Hellboy Returns

Everyone’s favorite do-good demon is back in the all-new animated feature Hellboy: Blood and Iron, premiering on Cartoon Network on Saturday, March 17 at 7 p.m. A follow-up to the well-received Hellboy: Sword of Storms, this second installment in the series throws vampires, werewolves, ghosts, harpies and one pissed-off dark goddess at our big, red hero and his fellow agents of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense.

Blood and Iron is quite different in tone from Sword of Storms, which had Hellboy thrust into a fantasy world of Japanese folklore. Supervising producer and director Tad Stones tells us the intent with this latest adventure was to evoke the spirit of Hammer Films, the legendary movie studio that cranked out a plethora of modestly budgeted gothic horror flicks in the 1960s and ’70s. The story focuses more on the Professor Broom character, who must again do battle with a beautiful vampire he thought he killed many years ago.

Stones collaborated on the story with Mike Mignola, creator of the Hellboy comics that started the franchise. Mignola also serves as a creative producer on the animated pics, along with Oscar-nominated filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, who directed the 2004 live-action Hellboy feature. Reprising their roles from that film are Ron Perlman as the voice of Hellboy, Selma Blair as Liz Sherman, John Hurt at Professor Broom and Doug Jones as Abe Sapien. Peri Gilpin from TV’s Frasier also returns as professor Kate Corrigan, a role she voiced in Sword of Storms.

Blood and Iron moves back and forth between present time and 1939, when Professor Broom first encountered Erzsebet Ondrushko, a female vampire who bathed in the blood of young women to stay young. When he suspects that someone in a mansion in upstate New York is trying to bring her back to life, the elderly Broom decides to investigate and finds Hellboy, Liz, Abe and Kate tagging along to make sure he doesn’t get hurt. The film culminates in a epic battle with Hecate, the powerful Queen of Witches, who wants Hellboy to embrace his destiny as a destroyer of mankind.

The series of Hellboy animated features is produced by Starz Media and animated by the company’s Film Roman and Japanese studio Madhouse. A third film, Hellboy: The Phantom Claw, is currently in the works and wil feature Lobster Johnson, a popular character from the comic-book series.

Following Saturday night’s premiere on Cartoon Network, Hellboy:Blood and Iron will be released on DVD by Anchor Bay on June 12. More information on this release and the animated Hellboy universe in general can be found at http://hellboyanimated.typepad.com.