Mike Mignola's Monster...

Rating: 8/10 (4 April 2014)

In celebration of HELLBOY's 20th anniversary, our local comic shop (Fanboy Comics) arranged a screening of both HELLBOY movies at a post-production screening room and it was well worth the effort: the ONLY way to appreciate these kind of movies is to see them up on The Big Screen; even the new, larger format flatscreen televisions don't really do them justice. The production values of the two HELLBOY movies are mind-boggling, to say the least, and Ron Perlman was the perfect choice to play Mr. Boy. The introduction of a character not in the original comics was one of the sticking points I always had with the first movie (filmmakers always seem to need to have "someone the audience can relate to" in a fantasy film, but they're usually wrong about that- as they were with both THE TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES and THE CROW, to mention but two of the fantasies that bog down in the "Real World"). Still, the fx are stellar- and I can't wait to see what Del Toro does with THE HULK.