Hellboy creator Mike Mignola first saw his trademark comic book character make the leap from page to screen in 2004’s critically-acclaimed adaptation of the same name, helmed by fantasy auteur Guillermo del Toro. After co-writing two direct-to-DVD animated Hellboy films (one of which was nominated for a Primetime Emmy), Mignola reunited with comrade-in-arms del Toro to pen an original sequel to their successful first Hellboy film, infusing the familiar world of the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense with a distinctly folkloric twist. The result, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, opened this summer to a Certified Fresh 88 percent Tomatometer score and comes to DVD this week.
RT spoke with Mike Mignola to learn his Five Favorite Films of all time, which appropriately span the cinematic landscape where art meets horror. (Stay tuned for Guillermo del Toro’s Five Favorite Films to see which beloved movie both Hellboy artists share in common!)
It’s just the greatest monster movie ever made. It’s so much weirder than it needed to be; in a way it’s kind of like Hellboy, where the first Hellboy movie was like, kind of normal, for what it was, but the second movie was so much weirder because the director was like, well I got that studio picture out of my system, now I’ll just go crazy. That’s what Bride of Frankenstein was like. It’s like a monster art film.
Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast — because it’s just the greatest, weird, fantasy art film ever.
Moby Dick — John Huston’s Moby Dick, because it was a movie I saw as a kid, and it was like the great, dramatic boy movie; it’s the movie I can still watch every week.
I moved to New York in 1982, and I didn’t know any of those kind of people but that kind of world was going on. It’s a brilliant film; the poetry of the language and everything else — it’s just a great film about art.
Kenneth Branagh‘s Henry V. Because it’s just a perfect mix of that great Shakespeare dialogue, with the music and the tone of everything, and the drama…it was just perfect.
