CANDYMAN
No sir, I still won't say it
To date, this is still the only adaptation of a Barker work that Im really enthusiastic about. Rawhead Rex sucked, Nightbreed was fun but inconsequential (novelty points, though, for it being set around Calgary), and Hellraiser...well, after three viewings, I still fail to see the big deal about Hellraiser. Other than Lord Of Illusions (which I thought was pretty good, unlike the local paper which gave it one of only three zero-star ratings I've ever seen 'em dish out), Candyman stands alone, above the crowd.
Candyman exploits the notion of urban legends far better than last year's pesky Urban Legend did, although it's a very different approach. This movie suggests that whether the stories are true or not is of no consequence - the near-religious belief in them gives them life and even sentience. The story behind the Candyman (look in a mirror, say his name five times, hope you've written your will) is familiar, borrowed from elsewhere (wasn't it Bloody Mary, or something?). But the notion of a big black man with a deep voice and a nasty hook on his hand is far more scary than some white chick who...I don't really know what's up with her. It doesn't matter.
Virginia Madsen stars as Helen, a grad student who's pursuing a topic for her thesis on urban folklore. What she's looking into specifically is the legend of the Candyman, a murdered slave from 1819 who haunts Cabrini Green, which is a real Chicago housing project and if it's half as nasty as it looks in this movie, I'm just as happy to be Canadian. She doesn't buy the "look in the mirror, say his name five times" bit that she hears so much about, so she does it anyway...and she doesn't get hooked. But she does have the living crap beaten out of her by a hook-wielding street thug and his goons, who use the legend of the Candyman to tighten their grip on the neighborhood. And when this guy is taken into custody, the real Candyman (Tony Todd)comes after Helen for shaking the neighborhood's faith in his power. But does he want to kill her, or...?
This movie has little on-screen violence, but it's awash with gore. It's possibly the most disgusting-sounding movie I've ever seen, uh, heard (just imagine the SOUND of somebody getting slit "from groin to gullet" with a hook), and it also boasts a bathroom scene right up there with those crap-covered commodes in Desperado and Trainspotting. Our heroine is in one scene told of a murder which is likely to make any man watching squirm with phantom sympathetic agony ("They found it floating in a toilet. Can't fix that. Better off dead."). In another, she's the focus of the least sexy nude scene of a beautiful woman with a great body that I've ever seen. This ain't a pretty movie, but it managed to turn out to be quite the crowd-pleaser, because it's scary as hell.
Bernard Rose (now working on filming Barker's The Thief Of Always) directs it all with a sure hand, with lots of great aerial photography to capture both the apparent harmless affluence of academia at the University of Illinois and the blight of the ghetto. He also wrote the script (Based on Barker's short story The Forbidden, previously filmed in short form by Barker himself in the original London setting), which is intelligent and thought-provoking.
Even disregarding the added "racial sensitivity factor" of casting a black woman as Helen's research partner (foxy Kasi Lemmons, who had pretty much the same role the year before in The Silence Of The Lambs), the racial tensions the movie wields never seem exploitative or gratuitous. Most black males are seen by our white heroine (and thus our audience) as threatening, and black females as standoffish and sometimes as violent as (and complicit with) the men - but how else do white people feel when they find themselves in a gang-infested black ghetto? This is not presented as a simple case of "scary black people in a scary black neighborhood" - the residents are as scared as anyone else, from dangers both within (gangs, poverty, and yes, the Candyman) and without; here, 911 IS a joke. The police can't be counted on to respond to emergency, and they only first exercise their power like they should when a white woman is in danger, and even our heroine soon enough finds herself on the police's shitlist.
The cast is mostly really good, but Todd's Candyman is in another league, beautifully realized by the actor and the script - he always seems larger than life and myth-like on the verge of god-like. His lines might be a shade overdone, but what else would you want, Will Smith? Watching and listening to this guy is like being in the presence of one of the less cheerful gods from a foreign pantheon.
Not all of the aspects of the film work perfectly - in particular, Xander Berkeley gets a thankless role as Helen's husband, who you know is going to turn out to be a heel because he's played by Xander Berkeley. The denoument seems kind of tacked-on, and while it's very darkly funny, it doesn't really hold up to what had been established before - hundreds, if not thousands, of people believed in the Candyman - who believes in this? Fairly minor problems, though, certainly not noticeably diminishing the impact of what is one of the most frightening movies I've ever seen.
Great score by Philip Glass, and watch for Ted Raimi early on as a motorcycle-riding "bad boy" - talk about casting against type! Gave rise to two sequels, the latest of which went straight to cable and I haven't seen. I can scarcely remember anything at all about the first sequel, except that it had a cute heroine and some red-haired guy who is one of the worst actors I've ever seen. Make no mistake, the original is the one to see.
Irrelevant trivia you don't care about - a friend of mine still freaks out when you say "Hook! Hook! Hook!" to him, and will leave the room if you start repeating the word "Candyman" in front of a mirror. I won't quite leave the room, but this movie scared me enough that I still won't say it myself, no small feat considering how non-superstitious I am otherwise.