{"id":3954,"date":"2024-09-11T14:39:31","date_gmt":"2024-09-11T14:39:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=3954"},"modified":"2024-10-14T14:24:37","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T18:24:37","slug":"candyman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/09\/11\/candyman\/","title":{"rendered":"Candyman (1992)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Candyman <\/strong>(1992)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 TriStar\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 102 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence and gore, nudity, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Bernard Rose\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Bernard Rose\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Philip Glass\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Anthony B. Richmond\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 16, 1992 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Virginia Madsen, Tony Todd, Xander Berkeley, Kasi Lemmons, Vanessa Williams, DeJuan Guy, Gilbert Lewis, Carolyn Lowery, Barbara Alston, Sarina Grant, Marianna Elliott, Ted Raimi, Michael Culkin, Rusty Schwimmer, John Rensenhouse, Stanley DeSantis.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $25.7M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ****<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019d like to start by clearing up a common misconception. The character of Candyman is NOT your typical slasher movie boogeyman like Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers or Freddy Krueger. He\u2019s more of a tragic figure like Dracula or Frankenstein\u2019s monster. He carries with him 100 years of pain, anguish and anger over the injustice of his murder at the hands of a lynch mob for daring to fall in love with a wealthy white girl. His death is one for the books. A talented artist commissioned to paint the girl\u2019s portrait, the educated son of a slave was chased down by a hired mob that sawed off his right hand with a rusty saw. Then they smeared him all over with honey and watched as bees stung him to death. His corpse was burned and his ashes were scattered on the land on which Chicago housing project Cabrini-Green now stands. He exists now (in \u201992, that is) as an urban legend.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I saw Candyman<\/strong> the night it opened. I had a positive feeling about it. It looked good in the previews. Plus, it\u2019s an adaptation of a short story (\u201cThe Forbidden\u201d) by Clive Barker, the horrormeister behind Hellraiser and Nightbreed, two of the better scary movies of recent years. My feeling about it proved to be well-founded. I LOVED it! It\u2019s freaking scary. I scream-jumped THREE times! That\u2019s the surest sign of an effective horror movie I know.<\/p>\n

\u00a0According to urban legend, if a person says Candyman five times in a mirror, he will appear and kill the summoner. This has to be BS, right? It\u2019s the kind of things kids at a sleepover dare each other to do. But what if it\u2019s not BS? Urban legends tap into our deepest fears like death by murder. Because of that, people tend to think twice about their veracity when they hear them. What if they became real if enough people believed in them? What if they fed on the psychic weight of faith and fear? What would that mean for skeptics or disbelievers? That\u2019s the foundation for the terror in Candyman<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0University of Illinois grad student Helen Lyle (Madsen, The Hot Spot) is about to learn a shocking truth about the subject of her thesis. She\u2019s researching urban legends with her friend and colleague Bernie (Lemmons, The Silence of the Lambs) when she stumbles across the legend of Candyman, an evil spirit that supposedly resides at Cabrini-Green, a tenement notorious for its high crime rate. It\u2019s rumored that Candyman, who has a pointed hook where his right hand used to be, killed a woman that lived there. Her curiosity piqued, Helen decides to look into the matter.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Things happen that allow Helen to believe she\u2019s debunked the Candyman legend once and for all. HA! That doesn\u2019t last. She soon discovers he\u2019s real and really pissed off about being discredited. Innocent blood must be spilled to make people believe in him again. Long story short, Helen ultimately finds herself locked up in a psychiatric hospital framed for murder. Here we have another deep fear for the vengeful spirit to exploit, the fear of being falsely accused of a crime and not being believed by friends, loved ones and authorities.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Candyman is played by Tony Todd who previously starred in the remake of Night of the Living Dead and would go on to play creepy funeral home owner Bludworth in three of the five Final Destination movies. Candyman is his signature role. I can\u2019t imagine anybody but Todd in the role. He\u2019s terrific. He creates a character who\u2019s equal parts malevolent and sad. He\u2019s a misunderstood monster. He kills, but it isn\u2019t random. He kills to prove he exists. He feels a special connection to Helen, but I\u2019ll leave that for you to discover. As Helen, Madsen does great work. She convincingly conveys her character\u2019s deteriorating mental state as she falls deeper into the Candyman rabbit hole. Xander Berkeley (T2) plays her husband, a university professor who everybody but Helen knows is screwing an attractive female student. Well, I knew it from the moment I saw him with the student. In any event, he\u2019s slime. They both get what they deserve at the end.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Directed by Bernard Rose (Paperhouse), Candyman<\/strong> makes excellent use of natural urban locations. So many horror movies are set in big creepy houses in isolated places. The city can be just as effective with its crowded projects ruled by gangs. There\u2019s also something unsettling about graffiti-strewn tenement buildings and vacant apartments not fit for human habitation. It\u2019s an ideal place for evil to dwell. The cinematography by Anthony B. Richmond is vivid and dreamlike. The score by Philip Glass (Koyaanisqatsi) perfectly augments the eerie, haunting tone of the film. The gore effects are nice and bloody without being excessive. They never overwhelm the film\u2019s frightening central ideas.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Needless to say, Candyman<\/strong> instantly became one of my all-time favorite horror movies. It is positively chilling. It has a cool premise and a truly frightening killer. Even better, the killer has a personality; he\u2019s not just some masked homicidal maniac. There\u2019s context to the violence*. As such, it hits harder than any killing in a Friday the 13th<\/sup> or Halloween sequel. \u00a0Candyman<\/strong> is a true horror classic.<\/p>\n

* = I still could have done without the dog getting killed.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Candyman (1992)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 TriStar\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 102 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence and gore, nudity, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Bernard Rose\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Bernard Rose\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Philip Glass\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Anthony B. Richmond\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 16, 1992 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Virginia Madsen, Tony Todd, Xander Berkeley, Kasi Lemmons, Vanessa Williams, DeJuan Guy, Gilbert Lewis, Carolyn Lowery, Barbara Alston, Sarina Grant, Marianna Elliott, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4628,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Candyman-1992-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3954"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4629,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3954\/revisions\/4629"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}