If you knew there was a new Hellboy movie this year – the fourth live action one – chances are you weren’t thrilled about that fact. For most people, it seems, HELLBOY was two movies directed by Guillermo Del Toro and starring Ron Perlman and since those guys aren’t making a third one that’s it, end of story, no further questions your honor.

That was the response in 2019 when there was a third one made on not much more than half the budget of HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY, with a different tone, directed by Neil Marshall and starring David Harbour as Hellboy. The makeup just isn’t as good, it’s jokier than I wanted, but hell, it won me over. It’s less reverent than the Del Toros, more in the style of 2000s CG-driven studio b-movies, and even has Milla Jovovich as the villain. In some ways I thought it was more in the spirit of the comics by Mike Mignola than the Del Toro movies were, though with a whole bunch of different stories crammed into one movie, so it feels pretty hectic.

Before greenlighting HELLBOY: THE CROOKED MAN they must’ve checked around and found out I was the only person who liked the 2019 one. So they started over with a new Hellboy (Jack Kesy, DARK WEB: CICADA 3301), a new director (Brian Taylor, MOM AND DAD), and less than half the budget of the previous lower budgeted one. In the U.S. it went straight to V.O.D. with an ugly poster and publicity stills that made it look like a fan film.

This week it came out on disc and I caught up with it. It definitely looks much cheaper than the others, and the Hellboy makeup especially can’t match how good Perlman looked. But like Harbour before him Kesy does a valiant job of making me like him anyway. I’m happy to say I kinda liked this one.

I’m not saying you will too. But maybe. I know how much some of the folks talk about “folk horror,” and that’s what this is – the Appalachian type. Hillbilly legends and folklore and shit. Set in 1959, out in some woods, people turning into animals, magic bones, a blind reverend, floating seductress witches, mountain spirits, snakes going down throats, “a big fucking bird,” you name it. Despite the CROOKED MAN’s obvious economic disadvantages it has one thing over the other ones, and that’s that it’s written by Mignola and his regular collaborator Christopher Golden (with director Taylor), adapted from one specific comics story. It’s probly the worst HELLBOY movie, but not for nothing it’s the one that’s most like the comics – small little isolated supernatural investigations, ghost stories, folk tales, nothing bombastic. Hellboy can travel around and meet people, they notice he’s a demon guy or whatever but they don’t got a problem with it. Some of them already heard about him. This guy they’re trying to help named Tom Ferrell (Jefferson White, EILEEN) says Hellboy can’t be the devil because he read in Life Magazine that he was found in a church, plus “I met that son of a bitch. He don’t look nothing like you.”

The Bureau of Paranormal Research and Development stumbles into this case by accident. Hellboy and his less field-experienced partner Bobbie Jo Song (Adeline Rudolph, who will play Kitana in MORTAL KOMBAT 2) are transporting a possessed spider that grows giant and escapes, wrecking the train they’re on. Hellboy says that something evil in the area caused it. He knows because “Dark things call to dark things,” so he heard it too.

They come across a cabin where a boy has been magically paralyzed. Just then Tom returns to the area after many years away, and starts telling them about how he and his childhood crush Cora Fisher (Hannah Margetson) and another lady named Effie Kolb (Leah McNamara, NAILS) dabbled in witchcraft, causing all kinds of problems.

One of the first scenes that really had me realizing I like this one is when Grammy Oakum (Suzanne Bertish, MAGIC MIKE’S LAST DANCE) looks right into the camera and explains how to make a “witch ball” out of various animals guts and baby’s nails, boiled in a pot and wrapped with “some hairs from your head and your nethers.” These witch balls come up a couple times. Mignola reads about alot of weird shit like this and puts all the best ones into his stories. I mean, even if you don’t believe in magic you don’t want somebody to throw a witch ball at you, in my opinion.

Effie is a good performance and character, a taunting cackler somewhat in an EVIL DEAD vein. But the main threat is the subtitular ghoul (Martin Bassindale, HERE), a creepy old man in a top hat with a bent neck courtesy of his death at the gallows. A good villain used with responsible moderation. As Tom tells it, he was “one of the first white men who came here from Europe hundreds of years ago,” he got rich playing both sides of the civil war, but “Heaven don’t have much room for rich folks,” so now he goes around claiming souls for the Devil, getting a penny for each one. “He gets enough of them, one day he’ll be rich again.”

Tom’s been running from the Crooked Man ever since a regrettable childhood ritual involving a cat skeleton. “You were just a kid. A deal with a demonic entity? How can that possibly be binding?” Bobbie Jo asks.

“Yeah, it’s kind of binding,” Hellboy says. But, “Look, there may be some wiggle room. It’s what I’m here for. To renegotiate.”

Tom finds out his dad (Anton Trendafilov, UNDISPUTED 3) is dead, and brings his body to Reverend Nathaniel Armstrong Watts (Joseph Marcell, THE EXORCISM OF GOD) to bury in consecrated ground at the church, which we’ll find out was built to plug a collapsed coal mine leading to Hell (see also THE CHURCH and DOMINION: PREQUEL TO THE EXORCIST). During the ensuing battle, the reverend will turn a cursed cat bone (long story) into a flaming holy weapon, use it to carve a glowing cross into the shovel he digs graves with, and give it to Hellboy to use as a weapon. I guess religion is kind of cool sometimes.

I really do like Kesy in the role, but I also kept thinking his eyes and nose were wrong for the part. Or at least the makeup failed to make them look right some of the time. It wasn’t a constant problem though, and he generally looks better in motion than in the stills you’ve seen (it took me a while to find the one to the right here, where I think he looks pretty cool). THE CROOKED MAN obviously lacks the lavish production value of the previous ones, but then again the story is designed for a lower budget. The CG effects are tasteful, it generally looks much better than that rough opening, there’s some good atmosphere to it, and Taylor and d.p. Ivan Vatsov (BOYKA: UNDISPUTED) come up with some interesting camera moves here and there without going spastic like Taylor would’ve in the CRANK days. The score by Sven Faulconer (SCREAM VI) is pretty good and I like the occasional use of blues and early rock ’n roll needle drops with lyrics about sinners and stuff.

Most of all I think this works for me because it’s a good script with lots of great dialogue about the weird shit that’s going on. Like when they go to Cora’s house and find her empty skin in a pile on the floor.

“What do you make of this?”

“She must be out roaming around. Just gotta wait for her to get back.”

Then a raccoon scratches at the window.

“That’ll be her demon familiar, I suspect.”

“I hate those.”

It’s such a nice blend of weird occult details and dry humor that I don’t know which one it is when Hellboy says, “The only way to tell how old a witch is, you gotta cut her leg off and count the rings.”

If you’re open minded and you’re ever in the mood for a down and dirty Hellboy tale in the tradition of the comics, where he travels and meets some people, stumbles into some crazy shit, makes some dry comments, says “aw, crap!” a couple times, gets thrown around by and punches a few monsters, I do recommend HELLBOY: THE CROOKED MAN for your specific circumstances. It worked for me.

In an ideal world this would’ve somehow made enough VOD cash to warrant a sequel with a slightly bigger budget. That ain’t happening, is my guess. But I won’t mind if we keep getting different cinematic Hellboys every several years. He’s gotta catch up to the Batmans and the James Bonds.