The Samaritan

For guns wielded by Hellboy in the comics, see Hellboy's gun.

'The Samaritan' replica by Sideshow Collectibles

The Samaritan is a weapon from the 2004 film Hellboy and its 2008 sequel The Golden Army. The preferred sidearm of Hellboy, the Samaritan is a massive revolver created by the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense that is capable of firing a variety of specialized bullets to fight monsters.

Weapon Specifications

The Samaritan is an oversized top-break-action revolver, resembling a beefed-up Webley revolver. Its size and heft – nearly 10 pounds – make it viable as a bludgeoning weapon in addition to its normal operation.

The cylinder has four chambers, accepting 22mm rounds. It fires with a muzzle velocity of 1775 feet per second. Slots on the chamber serve as indicators that allow an operator to quickly see if the gun is loaded.

As it is difficult for Hellboy to perform fine tasks with the large fingers of the Right Hand of Doom, he usually uses his left hand to both load and fire the sidearm; Hellboy makes use of speed-loaders to more easily arm the weapon. He does demonstrate an ability to fire it with his right hand in The Golden Army, during a fight in the Troll Market.

Construction

The Samaritan was hand-forged in 1956, in Braintree, Massachusetts. Its metal components were forged from a special alloy created from the iron of Irish church bells, holy silver, fragments of blades used in the Crusades, cannonballs, and various sacred amulets; the gunsmiths invoked ancient and holy incantations during the smelting. The metal was cooled in sage water and finished by hand.

A silver B.P.R.D. medallion, given as an 18th-birthday gift to Hellboy by Professor Broom, is embedded into the wooden grips. Some say that the wood was carved from a fragment of the true cross.

A short, knotted leather lanyard is braided to the butt of the gun; the end dangles loose rather than being tied to anything. Hellboy carries the gun in a leather belt holster that is emblazoned with a large "US" leather stamp; this holster is custom-made and reinforced for the weapon's great strength and size.

Special Rounds

Hellboy makes custom bullets himself as a hobby; there are twelve different varieties in total, including silver, gold, and hollow-point as well as the "whoppers" and tracking rounds.

Whoppers

Perfect job for these babies. Made them myself. Holy water, clove leaf, silver shavings, white oak. The works.

—Hellboy, showing the Samaritan's specialized ammunition to Agent Myers

These rounds, Hellboy's favorites, are tipped with explosive shells that contain white oak chips, holy water, clover leaves, and silver shavings. These ingredients, each bearing a folkloric power to impede evil and/or specific monsters, have the potential to injure the supernatural foes Hellboy may face.

Tracking Rounds

These contain a phosphorescent green liquid that will drip from the wound they open on a target, allowing the target's path to be easily followed in low-light situations. In the film, Hellboy deploys one such round when fighting Sammael.

Gallery

The Samaritan's labeled carrying case.

Hellboy brandishes The Samaritan.

The Samaritan, illustrated by Mike Mignola.

Design

I like revolvers. They have cool moving parts and a vibe that says "I'm a tool for the working man." When approaching the design of Hellboy's gun, I felt it would be cool to head in the direction of a massive snub nose.
As the design of the gun progressed, Mike [Mignola] started telling me how Hellboy draws his gun quite a bit, but hardly ever fires it. "He mostly uses it to hit things with."
The idea of this gun functioning as a hammer started to show up in the new design. The barrel got fatter and longer, and the cylinder bigger and chunkier. And when it was time to render the final design, lots of dings, dents, and scratches were added to underscore the idea that whether this master-blaster shot you or clobbered you, it was most certainly going to hurt.

—TyRuben Ellingson, "Samaritan" designer

The Samaritan does not take its name or design from any particular gun used by Hellboy in the comics, though its holster and general size is somewhat comparable to handguns used by the comic character.

Guillermo del Toro's script initially described the gun in a different manner than its ultimate appearance:

Hellboy unlocks a steel box (stenciled on its lid: "The Good Samaritan") and extracts the meanest-looking, custom-built, double-barrel, blue-finished handgun ever made. A veritable cannon.

TyRuben Ellingson, visual designer for Hellboy, developed the look of the Samaritan. Though his initial sketches followed the side-by-side double-barrel structure specified in the script, Ellingson eventually reworked the design to a four-chamber single-barrel revolver. During the design process, the adjective "Good" was also dropped from the name – its final name in the movie is simply "The Samaritan".

The Samaritan (and its holster) was ultimately built by Weta Workshop artists Jason Docherty, Dominic Taylor, John Harvey and Mike Grealish.

Trivia

• The weapon's name is an allusion to the Biblical parable of the Good Samaritan; Hellboy named it "The Samaritan" because it puts monsters out of their misery, in a tongue-in-cheek nod to the mercy of the Biblical figure.
  • In the film, Trevor Bruttenholm describes himself as Catholic ("among other things"), so he and his adopted son Hellboy would be familiar with the story.
• Although the gun only has four chambers, Hellboy is seen firing it at least six times before reloading in certain action scenes.
• The promotional website for the first film refers to the Samaritan simply as "Hellboy's Big Gun" and describes it in a slightly different manner:
  • "Hellboy's Big Gun is a not-so-miniature hand cannon that most people would use to blow huge holes in buildings. The .60 mm mega-pistol blows holes the size of Buicks through opponents wearing armor-plated gear. With an oversized chamber holding 4 of these bad-boy bullets, this weapon is the ultimate tool for bumping back against what bumps in the night."
    • A ".60 mm" pistol is nonsensical, as that would indicate an internal barrel diameter of less than a millimeter. ".60 caliber", by comparison, is slightly smaller than the 22mm bullet size that the final prop uses.
• At the end of Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Hellboy quits the B.P.R.D. and surrenders his equipment to Director Manning. However, he swiftly returns to claim the Samaritan, cheekily remarking "On second thought, I think I'll keep this."
• The Samaritan was created for the 2004 Hellboy movie and is distinct to the film and its sequel. In the comics (and other adaptations thereof) Hellboy uses different guns; the appellation "Samaritan" is often applied to these by fans, but is not given in the work themselves.
  • Hellboy uses several guns in the comics, most prominently a single-shot handcannon given to him by the Torch of Liberty and an M1911 pistol given to him by Harry Middleton.
  • Hellboy wields a revolver in Injustice 2. Moves using the weapon are referred to as "Devil's Revolver", but the handgun itself is referred to generically as "his trusty revolver".
  • Hellboy uses a different unnamed revolver, dubbed the "devil revolver" by production staff, in the 2019 film.
  • Another unique revolver is wielded by Hellboy in The Crooked Man; again, it is not referred to by a special name.

See Also

• Big Baby