People of Colour!

With Dr Manhattan from ‘Watchmen’ destined to be known as ‘that giant, naked blue fellow’, Time Out looks at the rainbow of colourful film characters

Red
Hellboy (Ron Perlman) in 'Hellboy'
Man’s man Perlman toplines Guillermo del Toro’s pair of rollicking comic-book capers as the Nazi-fighting demon with the redder-than-red hide: what with him being born in the bowels of Hades an’ all, you’d hardly expect him to be a pale shade of gooseberry? Also, we must not forget the scene in David Lynch’s ‘Wild at Heart’ when Dianne Ladd plasters her whole face in blood-red lipstick and crawls around on all fours like a sauce-addled sex fiend. And if you’re going out on a limb, you might want to include the ‘Squeal piggy!’ redneck rapists from ‘Deliverance’ who, if memory serves, had faces as blotchy and discoloured as a sunburnt Barnsley fan on tour in Marbella.

Orange
Magda (Lin Shaye) from 'There's Something About Mary'
Peter and Bobby Farrelly are credited with ushering in the golden age of grossout. But where would they have been without Lin Shaye’s willingness to exploit her leathery complexion in the service of sick humour? Appearing in each of the brothers’ early films, most notably as the sexually-demanding landlady in ‘Kingpin’, Shaye took things a step further in ‘Mary’ by apparently agreeing to be coated in sheep dip for the duration of the shoot, so stealing the show as Cameron Diaz’s voracious, dog-snogging, shrivel-breasted roommate, Magda.

Yellow
John (Mark Dightam) from 'The Boy who Turned Yellow'
Ending their partnership working for the Children's Film Foundation may have been something of a comedown for Britain’s finest ever filmmaking team, but that didn’t stop Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger putting everything they had into this simple, joyous tale of a boy who loses his pet mouse at the Tower of London, undergoes a bizarre accident on the underground and finds himself dyed a lurid shade of citron. Intended as an object lesson on the importance of intellectual curiosity, the film may also be a paranoid cautionary fantasy about the perils of prepubescent bedwetting. Further afield, in a turn which is said to have made Al Jolson blush, Mickey Rooney applied the yellow paint rather too liberally for his ill-advised turn as Holly Golightly's Japanese landlord, Mr Yunioshi, in 'Breakfast at Tiffany's'.

Green
Kermit the Frog (Kermit the Frog ) from 'The Muppets Take Manhattan'
As Kermit the Frog was all too ready to remind us, it ain’t easy being green. Kermy’s troubles were in the main limited to being sexually rejected by a busty foam-rubber pig, but for most other movie characters, the olive end of the spectrum is usually symptomatic of far deeper problems. Bruce Banner’s box-office defying alter-ego in ‘The Hulk’ and, erm, the ‘Hulk’, and the Wicked Witch of the West from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ both find their sickly skin colouration a real obstacle to ‘fitting in’, and act out accordingly. Yoda, for his part, was hounded out of the upscale neighbourhoods of space and into the boonies of Degobah to spend his sunset years in crotchety solitude. Shrek, therefore, is a shining light to all of them. In putting aside his grotesque greenery and plug-ugliness he proves that beauty is only pixel deep and that love is colourblind.

Blue
Marty Wolf (Paul Giamatti) in 'Big Fat Liar'
With Billy Crudup’s ‘Big Blue Dr Bastard’ in ‘Watchmen’ as the raison d’etre for this piece, we must admit that when trying to think of blue movie characters, the one that sprang instantly to mind was David Cross’s Tobias Bluth from TV’s ‘Arrested Development’, notably the clutch of episodes in which he’s attempting to become an additional member of The Blue Man Group. Elsewhere, you’ve obviously got Silver Surfer from the latest ‘Fantastic Four’ film, who, despite his name, was more an icy-blue colour than shiny grey (although that may have been due to the fact that we watched the film on a plane), and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s irresponsible take on Mr Freeze in 'Batman & Robin' must have sent sales of blue body-paint and bratwurst skyrocketing. Further afield, you’ve also got teen heartthrob Paul Giamatti as a vacuous Hollywood agent who has his skin dyed blue by vengeful young scriptwriter, Frankie Muniz.

Gold
Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton) from 'Goldfinger'
We’ve dropped indigo for obvious reasons and gone straight for the gold at the end of the rainbow. Shirley Eaton’s lustrous cameo in ‘Goldfinger’ springs immediately to mind – with the lumbering Golden Army of the second Hellboy movie coming close behind that. Our geld, however, is on Gene Hackman’s driven prospector in Nic Roeg’s forsaken masterpiece ‘Eureka’ (1983). Hackman being Hackman means that before he strikes it big he must go through an escalating and unnecessarily rigorous series of manly hardships; Roeg being Roeg means that when Gene does eventually hit the motherlode, he finds himself balls deep in an allegorical ‘golden shower’ sequence that hugely detracts from what might otherwise be the director’s best work.

Violet
Violet Beauregarde (Denise Nickerson/Anna Sophia Robb) in 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory'
In the rigid moral universe of Roald Dahl, a child only stands a chance if they’re a) poor, b) respectful and c) happy to follow strange men on mysterious adventures. Woe betide those who happen, through no fault of their own, to be fat, spoiled, competitive or American. Generally eclipsed by her more demanding counterpart Veruca Salt (no one names their shouty girl groups after poor Violet), sports nut Beauregarde is perhaps the most redeemable of all the gaggle of brats in ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’: sure, she’s a gum chewer and therefore doomed for all eternity, but she’s also the only one of the four who’s ever decent to our hero. But that can’t save her when fate comes a-callin’ in the shape of Wonka’s experimental three-course gum: before long she’s bloated, blueberry-coloured and packed off to the ‘juicing room’. Have a heart, Roald… See also the unfairly disregarded ’80s kids classic ‘Purple People Eater’, with an all-star cast consisting of Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Little Richard and Doogie Howser MD.

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