Following Guillermo del Toro’s successful 2004 and 2008 fantasy starring Ron Pearlman, and then Neil Marshall’s 2019 action starring Stranger Thing’s David Harbour comes the latest movie incarnation of our favourite cigar-smoking big red hero with Hellboy: The Crooked Man, which stars Jack Kesy as Hellboy and directed by Crank’s Brian Taylor.
The latest movie has been co-written by Mike Mignola, who created the original Hellboy comic book back in 1994, alongside Christopher Golden (who is probably most well known for his writing work on Buffy The Vampire Slayer books and affiliated projects, but who has also worked on Mignola’s Hellboy comics).
Based on the comic-book miniseries of the same name by Mignola and artist Richard Corben, Hellboy: The Crooked Man was first published in July 2008 and is set in the 1950s. It follows a rookie agent of the BPRD (the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense) who teams up with Hellboy to protect the residents of Appalachia from the creepy Crooked Man, who is collecting souls for the devil.
We sat down with Big Red himself, Jack Kesy, who tells us about taking on the iconic role, sitting in the makeup chair and how this movie is different from the movies that came before it.
So, Hellboy: The Crooked Man. How does one get involved in a movie like this?!
I have no idea. Honestly, it’s like I always say, all the good or bad things in life, they always come out of left field and get you.
So I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing yet! No, it’s definitely a good thing. It’s a great thing. I don’t know. It just finds you. Like acting. I didn’t seek out acting. Let me tell you, I didn’t seek out a lot of things. It just happened, man.
I got a phone call from a producer on the side of the road outside of Detroit, and he was like ‘dude, you want to play Hellboy?’ and I was like ‘what are you talking about?!’ It was literally three in the afternoon, the middle of the day. And then we got into it and kind of battled for it a little bit. And it happened, it’s crazy.
Were you aware of the character before taking on the role?
Yeah, I was aware of it. I hadn’t seen the David Harbour version at that point. I ended up visiting it after, just out of curiosity, but I saw the original with Guillermo del Toro film because I had worked with him. He was my first legit director. I’d done some really piece of shit movies before that, from, like Craigslist I think, but he was my first legit director, so I got into all his work.
So I watched Ron Perlman, and he was fantastic. Obviously he’s a great actor, and it’s a great movie, it really was.
That’s a pretty cool first legit director to have…
Totally! He’s funny. He’s amazing, man. I like him. He’s brilliant. He’s not precious either. He’s a tough guy, man.
Did you look at Ron Perlman and David Harbour’s performances as inspiration before taking on the character yourself?
I’ll be 100% honest. I think Ron Perlman (I can’t speak for him, he’s not here) but I think he probably approached it the same way that I did. There’s a script, you read the lines, there’s a tone, there’s a comic book, and you can’t deviate much from it.
It’s kind of like Batman. You got Christian Bale’s version, Rob Patterson. They all have a similar vibe and within those parentheses, you get to wiggle and jiggle your ass a little differently. But for the most part, the blueprint is done for you. That’s not a cop-out. It just is what it is. It’s a character. There’s a concrete, specific character created by Mike Mignola and then there’s a script that’s been adapted, and you work within those parentheses. A little bit here and there I got to improvise. I obviously had my own roll-up cigarettes. I smoke. I don’t smoke now. I try to quit, but I’ll probably be back. So I make him my own here and there, which people could probably distinguish, but for the most part, it’s a character that we have to fulfill.
Did you get a chance to speak to Mike Mignola about the character before you shot the movie?
I didn’t. Not until afterwards, but I got to hang out with him and his wife. They’re really great people. They’ve got a lot of Hellboy in them. They’re fun.
But the director did. He’s a very smart director. Brian is well prepared, and he maybe comes off casual, like I do, but he’s not. He knows every fucking thing. Man, I found that out when we did an interview and some lady tried to pop quiz his ass and failed miserably. He knew everything!
Hellboy is pretty complex. Hard on the outside, soft on the inside. How do you go about approaching a character like that?
Obviously it’s a challenge, and I hope I touched on it. For me personally, he’s totally relatable. I mean, on an emotional, intellectual level – obviously not on the surface – I think a lot of people relate to him. That’s why I wanted to lean into that human element of there’s a guy who essentially hates his life. I mean, hello, like seven out of ten people or more are jaded, hate their job, unhappy with their life, want to see themselves doing something else. Like he just wants to listen to the radio, go to the dance, go through the drive-through movie theater, put his arm around a girl, and have that experience as a young man, but he can’t. A lot of people can relate to that. When they look in the mirror, they want to smash their fucking head into it and that’s the fun part. I like leaning into that element.
You also don’t get much dialogue in the movie – how did you go about playing this character under all those prosthetics and without many lines?
That’s the challenge. That’s the relationship between you and the director, and obviously there’s also the buffer of the mask. That was a challenging aspect of it because I know myself after doing this for years. I know I got this. But here, it’s a little different. So you have to build some trust with the director. Like, is this reading? I didn’t want to do some Scooby Doo acting. I just kind of keep it really subtle. And maybe it’s too subtle for some, I don’t know, but that was definitely a relationship between me and the director, and hopefully [audiences] get it.
How was the process of the makeup and prosthetics to get the look of Hellboy?
Brutal! In the beginning, it was a long time. It was like six hours as it’s gonna be because you’re a new person. They have to make sure everything fits. And then we got it down, sometimes you got it four and a half, sometimes three and a half hours. It just all depends. Sometimes shit wants to stick, sometimes it doesn’t! It’s like, what changed?! Haha. Is it the humidity? What the fuck is going on? It’s kind of that process.
But we all became really good friends. I love the people who worked around me. They were so accommodating. It was just awesome. They made it a lot easier than it was. But it was a trial of patience.
You’re the first one there – 3:30 in the morning every day. By the time 7am/8am rolls up to shoot, you’ve already been there for four hours. Everyone’s just crawling in. Then we wrap and I gotta stay behind because they gotta take it off.
But I know what I signed up for. Obviously, it got a little difficult towards the end. I got really sick. And people were getting sick and dropping like flies. But I have to show up and do it anyway. It tested me. It was a personal experience of resolve but it was good.
How does The Crooked Man differ from the other Hellboy movies?
I’ve seen only the first one and I’ve seen parts of David Harbour’s one. Ours is a period piece. It’s a lot more grounded. It feels vintage to me. Sort of like what the Ninja Turtles were when I watched them as a kid. I love those original movies, as opposed to these big CGI-looking mofos, which I wasn’t into.
It’s a lot more grounded. It’s a lot more specific. It’s not larger than life, so to speak, which I prefer personally, though people have different tastes. It’s true to form. It’s really true to Mike’s form. Some of it’s literally frame by frame from the comic book. Obviously, they stitched a couple of other stories together for story-making purposes, and it is a film at the end of the night, not a comic book. But for the most part, it’s true to Mike Mignola’s comic book. It’s a lot more of an independent feel, grounded movie. And it is a horror. I mean, Hellboy is a horror character. It’s horror. If you’d seen that guy, you’d shit yourself, and you’d be like ‘what the fuck is going on on earth?!’.
If there were more Hellboy movies, what situation or time period would you like to see Big Red in?
You know what, we were just joking around with ideas. I would love to see Hellboy go into the 60s, maybe into the 70s, like bell bottoms, shirt out. He’s mythic. People are on Quaaludes and acids. So I feel like he’d blend in for a minute. People would question their own sanity. Are they tripping or not? He would blend in for a while, but then obviously his job would have to call him, and he’d have to take the bell bottoms off and get down and dirty! I’d love to see him in a period piece again. I’d love to see him tripping out with the hippies, but then having to save the world again. Keep that going but keep it grounded, keep it human, and have him discover elements of himself. I’d love to see that.
What do you want for audiences to take away from Hellboy: The Crooked Man?
I don’t know. Honestly, I try to stay out of people’s heads and what they feel and what they think. Obviously, I would love for them to love it and be like ‘wow, these people went for it, it’s dark, it’s scary’ and actually, you know, maybe even enjoyed it on a different level. I don’t want to say they were moved, because that’s preposterous, but perhaps, enjoyed it differently from every other movie. I don’t know what people think or feel anymore, but I do hope they love it.
Icon Film Distribution presents Hellboy: The Crooked Man in UK cinemas from 27 September. Read our review here.
