Candyman...Candyman...Candyman,
Candyman, Candyman.
After being underwhelmed by three of
the last five movies on this list, it's nice to go back to a
tried-and-true classic. While the
titular character lacks the level of public exposure enjoyed
by Freddy and Jason, his status as an icon among horror fans at least
is undisputed. When I strike up conversations with my co-workers
about horror films, oftentimes they will not have seen such films as
The Evil Dead, or The Shining... but everyone
has seen Candyman.
Tony Todd plays the Candyman, an urban
legend; the son of a slave who impregnated a rich white planter's
daughter who he was hired to paint. He was murdered horrifically.
The movie makes it pretty clear that whether or not this story is
true is completely irrelevant to the Candyman's continued existence.
He is powered purely by people's belief in him, which is thrown into
danger when a young grad student named Helen (Virginia Madsen) does a
study on urban legends, calling their veracity into question.
I recently read the short story on
which the movie is based, “The Forbidden” by Clive Barker.
Suffice to say that the setting and a number of plot points are
different, but much of Candyman's dialogue seems to be taken directly
from the original story. The dialogue remains creepy, as virtually
anything by Clive Barker always is. Seriously, I think that the man
could write a cook book and people would shit their pants trying to
make it through his recipe for key lime pie.
I'd say there are two significant
changes that were made between the original story and the adaptation
which need to be addressed. The first is that Candyman was changed
from a racially ambiguous character (yellow skin and blue lips), to
an intimidating black man. The second is the added plot point of
Helen being attacked by a gangster posing as the Candyman (Terrence
Riggins).
The first change can likely be
associated with the move from England to America. The implication is
that the horror created by the American collective unconscious, being
tinged with more racism, would obviously be a scary black man. I
believe that his association with the poor might also play in with
this, as he's an urban legend primarily in poverty-stricken
neighborhoods. So “black” in this film is code for “poor.”
This fits in with the original story, in which Helen was studying
graffiti in a poor neighborhood.
The second change, while it obviously
exists to allow us drama in the time building up to Candyman's
appearance, could also be said to exist to make Helen a more innocent
character. In the original story, it was strongly implied that the
murders attributed to Candyman before her arrival never happened.
They were the collective fantasies of people who wanted to believe
them. Candyman was obligated to actually come and kill someone only
when his existence was called into doubt, making Helen responsible,
because she questioned him. (Yes, the religious commentary is there,
but it’s not what I choose to dwell on.) In this version, it’s
implied that the murders did indeed happen, but that Candyman only
carried them out by proxy through another agent. It was Helen's
attempt to stop these, and destroy the mystique of Candyman, that
summoned him to take a direct role.
When he finally does arrive, the effect
is intense. Bees and a bloody hook are window dressing on Tony
Todd's performance. He actually makes you believe that he's less of
a human than he is an embodiment of your fears. I place the Candyman
up there with the original Terminator in terms of an actor embodying
a truly inhuman character.
I don't think there's a single frame of
this film that doesn't work. Tony Todd is the head of a small army
of talented actors, and never once do any of the actors seem to be
phoning it in; a rare occurrence for horror movies. The eventual
payoff is also fully satisfying, and makes sense in terms of what's
come before it. I highly recommend this film.
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