) Though given a lot of support by the other actors-- Jeffrey Tambor as a fussy managerial type, Rupert Evans as a human agent who might offer Hellboy some romantic competition-- HELLBOY is largely Ron Perlman's show. Once or twice he verges on scenery-chewing, but it's somewhat inevitable given all the intensive makeup effects. Possibly it helps that here he could play an ass-kicking hero miles away from his soulful incarnation of the similarly makeup-heavy Vincent of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.

The film was successful enough to spawn a sequel with essentially the same cast, more on which anon.