Hellboy Animated - Blood and Iron
 Dixon Bawls  rates it:    Community rates it:
   209 of 460 readers found this review helpful.

For fans of all things Hellboy, this is probably a must buy, but if you’re a die hard fan you already know about the animated series. “Blood and Iron,” I think, is the second release in this series and being the first one I have seen, it is easy to jump right in and not skip a beat. The illustrious Squime said “the animated series is somewhere between the movie and the comic books.” I am a fan of both, and found “Blood and Iron” to be very well done with impressive animation.

Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones, and John Hurt all reprised their roles from the movie as the voices of the characters. This was an added bonus because, for me, when I watch an animated movie, I picture the actor playing the part, so being a fan of the movie it was nice having that familiarity. The only problem I had with the voices was that Selma Blair didn’t sound like herself, but that is my own neurotic problem.

Another big plus for Hellboy fan boys is that the creative producers for this venture are Guillermo Del Toro (writer/ director of the Hellboy movie) and Mike Mignola (creator of the Hellboy comics). The story consisted of a lot of monsters for our heroes to fight and was thick enough to not make me feel I was watching a cartoon. The plot puts Hellboy and friends in a ghost-infested mansion recently purchased by a billionaire, wanting to turn it into a tourist attraction. The ghosts are an army of dead maidens killed by a female vampire to fill a bath with blood to keep her beautiful for eternity and they want to be avenged so they can rest. Hellboy must find out who is helping to resurrect the countess before she returns to feed on the souls of the local chicks.

The hand puppets for the vampire are a pair of harpies and a werewolf who will stop at nothing to bring there Hungarian Blood Countess back to power. There is also a back story that puts Professor Bruttenholm (leader of the paranormal investigation unit) fighting the same vampire when he was a fledgling vampire hunter. Another back story pits Hellboy against the goddess, Hecate, in a fight over why he wants to defend humans and kill immortals like themselves. All and all, the story was way better than I was expecting and I will make this DVD a must for all of those Hellboy devotees.

I will give this movie a 4 out of 5 and I am now going to borrow the first in the series and will await the next.

Added:  Monday, June 04, 2007
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