Friday 15 April 2011

Candyman: A Review

15th April, 2011

I’ve GOT to admit, I was going to tell you that Kevin D, Movie Night Adrian, and I, saw the James Bond film, Quantum Of Solace, on Tuesday.

I meant to … !

But as Adrian and I caught it, not long after it was originally released on DVD … ?

I wasn’t too worried: after all, I stand by what I said, back then: but do know both Adrian and Kevin were/are very impressed by Daniel Craig’s version of the title character.

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At any rate, Quantum of Solace wasn’t what Adrian and I managed to catch, tonight …

As you can probably tell from the poster …

The film was the 1992, Clive Barker scripted, Candyman.

Derived from Barker’s own short story, The Forbidden, Candyman sees Virginia Madsen — who Adrian and I had last seen in The Haunting In Connecticut — as Helen Lyle, an unhappily married graduate student, working, along with a friend, on a doctoral thesis on urban myths and legends.

And, on being told by one of the university’s cleaners, that one particular urban legend — the Candyman of the title — seems to have its origins in the run-down housing projects* of Cabrini Green.

With the story of the son of a slave who was a talented painter who’d fallen in love with a young white woman he’d been commissioned to paint.   Who’d been punished by having his right hand, his painting hand, hacksawed off, and then being stung to death by bees.

On being told this, Helen has to investigate.

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Now, I’m not sure I can speak for Adrian, here …

For myself, though … ?

I quite fond of Candymanª: while the franchise can be seen as something a rather novel type of slasher flick, I don’t think the first film is.

Arguably … ?   Candyman dies at the end, leaving Helen to carry on his legacy, and get revenge on her cheating husband: something I think I stressed to Adrian tonight.

Helen, and not the Candyman, should’ve been the focus of the sequels …



Candyman.
★★★☆

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Just as a final thought … ?

There’s been a lot of talk over the past few years, about a possible remake of Barker’s original Hellraiser. Whether that’ll come about is debatable: but one of the former prosthetic designers for the original 1980s franchise … ?

Thought having a crack at redesigning Pinhead might be in order, before anyone else had a chance to ruin it. Here’s the results …




* Lord knows why the US calls social housing estates, ‘projects’, but there you go …

ª The second in the series didn’t grab me enough to make seeing it again, a priority: or encourage me to see the third …

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