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How Ghosts' Jim Howick Lost His Moment In Guillermo Del Toro's Hellboy

Mat Baynton and Jim Howick, two of the Six Idiots team behind the sitcoms Ghosts and Yonderland, the movie Bill and the sketch show Horrible Histories, appeared on the Richard Herring Leicester Square podcast, recorded earlier in the year and released on Christmas Day, alongside the Ghosts Christmas Special, It's Behind You. During this, they revealed a few things. Such as one of Jim Howick's earliest roles in the first Hellboy movie from 2004, directed by Guillermo Del Toro.

How Jim Howick Lost His Big Moment In Guillermo Del Toro's Hellboy
Hellboy (2004) screencap

That's him on the right, obviously. Jim Howick talked about his one scene in the movie, at the very beginning, set during World War I, taking a month of night shoots in the rain. "Real rain doesn't register on the screen, you need to use fire hoses, so I'm freezing cold for a month. Three weeks in, I got hypothermia, and I passed out. I was in and out of consciousness and woke up in a trailer being stripped; I was sent to a clinic in Prague with an IV drip." Mat Baynton encouraged Jim to recall what happened next.

How Jim Howick Lost His Big Moment In Guillermo Del Toro's Hellboy
Hellboy (2004) screencap

"Well, I didn't really know who Guillermo Del Toro was, not them. My character had a hero moment, I had to shoot the bad guy, but it was the first time I'd used a gun. Like rain machines, they're scary." And, in an acknowledged bad Mexican accent, Howick recalled Del Toro's words, "Okay, Jimmy, come up here. Every time you pull the trigger, you look like you're taking a shit." Guillermo played it back in slow motion for Jim, "and it was true. So I was fired from that scene." But that, it seems, wasn't what Mat was trying to get Jim to recall; it was Guillermo's words after Jim was hospitalised. "He called him a pussy for getting hypothermia." Jim defended Guillermo, "It was banter! I almost died!" It was, after all, a different time…

How Jim Howick Lost His Big Moment In Guillermo Del Toro's Hellboy
Hellboy (2004) screencap

The Ghosts Christmas Special, It's Behind You, is currently on the BBC iPlayer, and the Richard Herring Leicester Square Podcast can be heard here. The Hellboy clip with Jim Howick's surviving role can be seen below.


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Rich JohnstonAbout Rich Johnston

Founder of Bleeding Cool. The longest-serving digital news reporter in the world, since 1992. Author of The Flying Friar, Holed Up, The Avengefuls, Doctor Who: Room With A Deja Vu, The Many Murders Of Miss Cranbourne, Chase Variant. Lives in South-West London, works from Blacks on Dean Street, shops at Piranha Comics. Father of two. Political cartoonist.
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