From writer/director Guillermo del Toro (Blade II, The Devil's Backbone) comes "Hellboy," a supernatural action-adventure based on Mike Mignola's acclaimed Dark Horse Comics series of the same name.

Born in the flames of hell 60 years ago during World War II, Hellboy (Ron Perlman) was brought to Earth by evil madman Grigori Rasputin (Karel Roden) to perpetrate evil. Destined to be a harbinger of the apocalypse, Hellboy was rescued by Allied Forces led by Professor Broom (John Hurt), founder of the clandestine B.P.R.D. (Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense), who raised him like a son and developed his extraordinary paranormal gifts. Despite his dark origins, Hellboy becomes an unlikely champion of good, battling the evil forces that threaten our world.

At the B.P.R.D., Hellboy becomes part of an unlikely family that includes the telepathic "Mer-Man" Abe Sapien (Doug Jones) and Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), 'who is pyro-kinetic. Hidden from the very society they are assigned to protect, they stand as a key line of defense against Rasputin - who seeks to reclaim Hellboy to the dark side and use his powers to bring about Armageddon. As Broom says of the B.P.R.D., "Make no mistake about it, there are things out there that go bump in the night. We're the ones who bump back."

"Hellboy" features an ensemble cast including Perlman, Blair, Jeffrey Tambor, Karel Roden and John Hurt. The film also stars Rupert Evans, Brian Steele and Doug Jones, and is produced by Lawrence Gordon, Mike Richardson of Dark Horse Comics and Lloyd Levin.

Revolution Studios Presents A Lawrence Gordon/Lloyd Levin Production in Association with Dark Horse Entertainment "Hellboy" a Columbia Pictures release. The film stars Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Jeffrey Tambor, Karel Roden, Rupert Evans and John Hurt. The film is directed by Guillermo del Toro. The screenplay is by Guillermo del Toro. The screen story is by Guillermo del Toro and Peter Briggs, based upon the Dark Horse Comic created by Mike Mignola. The producers are Lawrence Gordon, Mike Richardson and Lloyd Levin. The executive producer is Patrick Palmer. The director of photography is Guillermo Navarro, ASC. The film is edited by Peter Amundson. The production designer is Stephen Scott. The costume designer is Wendy Partridge. The music is by Marco Beltrami. The music supervision is by Peter Afterman and Margaret Yen.

Hellboy is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for Sci-Fi Action Violence and Frightening Images.

"Audiences will be impressed by the scope of Hellboy. It's really big. There are major action sequences and lots of them, and wonderful visual effects." - Producer Lawrence Gordon.

"Hellboy" creator Mike Mignola, who served as visual consultant on director Guillermo del Toro's "Blade II," was in total synchronicity with the overall visual design plan the director had for bringing his hero's story to the screen. "My art is very graphic and it would seem that there's a limit to what you can do with it in the real world," says Mignola. "But Guillermo perfectly captured the feeling of it. He set certain rules in doing that, assigning certain shapes and colors to the various character and design elements. It's an extremely controlled atmosphere."

Del Toro recalls that during production, whenever he showed Mignola a new set, Mignola would say, 'That looks like something I could have drawn.' "And when he said that, I would be very happy, because the interesting thing is, it also looked like something I could have shot. Which I did," he laughs. "There are many images that are incredibly evocative of the comic. But I didn't want to do a carbon copy, because a movie is its own creature. I think of it more as a great sort of a jazz riff inspired by the comic book."

Mignola not only lauded del Toro for his take on "Hellboy," he actually derived fresh inspiration from watching the filming. "One day, Mike was looking at a shot of the Hellboy character and he asked to see it again," relates producer Lloyd Levin. "After studying it for a bit he said, 'I've got to remember that. That's the way I've got to draw him.' For all of us it was a flattering confirmation that Guillermo had captured Mike's graphic sensibility."

Adds Mignola, "Some comic book movies play down the comic book element. If anything, this one amped it up and took full advantage of the visuals and the kind of action you see in comic books."

For the production, del Toro gathered together many of the talented artisans who had helped him realize his vision in the past on such films as "Blade II" and "The Devil's Backbone," as well as several notable craftspeople with whom he was working for the first time.

The objective was to coordinate their individual contributions and capture the essence and consistency of Mignola's comic book sensibility on film. This mandate is evident in Stephen Scott's production design, which not only took its cue from Mignola's comic books but also embellished upon it by adapting elements from the Gothic environment of the film's Prague shooting location. "What's remarkable about the set design," says Levin, "is that it walks a fine line. Though there is a strong fantasy element to the movie, it is rendered in realistic terms and the Gothic flavor of Prague definitely influenced the overall design."

The production design affirmed del Toro's vision and impacted the actors' performances as well, Levin claims. "I think it seeped into all their work because they were in such a real environment it was hard not to be in some ways creeped out."

"The point all along was to strike a happy medium," he says. "Since the level of the film's action is not real, we decided to take it to the next level, slightly beyond reality, working very closely with the special effects department."

The comic books served as Scott's jumping-off point, Levin continues. "From there we developed the sets incorporating images from the book and trying to be true to the comics' color scheme - black and brown, black and gray with a strong hint of purple and green. That makes the character of (the decidedly red) Hellboy pop out more."

As Levin notes, Scott was also stimulated by the location surroundings. "Prague is full of the most amazing architecture, which can't help but influence your designs, particularly on a movie like this," says Scott. Other research included poring over books on cemeteries, underground caverns and Indian architecture, which provided him with many ideas about color and form. Scott also perused texts of Neo-Egyptian architecture and applied the tactile qualities of "peeling, fading, dampness and decay" to his sets.

One of Scott's many interesting challenges was recreating the New York subway system on a sound stage in Prague. In preparation, he travelled to New York "and spent loads of time rushing around to the various subway stations measuring things. People must have thought I was mad because I was traveling in crowded subway cars taking photos, measuring advertising panels and the diameter of the handrails."

For anyone who's ever travelled to New York, an indispensable element is the freeform graphic art that appears everywhere including subway cars. "Luckily, I found a Czech guy whose hobby is graffiti," Scott laughs, "and I immediately put him to work."

In fashioning his design scheme, Scott received an assist from del Toro's ability to articulate his intentions on paper. "Guillermo is very good with a pencil, which helped me a lot." In addition, the film's elaborate catacomb set is based on an idea by Mignola, which was developed prior to production.

Before committing himself to the task of building full-scale sets - which took more than two months to construct - or altering outdoor locations to suit his concept, Scott made sketches and models. "A model always tells a lot of stories. It conveys the scale and enables you to see everything in a three-dimensional way," he relates. "We also had a mini-camera that was plugged into a TV monitor, which allowed us to wander through the model as if we were actually on the set. That gave the director and the director of photography an idea of what shots were possible."

As a cinematographer, Guillermo Navarro says he is always on the lookout for stories that allow him to explore and experiment within the visual world in which a story is set. "Hellboy," his third effort with del Toro, fit his criteria. "It is extremely visual," he says, "and it has a strong aesthetic, because Guillermo has such an incredible mind."

The look Navarro and del Toro decided on was meticulously lit using a select palette of colors. For instance, "for nighttime, we chose a pronounced urban yellow light," Navarro points out. The reason for such a distinctive color was part of the overall concept of keeping the movie halfway between fantasy and reality. "The nights are very yellow because a majority of the shots are either at night or on sets that are built. Ninety percent of the film takes place in an artificially lit environment."

Also, Navarro continues, the lighting was designed to complement the makeup. "Hellboy's face is shaped by shadows and highlights and plays a significant role in creating his personality." PHOTOS

To capture both the action and emotional aspects of the film, says Navarro, "many different camera moves are used to get the different elements across -Steadi-cams to techno-cranes and hotheads were used."

Costume designer Wendy Partridge, another del toro veteran, took her cues from the director, she says. And that really kept her on her toes. "Working with Guillermo is like working with an 8-year-old," she remarks. "His energy is incessant and his imagination never ends. He comes up with off-the-wall things out of the blue. There are no edges to his envelope."

One of Partridge's main objectives was doing justice to Mignola's original creation. "Just coming up with the right coat for Hellboy was a challenge. Do you make it out of fabric? Leather? He has a tail that moves, which requires concealing all the wiring in the costume as well. And since he jumps off buildings his costumes will get torn, so you have major continuity issues."

In addition to coordinating with the production designer and director of photography, Partridge also worked closely with the prosthetics department. "The average movie is very collaborative. This one was even more so," she says. In costuming the aquatic character Abe Sapien, she worked hand-in-hand with Spectral Motion to make sure her costume worked around the fins they created, which stick out of the character's back and legs. Sapien also has a mechanical respirator with wiring that had to be concealed within her overall design. Fortunately the costume shop and the prosthetics department were across from one another. "So we went back and forth to do fittings and make sure that all the pieces worked together. In the end it was not only practical but pretty cool looking as well."

Partridge started her work in Canada where most of the principal wardrobe was created, requiring her to fly to wherever the individual actors lived for fittings. Two weeks prior to production she moved to Prague and established a shop with a Czech crew to manufacture the remaining wardrobe. Because the film was contemporary, Partridge also did some shopping, but much less than she expected. "I shopped for things like the suits for the FBI guys, but John Hurt's clothing is all hand made because we wanted to give him the same look he had when he was a younger man with the FBI in the 1940s to show that he'd never changed. His wardrobe had a real old-man feel to it."

In fashioning Selma Blair's "eclectic and bohemian" Liz Sherman character, Partridge picked up a few items off the rack. "But Selma is petite and the things that worked best on her weren't available in multiples - and we needed six or eight of everything. So we basically wound up making them. They not only looked better on her, but it was simpler than trying to shop it."

One sequence that truly tested the limits of her creative imagination, Partridge says, was the film's Halloween sequence on the streets of New York. She was not allowed to use red (a color largely - but not exclusively - reserved for the Hellboy character). Also, since it was a nighttime sequence, white wouldn't register on camera. "Even our ghosts wound up being a dirty gray. While it was great to have all those little kids to dress, the hardest part was coming up with 500 to 600 costumes and not repeating ourselves."

Partridge's partner in crime was Spectral Motion's Mike Elizalde. Among his most daunting assignments was building the body suit for the character Sammael, Hellboy's nemesis, which required the concerted efforts of 15 members of his crew of 30 and a full six months.

"We built six different suits for Sammael, some of them for the stunt people," says Elizalde. "They're foam latex on the outside with a heavy structural construction inside, which holds batteries to make his head and tendrils move."

For the stunt sequences, Elizalde created minimal function ("basically only eye movement") stunt heads for the Sammael character that "could take a lot of punishment but were lightweight enough that the stuntmen wouldn't be injured. We made them out of a soft polyfoam that can take a pretty good bump without anybody getting hurt or the head being crushed." Stunt arms were also manufactured that were light enough and soft enough so the stunt men could fly through the air and crash into walls without injury.

The main costume worn by actor Brian Steele, who portrays Sammael, was much more elaborate - and heavy - weighing in at around 60 pounds total. "Once he was in the suit, Brian wore it pretty much all day with few breaks and he sweated profusely," says Elizalde. "He was a pretty rugged guy."

The head Sammael wore was multi-functional with membranes that opened and closed, eyes with dilating pupils, nostrils that flared and a tri-furcated tongue the character used to grab onto objects and spew venom. More elaborate arms were created for insert shots when del Toro required Sammael to move his fingers -done via remote control. "Aside from Brian, who's in the suit," says Elizalde, "we had three puppeteers operating the creature and keeping him looking slimy and wet and gross."

The nuance in Perlman's performance belies the rigorous application of several layers of makeup he underwent every day starting at four in the morning. "What's truly amazing to me is how subtle Ron's performance is and how it comes through all that makeup," says Levin. "You're looking at this outrageous character. He's red. He's got horns. He's huge. He has giant teeth. And yet, you don't see a mask. He's a living, breathing, emoting being right in front of your eyes.

"I've always enjoyed working under makeup," Perlman confesses, "ever since my first film "Quest for Fire," back in 1980. It's like alchemy. They apply this stuff to your face that's without life and the minute it's on you, it comes to life. Hellboy may look big and fierce, but the softer parts of his humanity definitely come through."

Even with years of experience wearing extensive makeup, Perlman confesses the specifics of Hellboy's head-to-toe get-up took some adjustments, particularly to his big stone arm. "Like my tail, the arm was remote controlled, so I won't know what performance the tail and the arm gave until I see the finished film."

The process took about four hours, according to makeup artist Jake Garber, with a breakfast break for wardrobe and the insertion of contact lenses by a lens technician. "Ron wore four foam-like tech appliances," notes Garber. "After a preparation to protect his skin, the first piece we put on was the neck and chest piece, which wrapped around him and was glued below his jaw line down to his collarbone. The piece extended down to his pectorals and was left loose so it could be lifted up when he put on his muscle suit. Next came the skullcap that incorporated the horns. Then there was a facial piece that covers everything except his lower lip, which was the last piece we put on." PHOTOS

After wardrobe, Perlman inserted his contact lenses after which the lower lip was secured. "The last thing I did was pop in his teeth," says Garber. When the process was complete, only the actor's eyelids were actually his own.

The logistics for stunt coordinator Monty Simons also required intense preparation, especially since del Toro wanted as much of the action as possible to be real and shot on set, rather than filled in later with computer graphics. "CGI is a punctuation rather than the sentence in this movie," Perlman affirms. "The three- dimensional world will be enhanced by CGI."

As it did with Elizalde, the character of Sammael provided Simons with one of his biggest challenges. "He wears a suit that weighs about 60 pounds. It's very flexible, but still you have a stunt guy dragging around all that weight during intricate fight scenes, having to hit marks and basically not being able to see."

Months prior to the onset of production, Simons rented a sound stage and built flying systems to explore what he could do with the Sammael and Hellboy characters. Flying systems were built with eight special harnesses for the two characters that had to be custom fit, measured and sized with "pick points" - different places where the cables could be attached to the harnesses since Simons didn't know how the costumed characters were going to balance once they were airborne. PHOTOS

"We spent five days picking them up, seeing if they turned over and fell on their feet or their heads and how they reacted when we launched them from long distances," says Simons."We learned a lot that week. It was very encouraging, because amazingly enough, there was a lot we could do with guys in the Sammael suit."

Of concern with Hellboy was the character's large concrete fist, which Simons feared would add weight to the character and change his center of gravity to such an extent that, when suspended, he would be completely off balance. This was solved by the design of several lighter-weight fists just for the levitation scenes.

Simons' hard work paid off in the exciting fight scene between Sammael and Hellboy on a subway platform, as well as in the chase sequence at Halloween, most of which were shot live on set.

Simons also studied all the actors in rehearsal before deciding when and if a stunt double would be required. "I watch them as they walk back and forth on the set to see how coordinated they are and how able they are when it comes to action and having to think fast and react under pressure," he says. "Once I've learned all that I go through each sequence, stunt by stunt and figure out what they're capable of and where their part will end and where I will put in a stunt guy."

The sequences in which the Abe Sapien character, played by Doug Jones, is under water, are a combination of special effects and stunt coordination. "Since Abe spends so much time under water, trying to do it physically would have taken weeks of shooting for just a few seconds of film. That was logistically impractical," says Simons. "However, we did have a couple of scenes in which we hung Doug upside down and filmed him 'dry for wet.' It appears that he's in a tank, when actually he's behind a two-sided wall of glass with water in between."

To Nick Allder, the SFX Supervisor, fell the task of executing some of the film's most daring on-set mechanical stunts like flipping a Jeep Cherokee into the air three times and crashing it, "which had never been done before, so it was a challenge," says Allder.

The feat was executed with the use of cables and a large nitrogen cylinder. "You see Hellboy walk over and punch the car with his hand and stop it and the car literally flips up and stops dead. Then it rotates over him and crashes to the ground behind him. It was very realistic."

The action that could not be staged on set was the responsibility of visual effects supervisor Edward Irastorza. His work included digitized images as well as miniatures. "We have a digital bridge being blasted apart by a giant pendulum. These effects are being done by (the visual effects house) The Orphanage," lrastorza explains. "Whenever you see Abe Sapien swimming, that's a digital effect done by Tippett Studio. If Sammael moves any faster than a step or two, that's basically a digital character effect."

In total there are about 900 visual effects in Hellboy, Irastorza estimates. The opening sequence at the Abbey Ruins totaled 95 shots, most of them of the giant machine that brings Baby Hellboy to Earth. About a year before production began, lrastorza started work on his visual animatics, a rough form of animation, in order to get the timing for each sequence.

From the official "Hellboy" Press Release.