Please Don't Play with Liz, 'Cause You're Playing with Fire: Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy

Yes, the title character of Guillermo del Toro's 2004 version of Hellboy is awesome, but it's Selma Blair's portrayal of everyone's favorite pyrokinetic Liz Sherman that really brings me back to this movie time after time. Granted, the name of the movie is Hellboy, not Hellgirl, but it's hard for me to imagine this movie having the same impact on me if it did not have the Liz Sherman character. Indeed, the one thing that turned me against the second Hellboy movie -- Hellboy II: The Golden Army -- was the way the filmmakers of that movie totally mangled the Liz Sherman character. It is almost as if once the filmmakers finally got Liz Sherman involved in a romantic relationship with the title character, they had no idea what to do with her. Which was a darn shame given that her character was one of the most interesting characters in the first movie.

Oh, well. The first movie still holds up and the scene in which Liz Sherman went all Carrie White on some evil demons is still a classic. Indeed, though Guillermo del Toro has noted many times in interviews that he is not exactly a devout Catholic, there nevertheless seemed to be a certain Catholic subtext to the scene in which Liz Sherman finally gave in to the temptation to use her power without restraint. Indeed, during that scene, Liz held herself in a certain posture that reminded me of a medieval saint -- almost as if submitting to her power to produce fire was the equivalent of submitting to some divine act.

To be fair, there were other interesting characters in the movie as well. Ron Perlman was a gem as the title character, John Hurt did an admirable job as Professor Bruttenholm aka Professor Broom and David Hyde-Pierce did an excellent -- if uncredited -- job as the voice of humanoid fish-person Abe Sapien. Rupert Evans also had a memorable role as the young FBI agent John Myers who played a key role in the climax of the movie.

Of all the Guillermo del Toro movies that I have seen thus far, Hellboy is no doubt my favorite. I'm just sorry that del Toro never had the chance to produce a memorable sequel. Oh, well. At least we got one classic movie out of this character.