As Meagan pointed out in her review for us, one of the best aspects of Neil Marshall’s monster-loaded, blood-soaked Hellboy is the Baba Yaga, a Mike Mignola character who comes to the big screen for the first time in Marshall’s rated “R” reboot. Meagan writes:
“Any scene that features the seriously creepy Baba Yaga is an amazing highlight that I can’t stress enough, particularly one that sees Hellboy inside her home. This character is so fantastically designed and performed, her home so unnerving, that she deserves an entire movie of her own. Troy James once again creates a memorable horror character in his unique twisty way.”
Yes, the Baba Yaga was played by “Twisty Troy” James, who has fast become of the top creature performers in the entertainment business. A real-life contortionist, James is able to bend, twist and move his body in highly unnatural (and very unnerving) ways and naturally, horror filmmakers have been mining his incredible abilities by making him their monsters.
Most notably, Twisty Troy played Pretzel Jack in “Channel Zero: The Dream Door,” one of the most memorable new horror villains to come along in recent years. James also made a memorable appearance as “Sleepwalker” in the 2016 horror film The Void, and more recently he played the DC Comics character Peter Merkel aka Rag Doll for The CW’s “The Flash.”
Up next, he’s playing a body-horror nightmare in Jen & Sylvia Soska’s Rabid.
I have to agree with Meagan that Twisty Troy is a total scene-stealer as the Baba Yaga, an evil witch who lost her eye in a battle with Hellboy prior to the events of Marshall’s film. Banished to another dimension by Big Red, the Baba Yaga lives in a creepy house that stands atop a set of chicken legs – and yes, Marshall absolutely worked that incredibly bizarre imagery into the film, making for one of its most awe-inspiring moments – and she herself stands on wooden peg legs and scurries around the place like the creepiest spider you’ve ever seen.
Oh and yes, she totally eats children. The movie isn’t afraid to show that.
It’s Twisty Troy’s performance that really does proper justice to the Baba Yaga, but Academy Award-winner Joel Harlow‘s makeup work on the character is equally impressive. And though the film is chock full of CGI throughout – some of it good, some admittedly pretty bad – the 100% practical approach to Baba Yaga makes her a standout highlight of the whole thing.
She’s a character only Twisty Troy could possibly play, and without Troy’s abilities at the team’s disposal, she likely would’ve been brought to the screen with a whole lot of CGI. Like Javier Botet, James allows for filmmakers to practically bring otherworldly, unnatural-moving creatures to life, and that makes him indispensable within the horror genre.
Check out some behind the scenes shots of Twisty Troy freaking everyone out on set below, along with a short featurette video about Joel Harlow’s practical effects on the new Hellboy.
