Hellboy pretty much fulfilled my life-long ambition to do nothing but draw monsters. Ten years later, I still love drawing it.”

Unlike most comic book heroes, Mignola fashioned Hellboy as a “blue-collar, regular guy,” he says. “In addition to being indestructible, he’s also slightly innocent and shy. He just happens to have a job as a monster hunter.”

The first ‘mini-series’ Mignola created was “Hellboy – Seed of Destruction,” which he calls “Hellboy’s coming of age, the moment he decides what kind of man he is going to be.” The arc of the story begins with Hellboy’s first appearance on earth and follows him through several adventures that ultimately lead to a confrontation with the villainous Rasputin who needs Hellboy to unleash the destructive forces of the underworld.

It was this first series that caught the attention and admiration of Mexican-born writer/director Guillermo del Toro, the creator of such memorable films as Blade II, The Devil’s Backbone and Cronos (which won the Critic’s prize at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival and received nine Mexican Academy awards).

Several years ago, del Toro learned there were plans for a movie based on Hellboy, and knew there was only one person to make it – himself. “I had become addicted to the comic. So when I first heard it was going to be turned into a movie, I fought very hard to get into the room and have a chance to say ‘I am the guy to make this movie,’” he explains.

Just from his initial discussions with producers Lawrence Gordon and Lloyd Levin, del Toro’s passion for the material was abundantly clear. “Not only did we respect the talent he’d already shown as a filmmaker,” says Gordon, “but we were bowled over by his understanding of the comic book and his enthusiasm. It’s as if he’d been there, somewhere in the room with Mike every day since he first created it.”

In the character of Hellboy, del Toro saw a unique superhero, “who is actually a lovable under-achiever,” he says. “He was born with this enormous strength and immortality, yet all he wants to do in life is kick back with a six-pack of beer and watch football on TV with his girlfriend – like a regular guy.”

Mignola and del Toro immediately connected when they were introduced. “It was clear to me from the start that Guillermo was the only guy who could make this movie,” says Mignola. “He brings his own personality to it. He’s one of a younger breed of directors who love comic books and take them very seriously. They understand them and see them as a legitimate film genre.”

The Seed of Destruction stories provided a launch pad for the film. The screenplay expanded upon the father-son relationship between Hellboy and his mentor Trevor “Broom” Buttenholm, the head of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (B.P.R.D). A triangular love story was introduced involving Hellboy’s pyro-kinetic cohort and friend Liz Sherman and a new character, John Myers, a young FBI agent who becomes Hellboy’s rival for Liz’s affection.

It’s a great yarn, a great action-adventure movie with a great character,” says Gordon. “The character of Hellboy is, to me, like John McClain (Bruce Willis) in Die Hard or like Arnold Schwarnegger in Predator. He has the same deadpan sense of humor and is a major action figure. And, like Die Hard and Predator, this film has a great villain in Grigori Rasputin.”

The reengineering of the story received Mignola’s blessing. “There were things I alluded to over the past 10 years in bits and pieces that were condensed. I said ‘Change what you want,” recalls Mignola. “Make it your version of my thing.’”

The result, Mignola continues, is an entertaining hybrid. “The movie exists in a parallel universe to the comic book. For instance, the aquatic superhero Abe Sapien is different from the comic book original. “Guillermo gave him more personality and altered him visually. But he’s certainly true to the spirit of what I did, whereas the (villainous) Sammael is completely a del Toro character. And in the climactic scenes where Hellboy and Kroenen duke it out, it’s like a Mignola character fighting with a del Toro character.”

“I’ve always wanted to make a monster movie and this one has outlandish characters and fantastic monsters and settings,” says del Toro. “But in order to have the audience connect with it, I had to find a couple of emotional through-lines. One is a father-son story between Professor Broom, who rescued Hellboy and raised him as a son. Broom loves Hellboy, but also fears his nature. The other is Hellboy’s crush on Liz Sherman, a variation on the beauty and the beast story — except in this case it’s more like beast and the beast,” explains del Toro.

Besides possessing a dual nature of good and evil, del Toro saw Hellboy as a man trapped in a boy’s body. “Hellboy has the physical body of a half-century old red ape, but the heart and mind of a young teenager. He is very spoiled, he’s very temperamental and he’s very unruly.”

From the very start, Mignola and del Toro were completely in accord that there was only one actor who could embody their hero. “We both immediately knew Ron Perlman should play him,” says Mignola. “He’s got Hellboy’s demeanor. He’s got that working stiff, been-there-done-that quality in almost everything he does. And he’s got the perfect voice. Soon after we first met I said to Guillermo, ‘So who do you think should play Hellboy?’ And there was a little bit of sizing each other up — like who’s going to say it first. And we both said Ron Perlman at the same time.”

While he was writing the screenplay, del Toro contacted Perlman (with whom he also worked with on Cronos and later, Blade II) and told him he was writing a movie for him. Perlman was flattered. “What I like about Hellboy is that he fights monsters but he’s also a sensitive soul. He’s bad, he’s fun, he’s fast.”

Embodying Hellboy’s outer trappings of enormous strength and indestructibility, however, was far from effortless, requiring a year of intense preparation for Perlman. “Physically, I knew I was in for six months of fighting crime against monsters and demons – the big dudes that Hellboy has to take down. The action sequences were going to require incredible outpourings of energy, so I felt like I needed to be in tip-top shape. I’m grateful I had almost a year between when I found out I was going to be doing this and the start of production. I was at the gym, five, six days a week and doing a lot a cardio and just getting as strong as I possibly could.”

The character of Professor Broom runs a secret organization, The Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense (B.P.R.D.) “It was formed by President Roosevelt to combat the occult societies created during World War II,” according to del Toro. “It’s an alternate world to the one we know. As Broom says, ‘Make no mistake about it, there are things out there that go bump in the night. We’re the ones who bump back.’”

It is Broom, an expert in the occult, who rescued Hellboy and decided to raise him as a son. “Broom anchors the story,” says Levin, “and it was our tremendous good fortune to get John Hurt to play him. He gives the character a kind of gravitas. He makes Hellboy understand that, in life, even the oddest creature has a purpose.”

Hurt, who has starred in such classic films as Alien and The Elephant Man, came aboard for two reasons, he says. “Guillermo is a director I admire tremendously. Also, it’s the kind of movie I’d never made before – a fantasy piece with touches of human emotion.”

Hellboy has been raised with two other exceptional creatures, Abe Sapien and Liz Sherman, who each possess their own supernatural gifts. “Abe Sapien is a being who’s almost superhuman, a fish-man who is also a very intelligent creature,” says del Toro. “He combines the body of a swimmer with the forehead of a dolphin and the face of a fish. While Hellboy is more the brawn, Abe is more the brain.”

When actor Doug Jones (Men in Black® II, Mimic) was approached for the role of Abe Sapien, del Toro informed him, “Oh by the way, you’re going to be a fish.” Jones didn’t bat an eye. “It was no surprise. I’ve played many creatures before,” he says. “I’ve been a kangaroo twice. I’ve been an alien, a cockroach, a large mosquito. I’ve been anything with a tail, basically. I’ve never been a fish before, however. This is new to me. Full head-to-toe gig. But curiously, he’s one of the easier creatures I’ve played because they used so much of me. Parts are glued on to me but it’s not like I’m wearing a big suit with a giant head on going ‘Arrgghh!’ I love Abe. He’s the smart guy.”

As Liz Sherman, actress Selma Blair is normal looking – though in this case, looks are definitely deceiving. “Liz is a fire-starter who caused great tragedy in her life, “says Blair. “When she used her power, it resulted in the death of her parents and many people in a nearby town. After that, she became a ward of the state and the B.P.R.D. took her in to harness her pyro-kinetic abilities.”

Liz forms a fractured family with Hellboy, Abe and Broom. “Hellboy is her comfort,” says Blair. “He’s someone who’s similar to her. Part of her hates that however, because unlike Hellboy, on the outside she looks like a regular girl. So, she’s very conflicted. Like Hellboy, she’s afraid of establishing real connections because she doesn’t know how to be normal.”

Adding to Liz’s emotional turmoil is the arrival of a handsome, young FBI recruit John Myers (Rupert Evans), on whom she develops a crush. “When Myers comes into her life, for the first time, she sees herself having a chance to be a real woman” Blair continues. “John Myers is definitely a flirtation she wants to try out.”
And that combustible situation is further fueled by Hellboy’s jealousy. “Myers has been recruited to be Hellboy’s companion,” notes Perlman. “While he admires John, he poses a threat to his friendship with Liz.”

Believing that his villains need to be as compelling as his heroes, del Toro created Grigori Rasputin (Karel Roden). “He’s a very fervent, religious man in his own sort of way,” del Toro points out. “He really believes there’s a cause to be fought, that Earth should be destroyed because of its impurities and we should start again with a new species.”

Famed Czechoslovakian actor Karel Roden, who previously worked with del Toro on Blade II, was the ideal choice for Rasputin, according to the director. “Rasputin has died many times,” observes Roden. “And each time he loses more of his humanity, but at the same time, gets more powerful and godlike – the god of chaos.”

Instead of portraying him as malevolent, however, Roden says his attitude toward the character was informed by the idea that “he thinks he wants to rescue the world. He may be doing bad things, but from his perspective, he is trying to achieve good.”

About The Production
Hellboy creator Mike Mignola, who served as visual consultant on director Guillermo del Toro’s Blade II, was in total synchronicity with the overall visual design plan the director had for bringing his hero’s story to the screen. “My art is very graphic and it would seem that there’s a limit to what you can do with it in the real world,” says Mignola. “But Guillermo perfectly captured the feeling of it. He set certain rules in doing that, assigning certain shapes and colors to the various character and design elements. It’s an extremely controlled atmosphere.”

Del Toro recalls that during production, whenever he showed Mignola a new set, Mignola would say, “’That looks like something I could have drawn.’ And when he said that, I would be very happy, because the interesting thing is, it also looked like something I could have shot. Which I did,” he laughs. “There are many images that are incredibly evocative of the comic. But I didn’t want to do a carbon copy, because a movie is its own creature. I think of it more as a great sort of a jazz riff inspired by the comic book.”

Mignola not only lauded del Toro for his take on Hellboy, he actually derived fresh inspiration from watching the filming. “One day, Mike was looking at a shot of the Hellboy character and he asked to see it again,” relates producer Lloyd Levin. “After studying it for a bit he said, ‘I’ve got to remember that. That’s the way I’ve got to draw him.’ For all of us it was a flattering confirmation that Guillermo had captured Mike’s graphic sensibility.”

Adds Mignola, “Some comic book movies play down the comic book element. If anything, this one amped it up and took full advantage of the visuals and the kind of action you see in comic books.”

For the production, del Toro gathered together many of the talented artisans who had helped him realize his vision in the past on such films as Blade II and The Devil’s Backbone, as well as several notable craftspeople with whom he was working for the first time.

The objective was to coordinate their individual contributions and capture the essence and consistency of Mignola’s comic book sensibility on film. This mandate is evident in Stephen Scott’s production design, which not only took its cue from Mignola’s comic books but also embellished upon it by adapting elements from the Gothic environment of the film’s Prague shooting location. “What’s remarkable about the set design,” says Levin, “is that it walks a fine line. Though there is a strong fantasy element to the movie, it is rendered in realistic terms and the Gothic flavor of Prague definitely influenced the overall design.”

The production design affirmed del Toro’s vision and impacted the actors’ performances as well, Levin claims. “I think it seeped into all their work because they were in such a real environment it was hard not to be in some ways creeped out.”

"The point all along was to strike a happy medium," he says. "Since the level of the film's action is not real, we decided to take it to the next level, slightly beyond reality, working very closely with the special effects department."

The comic books served as Scott's jumping-off point, Levin continues. "From there we developed the sets incorporating images from the book and trying to be true to the comics' color scheme — black and brown, black and gray with a strong hint of purple and green. That makes the character of (the decidedly red) Hellboy pop out more."

As Levin notes, Scott was also stimulated by the location surroundings. "Prague is full of the most amazing architecture, which can't help but influence your designs, particularly on a movie like this," says Scott. Other research included poring over books on cemeteries, underground caverns and Indian architecture, which provided him with many ideas about color and form. Scott also perused texts of Neo-Egyptian architecture and applied the tactile qualities of "peeling, fading, dampness and decay" to his sets.

One of Scott's many interesting challenges was recreating the New York subway system on a sound stage in Prague. In preparation, he traveled to New York "and spent loads of time rushing around to the various subway stations measuring things. People must have thought I was mad because I was traveling in crowded subway cars taking photos, measuring advertising panels and the diameter of the handrails."

For anyone who's ever traveled to New York, an indispensable element is the freeform graphic art that appears everywhere including subway cars. "Luckily, I found a Czech guy whose hobby is graffiti," Scott laughs, "and I immediately put him to work."

In fashioning his design scheme, Scott received an assist from del Toro's ability to articulate his intentions on paper. "Guillermo is very good with a pencil, which helped me a lot." In addition, the film's elaborate catacomb set is based on an idea by Mignola, which was developed prior to production.

Before committing himself to the task of building full-scale sets – which took more than two months to construct — or altering outdoor locations to suit his concept, Scott made sketches and models. "A model always tells a lot of stories. It conveys the scale and enables you to see everything in a three-dimensional way," he relates. "We also had a mini-camera that was plugged into a TV monitor, which allowed us to wander through the model as if we were actually on the set. That gave the director and the director of photography an idea of what shots were possible."

As a cinematographer, Guillermo Navarro says he is always on the lookout for stories that allow him to explore and experiment within the visual world in which a story is set. Hellboy, his third effort with del Toro, fit his criteria. “It is extremely visual,” he says, “and it has a strong aesthetic, because Guillermo has such an incredible mind.”

The look Navarro and del Toro decided on was meticulously lit using a select palette of colors. For instance, “for nighttime, we chose a pronounced urban yellow light,” Navarro points out. The reason for such a distinctive color was part of the overall concept of keeping the movie halfway between fantasy and reality. “The nights are very yellow because a majority of the shots are either at night or on sets that are built. Ninety percent of the film takes place in an artificially lit environment.”

Also, Navarro continues, the lighting was designed to complement the makeup. “Hellboy’s face is shaped by shadows and highlights and plays a significant role in creating his personality.”

To capture both the action and emotional aspects of the film, says Navarro, “many different camera moves are used to get the different elements across – Steadi-cams to techno-cranes and hotheads were used.”

Costume designer Wendy Partridge, another del Toro veteran, took her cues from the director, she says. And that really kept her on her toes. “Working with Guillermo is like working with an 8-year-old,” she remarks. “His energy is incessant and his imagination never ends. He comes up with off-the-wall things out of the blue. There are no edges to his envelope.”

One of Partridge’s main objectives was doing justice to Mignola’s original creation. “Just coming up with the right coat for Hellboy was a challenge. Do you make it out of fabric? Leather? He has a tail that moves, which requires concealing all the wiring in the costume as well. And since he jumps off buildings his costumes will get torn, so you have major continuity issues.”

In addition to coordinating with the production designer and director of photography, Partridge also worked closely with the prosthetics department. “The average movie is very collaborative. This one was even more so,” she says. In costuming the aquatic character Abe Sapien, she worked hand-in-hand with Spectral Motion to make sure her costume worked around the fins they created, which stick out of the character’s back and legs. Sapien also has a mechanical respirator with wiring that had to be concealed within her overall design. Fortunately the costume shop and the prosthetics department were across from one another. “So we went back and forth to do fittings and make sure that all the pieces worked together. In the end it was not only practical but pretty cool looking as well.”

Partridge started her work in Canada where most of the principal wardrobe was created, requiring her to fly to wherever the individual actors lived for fittings. Two weeks prior to production she moved to Prague and established a shop with a Czech crew to manufacture the remaining wardrobe. Because the film was contemporary, Partridge also did some shopping, but much less than she expected. “I shopped for things like the suits for the FBI guys, but John Hurt’s clothing is all hand made because we wanted to give him the same look he had when he was a younger man with the FBI in the 1940s to show that he’d never changed. His wardrobe had a real old-man feel to it.”

In fashioning Selma Blair’s “eclectic and bohemian” Liz Sherman character, Partridge picked up a few items off the rack. “But Selma is petite and the things that worked best on her weren’t available in multiples - and we needed six or eight of everything. So we basically wound up making them. They not only looked better on her, but it was simpler than trying to shop it.”

One sequence that truly tested the limits of her creative imagination, Partridge says, was the film’s Halloween sequence on the streets of New York. She was not allowed to use red (a color largely — but not exclusively — reserved for the Hellboy character). Also, since it was a nighttime sequence, white wouldn’t register on camera. “Even our ghosts wound up being a dirty gray. While it was great to have all those little kids to dress, the hardest part was coming up with 500 to 600 costumes and not repeating ourselves.”

Partridge’s partner in crime was Spectral Motion’s Mike Elizalde. Among his most daunting assignments was building the body suit for the character Sammael, Hellboy’s nemesis, which required the concerted efforts of 15 members of his crew of 30 and a full six months.

“We built six different suits for Sammael, some of them for the stunt people,” says Elizalde. “They’re foam latex on the outside with a heavy structural construction inside, which holds batteries to make his head and tendrils move.”

For the stunt sequences, Elizalde created minimal function (“basically only eye movement”) stunt heads for the Sammael character that “could take a lot of punishment but were lightweight enough that the stuntmen wouldn’t be injured. We made them out of a soft polyfoam that can take a pretty good bump without anybody getting hurt or the head being crushed.” Stunt arms were also manufactured that were light enough and soft enough so the stunt men could fly through the air and crash into walls without injury.

The main costume worn by actor Brian Steele, who portrays Sammael, was much more elaborate – and heavy – weighing in at around 60 pounds total. “Once he was in the suit, Brian wore it pretty much all day with few breaks and he sweated profusely,” says Elizalde. “He was a pretty rugged guy.”

The head Sammael wore was multi-functional with membranes that opened and closed, eyes with dilating pupils, nostrils that flared and a tri-furcated tongue the character used to grab onto objects and spew venom. More elaborate arms were created for insert shots when del Toro required Sammael to move his fingers – done via remote control. “Aside from Brian, who’s in the suit,” says Elizalde, “we had three puppeteers operating the creature and keeping him looking slimy and wet and gross.”

The nuance in Perlman’s performance belies the rigorous application of several layers of makeup he underwent every day starting at four in the morning. “What’s truly amazing to me is how subtle Ron’s performance is and how it comes through all that makeup,” says Levin. “You’re looking at this outrageous character. He’s red. He’s got horns. He’s huge. He has giant teeth. And yet, you don’t see a mask. He’s a living, breathing, emoting being right in front of your eyes.”

“I’ve always enjoyed working under makeup,” Perlman confesses, “ever since my first film Quest for Fire, back in 1980. It’s like alchemy. They apply this stuff to your face that’s without life and the minute it’s on you, it comes to life. Hellboy may look big and fierce, but the softer parts of his humanity definitely come through.”

Even with years of experience wearing extensive makeup, Perlman confesses the specifics of Hellboy’s head-to-toe get-up took some adjustments, particularly to his big stone arm. “Like my tail, the arm was remote controlled, so I won’t know what performance the tail and the arm gave until I see the finished film.”

The process took about four hours, according to makeup artist Jake Garber, with a breakfast break for wardrobe and the insertion of contact lenses by a lens technician. “Ron wore four foam-like tech appliances,” notes Garber. “After a preparation to protect his skin, the first piece we put on was the neck and chest piece, which wrapped around him and was glued below his jaw line down to his collarbone. The piece extended down to his pectorals and was left loose so it could be lifted up when he put on his muscle suit. Next came the skullcap that incorporated the horns. Then there was a facial piece that covers everything except his lower lip, which was the last piece we put on.”

After wardrobe, Perlman inserted his contact lenses after which the lower lip was secured. “The last thing I did was pop in his teeth,” says Garber. When the process was complete, only the actor’s eyelids were actually his own.

The logistics for stunt coordinator Monty Simons also required intense preparation, especially since del Toro wanted as much of the action as possible to be real and shot on set, rather than filled in later with computer graphics. “CGI is a punctuation rather than the sentence in this movie,” Perlman affirms. “The three- dimensional world will be enhanced by CGI.”

As it did with Elizalde, the character of Sammael provided Simons with one of his biggest challenges. “He wears a suit that weighs about 60 pounds. It’s very flexible, but still you have a stunt guy dragging around all that weight during intricate fight scenes, having to hit marks and basically not being able to see.”

Months prior to the onset of production, Simons rented a sound stage and built flying systems to explore what he could do with the Sammael and Hellboy characters. Flying systems were built with eight special harnesses for the two characters that had to be custom fit, measured and sized with “pick points” – different places where the cables could be attached to the harnesses since Simons didn’t know how the costumed characters were going to balance once they were airborne. “We spent five days picking them up, seeing if they turned over and fell on their feet or their heads and how they reacted when we launched them from long distances,” says Simons. “We learned a lot that week. It was very encouraging, because amazingly enough, there was a lot we could do with guys in the Sammael suit.”

Of concern with Hellboy was the character’s large concrete fist, which Simons feared would add weight to the character and change his center of gravity to such an extent that, when suspended, he would be completely off balance. This was solved by the design of several lighter-weight fists just for the levitation scenes.

Simons’ hard work paid off in the exciting fight scene between Sammael and Hellboy on a subway platform, as well as in the chase sequence at Halloween, most of which were shot live on set.

Simons also studied all the actors in rehearsal before deciding when and if a stunt double would be required. “I watch them as they walk back and forth on the set to see how coordinated they are and how able they are when it comes to action and having to think fast and react under pressure,” he says. “Once I’ve learned all that I go through each sequence, stunt by stunt and figure out what they’re capable of and where their part will end and where I will put in a stunt guy.”

The sequences in which the Abe Sapien character, played by Doug Jones, is under water, are a combination of special effects and stunt coordination. “Since Abe spends so much time under water, trying to do it physically would have taken weeks of shooting for just a few seconds of film. That was logistically impractical,” says Simons. “However, we did have a couple of scenes in which we hung Doug upside down and filmed him ‘dry for wet.’ It appears that he’s in a tank, when actually he’s behind a two-sided wall of glass with water in between.”

To Nick Allder, the SFX Supervisor, fell the task of executing some of the film’s most daring on-set mechanical stunts like flipping a Jeep Cherokee into the air three times and crashing it, “which had never been done before, so it was a challenge,” says Allder.

The feat was executed with the use of cables and a large nitrogen cylinder. “You see Hellboy walk over and punch the car with his hand and stop it and the car literally flips up and stops dead. Then it rotates over him and crashes to the ground behind him. It was very realistic.”

The action that could not be staged on set was the responsibility of visual effects supervisor Edward Irastorza. His work included digitized images as well as miniatures. "We have a digital bridge being blasted apart by a giant pendulum. These effects are being done by (the visual effects house) The Orphanage," Irastorza explains. "Whenever you see Abe Sapien swimming, that's a digital effect done by Tippett Studio. If Sammael moves any faster than a step or two, that's basically a digital character effect."

In total there are about 900 visual effects in Hellboy, Irastorza estimates. The opening sequence at the Abbey Ruins totaled 95 shots, most of them of the giant machine that brings Baby Hellboy to Earth. About a year before production began, Irastorza started work on his visual animatics, a rough form of animation, in order to get the timing for each sequence.