Hellboy hath much fury

If I see one more movie taken from a comic-book series, I may expire quietly in my seat. But at least Hellboy, taken from Mike Mignola's Dark Horse comics, is better than such mundane blowouts as The Chronicles of Riddick - probably because the man in charge is Guillermo del Toro (Blade II and The Devil's Backbone), and there are no portentous airs and graces. Del Toro just goes hell for leather about his task, spitting special effects at us as if there were no tomorrow.

And there is no tomorrow for half of the slightly B-list cast, since they are scrunched up beyond recognition long before the epic is finished. Serves them right.

The scrunchers are Ron Perlman's Hellboy, a monster with a kind heart who protects the Earth, indeed the galaxy, from evil Rasputin (Karel Roden), who commands a herd of slimy nasties. It's wham, bang, thank you, ma'am, for two hours.

Hellboy is good because, though created by Rasputin and destined to be the harbinger of the apocalypse, he is rescued and raised like a son by John Hurt's professor at the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defence.

Perlman does well within his peculiar skin while Hurt, of course, is his usual A-list self as the Prof.

The rest of the acting is pretty amorphous since the effects are the thing here. Long before the end, I was a gibbering wreck. It's quite a show.

Hellboy
Cert: 12A