M&M: Candyman

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”.