Helen Lyle (Virginia
Madsen) is a graduate student in Chicago researching urban legends.
During her research she comes across a local creature: the Candyman.
Candyman was originally the son of slaves, who earned himself quite a
bit of money when during the Civil War, he invented a machine to mass
produce shoes. He fell in love with a white woman, who got pregnant
from him. His father didn't like that at all. So he sent a bunch of
people to brutally murder him. The right hand was sawn off and after
they poored honey over his body, he got stung by hundreds of bees and
eventually died from that. But when you stand in front of a mirror
and say is name five times, he'll come back as Candyman and will have
a hook for his right hand. He'll then kill the person that called
him.
Helen and her friend
Bernadette Walsh (Kasi Lemmons) want to try that. But Bernadette
hesitates and leaves before saying his name five times. Helen does
say it five times. Following that strange things start happening. The
police take notice of Helen and it's none other than Candyman
himself, who is able to help her out. But Helen has to end this
curse.
You'll have to see for
yourself to find out if she succeeds and how the story ends.
I became aware of
this movie a while ago after I found a set of movie posters. The one
of Candyman attracted me most. There's not much to see. Just one eye
of a person, but the pupil of the eye has the shape of a person
(Candyman) and at the eye itself there is just one single bee to be
seen. This combination attracted me so much that I eventually watched
the movie. The movie is fairly brutal. The story of the creation of
Candyman itself should make that obvious. But there's almost no
actual violence to be seen. There is talks and hints of the brutal
acts, but not directly shown. But maybe I saw the cut version.
There's also an R-rated one. You should in any case not be afraid of
bees. Virginia Madsen was reportedly hypnotised to be able to shoot
some certain scenes with bees. Who know if this is true or if that
itself is another “urban legend”. In any case, towards the end
there are lots of bees shown.
The movie is based
on the short story “The Forbidden” by Clive Barker and can be
found in volume 5 of his “Books of Blood”. Currently I haven't
read the story yet, so I can't say anything about to compare it with
the movie. Douglas E. Winter however speaks about Clive Barker and
“The Forbidden” and the parallels as well as differenes to
“Candyman” in a roughly 18 minutes long video Candyman
[A Story To Tell: Clive Barker's 'The Forbidden'] (English),
positive for the movie and also the changes they made compared to the
short story.
Fun fact: Kasi
Lemmons, who plays Helen's good friend here also plays a good friend
to lead actress Jodie Foster in “The Silence Of The Lambs”.
