Richard sat down with “Hellboy” star David Harbour to talk about how he prepared to play Big Red.
“Because the [Hellboy] outfit is so extraordinary, the latex mask and the body is so big, I needed something to rehearse in. They can’t apply it [for rehearsal] because it requires however many thousand dollars a day to apply that makeup. So I went to Paragon Sports in New York and made myself this homemade Hellboy outfit. I bought a wetsuit and all this hockey padding. I sewed together two big catcher shin guard things and put a hockey glove on the end of it. Then I got a wig, put some coffee cup holders for my horns, and put little weights on my face so that I could feel the tension that. It was a whole sports rig.”
How does the new, rebooted “Hellboy” differ from the Guillermo Del Toro films that introduced the hell spawn character to filmgoers? The title character looks basically the same, red skin, sawed-off-horns and wise cracks his way through battles with supernatural creatures, just like the older movies. What is different is the attitude. Del Toro’s films were idiosyncratic action adventures with a supernatural twist. The new movie, directed by Neil Marshall, feels more like playing a game of Dungeons & Dragons as Judas Priest blares in the background.
This time around “Stranger Things” star David Harbour plays the wise cracking half-demon, an employee of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (B.P.R.D.), an organization founded by his adopted father (Ian McShane) to combat various occult threats. Several battles with undead English giants, a vampiric Lucha libre wrestler and a massive, angry pigman lead him to the world’s biggest threat, Nimue the Blood Queen, played by Milla Jovovich. From her Big Red learns of his true origins as she tries to convince him to embrace the dark side and help her bring on the apocalypse.
“Hellboy” Mach 3 feels more down-and-dirty than the other films. It plays up the “boy” part of Big Red’s name as he comes of age. He’s a motor mouth with a devil-may-care attitude. “I met [Egyptian deity] Ra once in the underworld,” he says. “He was a close talker.” Beneath the bluster—and his giant stone arm—however, is a more complicated guy, someone born a monster with noble aspirations. Covered in layers of make-up, Harbour hits the right mix of smart aleck and conflicted guy, giving the character an aura that falls somewhere between grandeur and silliness, superhero and supernaturalhero.
But the movie is not all Sturm und Drang. Marshall makes sure Big Red is frequently raising hell and often covered in buckets of blood. “Hellboy” gory and grimy, loud and proud, more horror than fantasy. It’s fun, if a little wearing after the ninety-minute mark.
Alfred Hitchcock, knew how to scare the wits out of people. The shower scene in “Psycho,” for example, is a benchmark in cinematic fear. If he had any doubts about the effectiveness of that sequence they must have been put to bed when he received an angry letter from a father whose daughter stopped bathing after seeing the bathtub murder scene in “Les Diaboliques” and then, more distressingly, refused to shower after seeing “Psycho.” Hitch’s response to the concerned dad? “Send her to the dry cleaners.”
“78/52,” a new documentary from Alexandre O. Philippe spends ninety minutes exploring not only why the fifty-two second scene continues to terrify but also how it changed cinema. Drawing its title from the 78 shot set-ups it took to film the scene, the movie is an exhaustive but not exhausting look the shower sequence.
A mix of fan info and academia, it covers some familiar territory but more intriguingly looks to experts like filmmaker Guillermo del Toro and editor Walter Murch to dissect the nuts and bolts of the scene. Shot-by-shot they get inside Hitchcock and collaborator Saul Bass’s mindset, delving into the decisions, both artistic and practical, that give the sequence its power. First hand recollections come from a new and spirited interview Janet Leigh’s nude model stand-in Marli Renfro and archival conversations with Hitchcock and Leigh.
“78/52” is likely the final word on the infamous shower scene. The level of detail will enthral film geeks and Hitchcockolytes but shouldn’t dissuade more casual viewers. The enthusiasm of several of the talking heads—most notably Elijah Wood—is infectious. We can learn how and why the scene works but their passion shows why the scene is so successful from a strictly personal point of view.
Richard sat down with “Hellboy” star David Harbour to talk about how he prepared to play Big Red.
