Hellboy: The Crooked Man 2024 Based on The Crooked Man by Mike Mignola, screenplay by Christopher Golden, Mike Mignola and Brian Taylor, directed by Brian Taylor. The comic was written by Mignola and illustrated by Richard Corben. It's an entertaining story and Richard's art is great.
Hellboy, Bobbie Jo Song and another agent are guarding a box in a box car. Inside the box is a size changing supernatural spider. It gets agitated and busts out of the box, Hellboy gives it a beating and the car bounces off the track. The spider escapes and Hellboy and Bobbie Jo give chase. The other agent didn't make it. They find themselves in a small community in the Appalachian Mountains and get involved with the locals. Turns out the place is filled with witches and pals of the devil. Things don't go so well after that.
Hellboy and Bobbie Jo pal up with a young man called Tom Ferrell and a witch called Cora Fisher, they hang out in Cora's house. A bad witch called Effie Kolb comes by with Tom's father, she'd turned him into a horse and ridden him around for years. Transformed back into a man, the father soon dies. Tom wants to bury him in consecrated ground at a nearby church. The trouble that area is home to The Crooked Man, an agent of the Devil. Hellboy battles the evil man and that's quite enjoyable.
I found the whole film entertaining and one of the best adaptions of the Mignola comics. More than any of the live action films that preceded this. We watched the 4K from Australia which some say is the better transfer. The film had a budget of $20 mill but only made $2 mill at the box office. Critics dumped on the film and the public didn't watch it. Too bad for them. I was happy to watch it and I'll want to watch it again so I'll order the Blu-ray.
Blood Suckers 1971 Based on the novel Doctors Wear Scarlet by Simon Raven, screenplay by Julian More, directed by Robert Hartford-Davis. The film has had a lot of titles over it's life, it's a mess of trickery. I've seen three other Hartford-Davis films: The Sandwich Man, Gonks Go Beat and The Black Torment. I thought they were better than this one. I have another, Corruption with Peter Cushing. I should remind myself to watch that some time soon. The film is part of the Cushing Curiosities box set from Severin.
Richard is a young don at a fictional Oxford college. He'd gone to Greece to study, he's late in returning and no one's heard from him. His friends travel to Greece, among them his possible fiancee Penelope. They find he's fallen in with a bad crowd who have wild parties, take drugs and have sex orgies. During the 10 min long psychedelic sex orgy a woman is stabbed repeatedly and dumped in some bushes.
Chriseis is the head of the bad crowd, she's the worst sort of person, her hobbies include wild dancing and murdering. She's got some hold over Richard. We also find out Richard is impotent, he can't participate in the orgy. Sad. Richard had come to Greece hoping to find his manhood. He didn't get his end away, he got turned into a vampire instead.
Chriseis has taken Richard to a castle where she plans to kill another woman. Richard's friends chase after and rescue him from Chriseis. They return him to the UK where he's supposed to marry Penelope and graduate. He botches both of those plans when he calls Penelope's father a thief who's come to steal your souls at the graduation ceremony, a bit later he kills Penelope by chomping on her neck. The friends chase Richard over the college roofs until he falls off the building. Lucky for Richard he impales himself on the big iron spike of a convenient fence. Richard's pals return to Greece to stake Chriseis.
It's a mess of a film, apparently it ran out of money and many things weren't filmed. This version has the most material of any past version and it's only 87 mins. The commentary by Jonathan Rigby and Kevin Lyons fills in a lot of detail behind the scenes. They speculate that the 10 min orgy is edited for maximum length to pad out the film. I sort of enjoyed the film but can't believe I'll get back to it soon. There's plenty of nice scenery when they are in Greece. Saturday morning I'm listening to the commentary and mostly enjoying that. There are some info filled interviews that I liked.