Candyman

Candyman...1992...R...99 minutes...starring Virginia Madsen, Tony Todd, Xander Berkeley, and Vanessa Williams (with an appearance by Ted Raimi)...written and directed by Bernard Rose...adapted from a Clive Barker short story entitled "The Forbidden"

Let's talk urban legends: people waking up in the bathtub on ice missing a kidney, alligators in the sewer flushed down the toilets, and apparitions like the Candyman...who is evoked by staring into a mirror and saying his name 5 times. These tales become woven into our culture, and achieve a life of their own. In a way, these stories become a gateway to myth...and perhaps, just perhaps, are also a doorway into immortality. If nothing else, tales like these can be studied, tracked down, and analyzed; which is what doctoral candidate Helen Lyle is doing. She and her companion Anne-Marie McCoy follow the trail of the Candyman, in eerie ghost stories, to an inner-city area named Cabrini Green; not the safest  of places for college students.

Of course, Helen forgets a key rule in her hunt: be careful what you look for...you just may find it.

As someone who loves both horror fiction and horror movies, I find the idea of a legend with life in it compelling in many ways. I do believe that stories have power; we're drawn to certain tales because they speak to us on levels beyond the literal...they hit us in the deep places that we try to label with words but that ultimately go beyond logic and left-brained analysis. Horror stories scare us, but they also draw us in, and allow us to look in the darkness...if just for a brief second. Clearly enough, I like the thought behind the story and the movie.

I also think the movie delivers fairly well. There's some good moments to make you jump, and plenty of gore to make you flinch as well. Tony Todd's voice makes him an excellent choice as a creature of dark legend, and he ends up stealing the show in the scenes he appears in. (Appropriate, in my opinion.) Virginia Madsen isn't to be underestimated;  I'm watching the film and can see her as a woman so caught up in the story she's researching that she's losing herself. Everone else...well, eh.

A warning: if you're sensitive to animal violence, there's a rough moment in the movie for you. There's also plenty of blood, though perhaps not as much as you might expect.The soundtrack does occasionally get a little intrusive as well. Still and all, I think Candyman gets 3.5 bloody hooks out of 5.

Blame Sam Raimi, though; if I ever lose a hand, I'm going chainsaw and not hook. ;-)