It is a fool’s errand to try and summarize John Hurt’s decades-long career as an actor with one film. What would you even choose?
Would you go early, with his turn as the patron saint of duplicity in A Man for All Seasons? Or his immortal moment of horror in Alien? Hurt had the kind of versatility that allowed him to play Big Brother’s signature victim in 1984, and then play Big Brother himself in V for Vendetta.
The Elephant Man. The Hit. Rob Roy. Hell, Hurt managed to become one of the most popular recent versions of Doctor Who with a one-off appearance in a recent special. And that’s not even getting into his brief, deranged appearances in films like Dead Man and The Proposition, adding spicy trails of mania in the margins.
But for fans of a certain age and a certain genre bent, John Hurt will always be Professor Bruttenholm (“Broom”), the wizened and wise father figure to Ron Perlman’s irascible demon-hunting demon, Hellboy.
The 2004 film was a labor of love for writer-director Guillermo del Toro, a project he pursued even as easier, saner and more lucrative properties were offered at his feet. del Toro clung fast to his passion project, and to his conviction that only Ron Perlman was the right man to don the tail and horns of Hellboy.
While neither Hellboy or its 2008 sequel, The Golden Army were box office smashes, they nonetheless maintain a passionate fanbase for del Toro, Perlman, and comic creator Mike Mignola, so much so that del Toro recently gauged interest in a third film and was met with an overwhelming response.
Will there be a third Hellboy film? Who’s to say? But if and/or when a new entry arrives, it won’t have that peculiar magic of John Hurt to help light up the strange dark world of gods and monsters, and cinema is poorer for it. — Brendan
Next week’s pick:
We’re starting up a new short series called “Girl Stories”, which is exactly what it sounds like: stories about girls. First up is The Fits, a critically acclaimed 2016 film about adolescence and dancing that veers into something else entirely. The Fits is currently streaming free for Amazon Prime subscribers.
— Austin
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Husain Sumra
It turns out I really needed to watch a big, red dude destroy a Nazi with a giant cog and a loving John Hurt ensuring that his son had someone to lean on in the future.
Other than the Nazi fighting and Guillermo del Toro’s luscious storytelling, I was blown away by the makeup in Hellboy. I would have believed you if you told me that this was released in 2016. It holds up so well that I just want to watch it one more time, scrutinizing the details in Abe, Hellboy, and those weird squid monsters.
Speaking of monsters, Hellboy perfectly showcases how economical del Toro is when he introduces creatures. Within a couple of moments, you totally understand what they’re capable and their rules. You understand that when the squid monster dies, two rise from its ashes. You understand that the terrifying Nazi assassin is powered by clockwork and needs to tune up before he slices and dices anything that’s in his way.
Some of Hellboy, like the one-liners and wirework, don’t fully stand the test of time, but the amount of fun its having everywhere else makes up for it.
Trey Lawson
We’re discussing Hellboy this week in part to celebrate the life and career of the late John Hurt. Hurt’s work spanned numerous genres and media, and his screen presence has always commanded my attention as a viewer. Case in point, he really isn’t in Hellboy as much as I remembered. He’s around for the first half, I suppose — and at that only for a handful of scenes. But that speaks to just how good Hurt was, and how memorable the relationship was that he helped craft between his Professor Broom and Ron Perlman’s Hellboy. That father-son dynamic, and the tragedy of Broom’s secret illness, drive much of the film. There is of course also the quasi-love triangle between Hellboy, Liz, and Myers, but the “quasi” there is pretty key as I don’t think any viewer would actually be surprised by how it turns out. It really is the father-son dynamic that informs Hellboy and the way he sees the world around him; so much so that it becomes twisted or even inverted by Rasputin in the third act. In many ways, Rasputin is an absent, abusive father figure who serves as counterpoint to the protective and nurturing Broom. Hellboy’s struggle to reconcile these two important people in his life is also his struggle over whether to embrace humanity or his demonic side. It is a story of nature vs nurture, and John Hurt’s Broom — even when stern or disappointed — always very clearly loves his adopted son. Hellboy is also full of delightful practical effects and cleverly blends elements of Lovecraftian mythos with an action/superhero formula. It’s exciting, funny, and occasionally a bit creepy — but at its core is the story of a father and an adopted son struggling to find his place in the world.
Brendan Agnew
Let’s talk about John Hurt. More specifically, John Hurt the Brilliant Supporting Actor.
Something that’s struck me about Hurt’s work, especially when part of ensembles, is the way he bolsters an entire film. There are “character actors” who savor the chance to dig into meaty, showy roles while the spotlight is on them (and Hurt could certainly crow with the best of them), but Hurt’s great gift was to lend weight to whatever he touched, seemingly effortlessly, without getting in anyone’s way.
Case in point: Hellboy. Guillermo Del Toro’s comic book passion project is a solid film, but also faced a myriad of hurdles as an oddball “superhero” movie in the early aughts, not the least of which is Wonderbread audience surrogate John Myers. Agent Myers has the thankless task of being The New Guy that everyone can explain everything, to without much actual personality or agency to make him more than a walking narrative device. Until he shares a the screen with Professor Trevor Broom. Hurt almost singlehandedly imbues a vanilla character performing a thankless task with legitimate weight and sympathy simply because of the belief he puts into his performance that we SHOULD feel this way. It’s a microcosm of the way he brought his “A” game to every project, no matter how ludicrous it seemed on paper, no matter how short a time he’d be ask for.
John Hurt always showed up to work, and his work lifted up everyone else.
THE TEAM
Brendan Foley
Man oh man does it hurt to watch this film knowing that John Hurt is no longer with us. There’s a deep strain of melancholy that has always run through Guillermo del Toro’s work, adding a rich flavor to his flights of fantasy and romance, and Hellboy’s take on an even sharper note now that Hurt is gone.
Hurt’s Broom is not just our entry point and guide to this bizarre world of avuncular demons and nebbishy fish-men, he brings a sincere weight of weariness and age that grounds the rest of the film. Without that wonderful gravelly voice of his intoning the pages of Lovecraftian mythology, it just wouldn’t have worked as well.
It’s a small role in a career filled with brighter lights, but in my heart, John Hurt will always be Professor Broom, first and foremost.
As for the film itself, Hellboy is loads of fun, but remains a too-obviously compromised version of what del Toro set out to make. You can see the studio notes throughout (fucking Myers), and it gets frustrating to watch del Toro obviously yoking against the leash of studio meddling and budgetary limits.
Fortunately, we have The Golden Army, which fixes pretty much every mis-step and dials the weird up to 11. While that is the superior film, the original Hellboy remains one of the oddest studio films to ever sneak out of the studio system, and I’m grateful for it.
Justin Harlan
Nearly 38 years after having an alien burst out of his chest, the illustrious actor John Hurt passed away from complications from the ordeal. Interestingly, he lived not through one such catastrophe, but a second 8 years later, while eating “The Space Special” at his favorite intergalactic diner. To call Mr. Hurt a tough man would be quite the understatement. In fact, to call him Mr. Hurt is also an understatement; for his contributions to mankind, Mr. Hurt became Sir Hurt, being knighted by the Queen.
Sir Hurt was an incredible man. In addition to surviving these alien encounters, where he literally birthed a nasty xenomorph and talented singing/dancing one, he also raised a demon from Hell as his own son. Unfortunately, his generosity and care was his undoing, as one historical tyrant named Rasputin took his life.
Surprising to everyone, especially Rasputin, Sir Hurt reappeared soon after, living for another 12 years before taking his final breath. While believed to be linked to his alien encounters, the official cause of death is listed as pancreatic cancer.
Goodbye Sir, you will be missed.
Austin Vashaw
I rewatched both Hellboy films recently and am glad to report that Hellboy (and even more so its sequel) holds up beautifully. A few effects or CGI shots show their age, but that’s practically a compliment given that the film is absolutely packed with them from start to finish.
John Hurt is definitely the anchor of the first film, providing an air of credibility to what might at that time, before the solidification of director del Toro’s reputation, have casually been dismissed as mere comic book pulp in a market saturated with it. Hurt could play men you’d loathe or love with equal fervor, and in Hellboy he had one of his most endearing characters — the fatherly Professor Bruttenholm, whose love and nurture turned a demon birthed to bring about the Apocalypse into one of the good guys. His funeral scene and our heroes’ mourning now carries even more raw power, for we no longer need imagine their loss.
I’ve loved John Hurt for a long time and will miss his presence greatly, but I’m thankful that he had a long and fruitful life and career doing what he loved.
Sir John Vincent Hurt, CBE
22 January 1940 — 25 January 2017
Get it at Amazon:
Hellboy — [Blu-ray] | [DVD] | [Amazon Video]
Hellboy II — [Blu-ray] | [DVD] | [Amazon Video]