Hellboy Animated: Blood and Iron
Dark Horse; IMDb; Manga.com; Wikipedia
This is the second Hellboy Animated movie, after Sword of Storms.
The present-day story is interspersed with flashbacks to a related mission Professor Broom was involved with back in the 30s. He, along with a young priest and some other guys were searching for a young woman named Anna, who had been abducted by a vampire named Erzsebet Ondrushko. Anna's fiancee was also among the search party. Unfortunately, they were too late to save her, but the Professor did manage to defeat Erzsebet. Interestingly, the flashbacks seem to occur in reverse order throughout the film. I suppose that technique has been used fairly often in recent years, in films I haven't seen yet, so it may not be that innovative, but it was fairly fresh for me. The priest is clearly having a major of crisis of faith by the end of the mission (in the first flashback), so it's interesting to see him go from that state to one of confidence in his faith in the later flashbacks, which are set earlier. His deterioration will also become important in the present....
Anyway, in the present, the Professor, Hellboy, Liz, Abe, and a new BPRD recruit named Sydney Leach (who is a human metal detector) head off to investigate a reportedly haunted house which has recently been purchased by some rich guy who's friends with a senator or whatever, who is involved in the financing of the BPRD. Which was the only reason the organization was even going to get involved, though it was considered low priority, until the Professor spoke up and suggested they all go- including himself. But he didn't want to say why he thought it important.
The guy who bought the place wanted to turn it into a sort of tourist attraction, exploit the ghosts. But the ghosts turned out to be victims of Erzsebet, whose possessions the guy had had shipped over from Europe. We learn that she had been a witch who bathed in the blood of young women to maintain her own youth and beauty, and later became a vampire. Now the two witches who originally trained her- who were very old, ugly, and creepy even back then- are trying to revive Erzsebet. So, the BPRD has to try to prevent the ceremony from being completed.
Well, there's also a bit of a subplot about the goddess Hecate, who Erzsebet and the witches worshipped. She's been watching Hellboy and doesn't understand why he concerns himself with mortals, since he's a higher being like herself. Eventually, he'll have a confrontation with her. And... there's not much else I can say right now, because I had recorded the movie on TV and when I watched it, it turned out the end didn't get recorded. I have the DVD now, so whenever I get around to watching it, I'll update this review, but for now I can say that what I did see so far was fairly cool and all....