The evolution of my tastes in horror fiction in my teenage years went a little something like this: R. L. Stine; Christopher Pike; James Herbert; Shaun Hutson; Stephen King; Clive Barker. By the time I'd reached 15 or 16 there was no saving me and I was reading things like Cabal and The Hellbound Heart like there was no tomorrow, and of course with that came the watching of any movies I could get hold of that bore Barker's name in one way or the other. This included Candyman, the horror movie that was based on the Clive Barker short story The Forbidden (although ironically I wasn't able to get hold of that story until many years later).
Helen Lyle is writing a thesis on modern folklore and urban legends with her friend Bernadette. During their research they come across the story of the Candyman, the son of a slave who was tortured and murdered for the crime of miscegenation. Now with a hook for a hand, he is summoned by someone looking in a mrror and saying his name five times - when he appears for the unlucky person he proceeds to eviscerate them "from groin to gullet". When she discovers that a gang are using the Candman legend to terrorize and control the residents of the Cabrini Green housing project, Helen sets out to expose and debunk the story as nothing more than fiction... except that it turns out that Candyman is real after all and he is not at all pleased with this turn of events. He sets out to rekindle the residents' fear and awe of him by killing people around Helen in spectacularly gory ways and framing her for the deaths.
At quite a few points in the film Candyman feels more like a 1920s or 1930s romance film than a modern horror - okay, maybe the romance in question is The Phantom of the Opera, but the comparison still stands. A good part of this is because of the way that Virginia Madsen is styled and shot throughout the film - there's a whole lot of soft-focus close-ups of her; her hairstyle is pretty reminiscent of that time period and Helen Lyle spends a lot of time staring off into the middle distance with a single tear running down her cheek. Please note, I'm not really saying this is a bad thing, because I really do like this film, but when you lay it all down like that it might seem a little pretentious.
Originally, the role of Candyman was going to go to Eddie Murphy, but he was too expensive and so they went with Tony Todd instead. And thank Eris for that, because I'm pretty sure having the Nutty Professor in the role of the vengeful, murderous, hook-handed urban legend would have pretty much ruined just about everything the film was going for. Eddie Murphy is pretty much exclusively a comedy actor (certainly he was back in 1992), and I really doubt that he would have had the ability or presence to carry off such a dark and serious role (sorry!). Besides, Tony Todd is superb in the role, as well as damn good-looking (and, in connection with my previous paragraph, described his role in the film as his "personal Phantom of the Opera". I love it when a review comes together).
The film overall is very good, its slight over-reliance on soft-focus lenses aside. It's good and gory (if that's what you look for in a film) and there are a good couple of cringe-inducing body horror moments to go with that (if you're apiphobic you might want to give this film a miss though). The whole idea of the urban legend come to life and feeding off the fears of its believers is a fascinating one and one that I particularly love - although to be fair I'm also a big fan of urban legends in general so I might be a little bit biased. The sub-plot involving Helen's husband was maybe a little too obvious, annoying and maybe unnecessary, but even that has a good payoff in the end. And of course a good Clive Barker film is always something to watch.
(And yes, that is Ted Raimi in the trailer.)
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