In The Name of The King - The Last Mission (2014)

Dominic Purcell (from The Arrow'verse shows and Prison Break) is Hazen Kaine, a burned-out, no-nonsense American hitman working in Bulgaria. His "last" job - before retirement - is to kidnap the two daughters of the Bulgarian royal family, so his paymasters can demand an enormous ransom.

Although he's having doubts about his latest assignment, he hides the girls in the nominated shipping container anyway, then notices that one is wearing a pendant that matches the tattoo on his arm (which his late wife chose for him).

The girl tells Hazen the medallion, a family heirloom and talisman of protection against things he wouldn't understand, is magical. He takes it outside for a closer look... and causes a rift in time and space to materialise and drag him through.

Hazen finds himself in a mysterious land - which, he later learns is also called Bulgaria, but clearly is a fantastical, pseudo-Medieval version - and stumbles into a nearby village which is being attacked by a dragon!

He uses the last bullets in his gun to drive off the dragon, in the process befriending a pair of warrior princesses, Arabella (Ralitsa Paskaleva), and Emeline (Daria Simeonova).

They're living in this village because of Game of Thrones-style violent machinations which saw one of their uncles, Tervon (Marian Valev), usurp their father and steal his throne.

They are now part of a rebellion led by their other uncle, Tybalt (Nikolai Sotirov).

Eventually, Hazen comes to accept his position in this new world - his tattoo marks him out for a special destiny - and hatches a plan that will allow him to slay Tervon and steal the king's magical medallion, which will send Hazen back to our world.

During all this he develops a rather cute and chaste romantic relationship with Arabella; the hitman's flirting technique seems to be telling her about the horrific fiery death of his wife at the hands of other gangsters.

Hazen's big plan comes to nowt, as the rebels are ambushed in a forest by Tervon and his men.

However, the fight goes surprisingly well in favour of the rebels, even though Tervon has been controlling the dragon this whole time.

The evil king flees back his castle... followed by Hazen and Arabella.

The castle is remarkably easy to access and our heroes fight their way through Tervon's goons to confront the Big Bad on the roof of the castle, where Hazen dispatches him, causing the time rift to reopen.

This time, not only does Hazen travel back to our world, but also the dragon. Not entirely sure why Arabella didn't go with him.

Hazen then races to where the kidnapped girls have been hidden and fights the mobsters who have come to collect him... at which point you realise that the head gangster Ayavlo is also played by Marian Valev.

Does this mean that Hazen's whole isekai adventures in In The Name of The King - The Last Mission were a dream? Or a metaphor? He does kidnap two young princesses in our world and then become entangled with two princesses in the fantasy world. But then how do explain the dragon now loose in the skies over Sofia? 

There's a lot that's handwaved in Joel Ross's 85-minute script and under Uwe Boll's taut - let's get things done - direction. As an example, I particularly loved the blasé attitude of, I guess, the king of Bulgaria to having his daughters kidnapped and then returned by the same person. It rather implies that this happens all the time!

Honestly, for my money, too much time is spent in modern day Sofia and I'd have preferred Hazen to stay in mythical Bulgaria with his new love... but then that would have left the kids in the shipping container and at the mercy of the gangsters.

In D&D terms, I reckon it's a young black dragon (although it breathes fire)

For a decade-old, low budget , direct-to-video sword-and-sorcery flick, all the special effects, including those that bring the dragon to life, are pretty decent. Of course, the beast is obviously CGI, but I've seen far worse in this calibre of movie (yes, Asylum, I'm looking at you).

On the other hand, the fact that the rebellion relies on caves so much - despite having several villages to call their own - is a real throwback to '80s sword-and-sorcery films that also often operated on similar microbudgets and had to make do with what nature provided.

Director Uwe Boll certainly makes great use of the beautiful Bulgarian landscape and the film was largely filmed at Nu Boyana Film Studios where, co-incidentally, the new Red Sonja movie was shot as well as Jason Momoa's Conan The Barbarian and the excellent last Hellboy movie, The Crooked Man, and many other great films.

Dominic Purcell and pretty much the entire Bulgarian cast of In The Name of The King 3 are all great and clearly invested in their roles, but they're not always best served by a script which barrels along at such speed that a lot of plot threads are just left dangling.

It's also a shame that In The Name of The King - The Last Mission appears to be totally disconnected from either the first or second films in the franchise.

I'd rather hoped that Hazen was actually in the Kingdom of Ehb (where the previous films took place) and that Arabella and Emeline were the daughters of Dolph Lundgren's Granger, to continue the generational narrative of the two earlier movies.

I guess there's always headcanon. 

Hellboy - The Crooked Man (2024)

It's the late 1950s and, following a train accident, Hellboy (Jack Kesy) and rookie Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense researcher Bobbie Jo Song (Adeline Rudolph aka Agatha from The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) find themselves stranded in the Appalachian Mountains.

They soon become entangled in the life of Tom Ferrell (Jefferson White), an ex-soldier and former resident of the area who has returned to try and undo a pact he made with a demon when he was a child.

Initially, they accompany Tom to visit his former childhood sweetheart, Cora Fisher (Hannah Margetson), who has since become a witch.

Tom explains to the BRPD agents that he had been seduced by a witch called Effie Colb (Leah McNamara) who had taight how to create a lucky totem and urged him to summon a local demonic ghost-entity called The Crooked Man (Martin Bassindale).

Cora returns to her home, telling Tom and the agents that she is being persued by other witches... and it tunrs out that they are being led by Effie, who looks exactly as she did when Tom met her all those years earlier.

She is riding a white horse that turns out to be Tom's transformed father (Anton Trendafilov), who promptly dies when Effie is scared away by Hellboy.

Tom wants to take his father to the nearby church, to be buried in consecreated ground.

However, on the way they are attacked by a demonic snake that kills Cora and injects Hellboy with its toxin, causing him to have hallucinatory visions of his mother, Sara (Carola Colombo), herself a witch.

At the church, the group - meeting the blind Reverend Watts (Joseph Marcell aka the legendary Geoffrey from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air) are besieged by The Crooked Man and his coterie of witches.

Through some clever magic, our heroes manage to repel the supernatural attackers.

Hellboy and Tom then chase after The Crooked Man to the abandoned mansion that was once his home, while Jo and The Reverend head into the old mines that crisscross the mountain, believing that that is the source of The Crooked Man's power.

Working from a screenplay co-written by Mike Mignola (the creator of Hellboy) and Christopher Golden, his frequent collaborator, director and co-writer Brian Taylor serves up a Hellboy movie unlike any that have come before.

I have to confess that, for all my decades as a comic book reader, I might have only read a handful of single Hellboy issues and they've never really hooked me as Guillermo del Toro's early 2000's pulpy Hellboy duology did.

But, Hellboy: The Crooked Man, an adaptation of a 2008 Hellboy mini-series of the same name by Mike Mignola, steps away from the superheroic blockbuster nature of the del Toro era and leans, instead, heavily into Hellboy's horror roots. 

It's of a smaller scale, and more focused on its single driving narrative, than we might be used to - cinematically-speaking - from movies involving Hellboy and his compadres in the BPRD.

But have no doubt, Hellboy: The Crooked Man is a phenomenal down-and-dirty work of  mesmerising, disorientating weird Appalachian folk magic that has more in common with the works of HP Lovecraft (who gets namechecked) and atmospheric films like The Blair Witch Project, Night of The Demon, The VVitch, and Evil Dead.

If you know my taste in horror then you can see why I loved The Crooked Man.

The verisimilitude of the world created is second to none, relying mainly on practical effects, and proving you don't need a honking big Hollywood budget to produce memorable horror movies.

While this is very much its own thing - officially unconnected to del Toro's wonderful flicks and whatever the dickens that 2019 mess was - I could see an argument for Jack Kesy's charismatic Hellboy being a younger version of Ron Perlman's take on the character.

I can also see why The Crooked Man might not be for everyone, but given that this was co-written by the character's creator, I have to believe that this is the closest iteration of Hellboy to the source material.

Snakes Alive! Solomon Kane Gets His Own Comic and Conan Crushes FCBD Again!

In case you missed it: following the incredible success of its Conan The Barbarian comics, Titan is broadening its offerings from the worlds of pulp scribe extraordinaire Robert E Howard with the launch of a new Solomon Kane miniseries in March.

Although little is known at present, Solomon Kane: The Serpent Ring will be written - and illustrated - by Pat Zircher (who has delivered the mighty fine Solomon Kane strip in the Savage Sword of Conan magazine this year).

Legendary artist Mike Mignola (of Hellboy fame) will be providing variant cover art for, at least, the first issue.

The hardnosed, 16th Century Puritan monster-slayer Kane, of course, co-starred in Titan's recent Howardverse crossover comic event, Battle of The Black Stone, alongside Conan and a host of other Robert E Howard creations.

Keeping with the serpent theme (a common motif in Howard's work), Titan is also announcing its next "event" storyline, Scourge of The Serpent, with its 2025 Free Comic Book Day offering.

The serpent god's influence tightens its coils around the Hyborian Age and every other age linked to it... Three stunning supernatural stories will spiral together to answer a chilling question framed in past and present. What is Set’s grand plan for humanity and, now that it has begun, can it be stopped? The newest epic Conan event, begins here!

Conan: Scourge of The Serpent will be available, for free, from your friendly, local comic book shop on Saturday, May 3, along with a host of other 'taster' titles.