Bad movie with a good hook.

Candyman. Candyman. Candyman. Candyman. Candyman.

Say it five times into a mirror and Candyman appears to kill you. Unless you’re Virginia Madsen.

Madsen is Helen, doing a thesis on urban legends. She is told the Candyman myth – of the tall, black, gravel-voiced phastasm, with a hook for a hand and a pimpin’ longcoat, who disembowels you upon summoning him – then recites his name into a mirror to debunk it.

Well, Candyman (Tony Todd) does, in fact, appear much later (no reason given for the delay – maybe it’s a black thing? D’oh!), yet Helen keeps escaping his flesh-stained hook-hand. Because he’s hot for her flat white booty it seems. The filmmakers (writer Clive Barker and director Bernard Rose) try to conjure the same sentiment as BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA where Gary Oldman’s Count “crossed oceans of time to find you,” as we see Helen’s visage in some old painting in Candy’s dungeon… but the concept is completely mismanaged in this mediocre production. And Tony Todd ain’t no Gary Oldman.

Considering that Barker co-wrote this screenplay with director Rose, from his own short story The Forbidden, it’s not transferring well to the screen. Yet the movie adds more hook to the story (see what I did there?), like the iconic ‘saying the name 5 times,’ and ‘in front of a mirror,’ with backstory added that Candyman was the son of a slave and a painter.

And that was the greatest gambit that endeared CANDYMAN to African-Americans in the United States. The story was originally set in Liverpool, but Rose envisioned it in Chicago, so based it in the real life Cabrini-Green housing projects, with a backstory of Candyman’s first victim being named Ruthie Jean (inspired by real life victim Ruthie Mae McCoy, killed in a Chicago housing project when her killer entered through the back of her bathroom’s medicine cabinet – which is how the ‘mirror’ element was inspired).

So black viewers identified with this black supernatural villain (especially with him trying to nut a blonde), and the movie has become somewhat iconic. In retrospect, it looks dated; produced around the same time as DARKMAN (1990), it shares a kind of insipid color palette and the residue of 80’s modality. Also, Madsen’s constant smoking is making me hoik. (She sits at her desk, lights up a cig, glass of wine – lights up a cig, giving a report to the police with her eye bludgeoned – lights up a cig. It’s more horrifying than the Candyman.) And the efx are chromakey, especially an opening shot of the city swarmed by bees, which only added cheapness to the opening unnecessarily.

Helen has a passionless relationship with her husband (lackadaisical Xander Berkeley), who is probably plonking his 16-year-old sociology student. Honestly couldn’t tell. Was Xander lying about his affair, or is he acting so badly that we think he’s telling the truth? When someone says, “You’re my wife and I love you dearly…” that pretty much means the opposite, no? Is he trying to act like he’s reading this line for the first time, or is he actually nervous that she’ll discover he’s lying? Or – here’s a novel approach – does he really love her dearly despite the robotic line-read?

With the Candyman legend rampant in the projects, Helen scares up her black friend (Kasi Lemmons as Bernadette – she was Jodie Foster’s FBI pal in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS) and rolls into the ghetto looking for clues, dressed like a whitegirl aching for BBC. She befriends a black single mother (Vanessa Williams) with a small child and a dog. When Helen visits this woman a second time, Candyman appears to her – but doesn’t kill her. Instead, hypnotizes her, beheads the dog, wounds the mother and kidnaps the kid, then frames Helen for the madness.

Whaa–? I think black people have been telling you this legend all wrong, whitegirl. I mean, the dog never said “Candyman,” five times. Later, Helen would be out on bail, Bernadette comes over. Candy appears – and doesn’t kill Helen. Instead, kills Bernadette. Really? She never said Candyman five times either! Helen made to look like Ted Bundy, waking in a pool of blood with a carving instrument in her hand.

In restraints, Helen is brought before a police psychologist. To prove her innocence, she tries to conjure Candyman from a mirror. Sure enough, he appears – doesn’t kill her again! Instead, hooks the psychologist through the spine and frees Helen. Alarms go off throughout the police station, which means the psychologist must have had his spine connected to the alarm system. I can think of no other way the alarms would start one second after he is stabbed.

Helen performs a Movie Escape (knocking out a nurse and taking her uniform), flees home, to find Xander plonking the 16-year-old (so he was lying! Okay, got it: bad actor). She somehow figures that Candyman is holding Vanessa’s kid hostage, forcing her to come retrieve it. Can’t really figure the endgame: is Candy going to woo her with a candlelit dinner of braised dog or something? I dunno, I don’t think even Candy thought this out too well…

They say you never forget your first time.

Director tries to create some ominous sequences (Bernard Rose just directed UB40’s Red Red Wine video – 2 years later he would direct the magnificent IMMORTAL BELOVED), but the mythology is just too scatterbrained and – What’s with all the talking, Candy?! Too much qualification on why he’s not murdering her. The more he talks, the more UN-scary he becomes; he starts to sound like a dude saying anything just to get into a chick’s pants. Which he is.

So is Candy caring for the baby now? Feeding it, changing it… I think this legend needs some revising: “And if Candyman likes you, he’ll kidnap someone else’s baby to lure you into rescuing it; he’ll feed it and play peekaboo with it so it doesn’t give away his location by crying…”

In a badly-staged climax, a stuntman in a blond wig climbs into a garbage heap in the middle of the projects—oh wait, it’s meant to be Helen, looking for the kidnapped kid. The ghetto residents mistake her for Candyman (see? that stuntman shoulda worn a sexier skirt) and set the garbage on fire. Although, I don’t know how they hope to burn this entity that could teleport supernaturally through mirrors. Speaking of which, Candy has teleported inside this heap to threaten Helen (make up your mind, brah! Are you propositioning her or terrorizing her?), and somehow when she hits him with a burning timber, he stands there and screams instead of teleporting somewhere else. Helen grabs the kid and crawls out, and – I dunno – keeps distracting Candyman by hitting him so that he wouldn’t teleport out of the fire? What are the rules? Anyway, it’s explicitly shown that Candy dies, and the stuntguy in the wig dies as well—I mean, Helen.

The whole black community turns out for her funeral, all late of course, because – black. (Now it’s getting downright racist.)

Xander, now living with his snarky 16-year-old who can’t cook but has great tits, looks into a mirror in grief and moans for “Helen” – and after five moans, Helen appears (!),  crispy-burned, with a hook, and disembowels him. Because adultery is a killable offense, right?

So, uh, you can just say any dead person’s name and they’ll appear? Okay: Sharon Tate. Sharon Tate. Sharon Tate. Sharon Tate. Sharon Tate.

Hey, it works! Hold all my calls… Her hook just makes it hotter…

END

Mo’ dark, mo’ fantastic.

I honestly don’t see the problem with the maligned 2015 reboot FANTASTIC FOUR, the dark rendition of Marvel’s longest-running superhero team (first published 1961). Good acting, strong themes (involving family, alienation and teamwork), and an eerie discomfiture surrounding the unearthly “powers” of the protagonists, rather than blind, childish, do-gooder acceptance. And featuring the barbecue-rib guy from HOUSE OF CARDS! This movie has everything!

Four young scientists open a gateway to another dimension via a teleporter, and are contaminated by the glowing goop they find there. With the most morose of their team lost to the goop, three of them return, exploding back into this dimension, and into the face of their female cohort, who is then also affected. (Isn’t that how cooties works?)

The infected four must adapt to their physical anomalies, with the American military fulfilling its usual boneheaded purpose of trying to weaponize each of them.

Miles Teller is physics genius Reed Richards, nominal leader of the young scientists; Kate Mara is brainy love interest Sue Storm; incredible thespian Michael B. Jordan is Sue’s reckless half-brother, Johnny Storm; Jamie Bell is Reed’s buds from college, Ben Grimm; and Toby Kebbell (so entertaining as Agenor in WRATH OF THE TITANS) is Victor Von Doom from Latveria. (We know he’s from Latveria because that happens to be the most pertinent information on his dossier apparently, in bold letters directly under his name. Yes, that’s exactly the type of information most needed about young scientists – their place of birth. This stupid labeling came about because of the studio contention on whether to call Victor “Von Doom” because it sounded too dated and cheesy 60’s-comix, so the filmmakers changed his character name initially – until fan uproar made them change it back. But in one last impotent flourish, the filmmakers sought to mitigate how melodramatic the name sounds by making it quite obvious he’s from another country. You know, where cheesy 60’s-comix names are common. Fucking idiots!)

Their sponsor/mentor is Kevin Spacey’s barbecue maven, Reg E. Cathey, as Dr. Franklin Storm.

FANTASTIC FOUR is no more or less silly, spectacular, inspiring or cookie-cutter than any other superhero movie out there today. It has its idiotic plot point faults – such as using the teleporter without anyone in the facility noticing, and its sudden bombastic climax which completely loses the tone of the movie – but it is most impressive in the way director/co-writer Josh Trank and co-writers Simon Kinberg and Jeremy Slater create realistic reactions to “superpowers.”

We take the word “superpower” for granted in this age of Blockbuster Superhero Blimptacular Crapticular Tentpole Summer Movie Extravashitstormia, but insert any extreme physical anomaly intrusively and suddenly into the real world, and your first reaction would not be to save a child’s life or stop a bank robbery, but probably just to… scream. (Director Trank actually explored this exact theme in his last film, CHRONICLE (2012), about three friends gaining super powers and dealing with them realistically – which also starred a young Michael B. Jordan – hmm, do I sense a Scorcese-De Niro Marvel Team-Up?)

When the teleporter crashes back into this dimension, Reed finds himself trapped under a girder, which he cannot move off him. He hears Ben screaming for help and crawls toward him. Only his torso is in shot through the smoking rubble, as he painfully drags his body along the ground. When he looks back, he sees his legs have not been freed from under the girder, but are rather “stretched out” along his path. His face contorts in pure horror. He faints.

When we see Ben as an orange rock-thing in his cell, his arm is fused to his body and he painfully extricates it. Gravel dust is shaken loose with his exertions. It’s a sad, terrifying ordeal. When Reed asks him about his condition later, “Does it hurt?” Ben replies, “I’m used to it.” Sue drops in and out of visibility, and Johnny is aflame, constantly burning inexplicably… Franklin, though father to Johnny and adopted Sue, considers all the young scientists his “children,” and butts heads with the military over their fate and cure; when he sees Johnny aflame on a table, his face is a mask of suffering, living the pain of his son.

We can see the confusion and horror in all these characters as they try to manage their abilities, especially Reed, whose stretching and reshaping is seen as a constant painful struggle of will. Johnny’s fire is also about will, and as he learns his control, he embraces a newfound independence; he is the only one to call the abilities “powers” while Sue calls them “aggressively abnormal physical conditions.” There is a subplot of the father-son rift between he and Franklin, which threatens to subsume the superhero story due to Michael B. Jordan’s magnificence.

While the government spook (Tim Blake Nelson) opines: “They are dangerous and powerful, which makes them extremely valuable to the guys who run this place.”

Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell, Miles Teller and girlfriend Keleigh Sperry: The Fantastic Six.

No one is given any “superhero names” like Invisible Girl or – heaven forbid – Mr. Fantastic [snigger]. And the “Thing” – due to his rock condition – does not wear any spandex undies. He just gads about naked; he’s just rock hard down there. They don’t even come up with a “team name” until the very end and try ever so hard not to sound corny as hell. For the Fantastic Four in film, this tone has never been adopted before – alien elements intruding upon a dour reality – and it makes this movie an entertaining fantasy, if we drop our expectations for it to be a DARK KNIGHT or AVENGERS.

The tone and character reactions override the prosaic plot of Victor returning from the other dimension and wanting to destroy Earth to preserve the environment – HIS dimension’s environment! Doom (who is visualized very creatively, with his atmosphere suit having melded to his skin) is inextricably linked with the other four, due to their powers’ origins, yet he psychologically turned in another direction, and I think the filmmakers missed the opportunity to exploit the trope of the heroes and villain being two sides of the same damaged coin.

The vitriol aimed at this film makes me wonder if fans remember that the last filmic incarnation of this team was, in fact, dogshit. Blank-faced Ioan Gruffudd and blanker-brained Jessica Alba as the two main protagonists, with Captain America smug-acting as the Human Torch and Michael Chiklis making a fool of himself wearing disco pants over his naked orangeness. You remember that, dummies? How can you compare the snide childishness of those films with the somber darkness of this one?

Dark not just thematically, but literally. I mean, is Johnny Storm black because they’re saying he’s… burnt? (Is that racist?) As strange as it is to see a well-known character’s race changed, they could not have done better than casting Jordan, who totally wipes our minds of the image of Human Torch as Apple Pie White. In this respect, depending on the level of gravitas an actor might bring, the filmmakers could’ve changed anyone! How about an African-American Thing? Then Orange would be the new Black. (Now that’s definitely racist… hang on, I think the pc police are banging on my door…)

END