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

Liam Neeson’s first encounter with the dark side… of acting!

Back before Sam Raimi knew how to direct, and before Liam Neeson knew how to act, there was a patchy, deformed quilt of sophomoric acting and gloved-thumb editing called DARKMAN.

Supposedly a “superhero” movie, now a cult film, DARKMAN has dated badly since its 1990 release (a release date that meant it was basically an ’80’s movie, reflecting all the dopey synth music, trashy practical effects and boorish executive trousers that decade offered). Sam Raimi (who would go on to future successes with his SPIDER-MAN trilogy) wanted his own Batman-type character, so created this story of a scientist that is thought murdered by gangsters, who emerges as a deformed night vigilante out for revenge.

Scientist Peyton Westlake (Neeson, forced to use an abominable American accent) has almost discovered how to create synthetic skin (to aid burn victims); its only flaw is that it disintegrates after 99 minutes when exposed to light, yet can remain stable if kept in the dark. Meanwhile, his girlfriend Julie (Frances McDormand) runs afoul of some executives in boorish trousers, who send out gangsters to rough her up for a McGuffin document, find Peyton instead, and leave him for dead in an explosion. Rescued by some callous hospital staff (headed by the stunning Jenny Agutter), Peyton is bandaged and given some drug that negates his burned nerves, allowing him that “superhero trait” of not feeling pain. He flees the hospital to roam the stormy night (for some inexplicable reason – one would think you’d stay in a place that is trying to heal you. Or maybe he figured the truth that it would be less painful to die slowly in the streets than go through the American health care system.)

Peyton dons a grubby overcoat (superhero cape), keeps his head bandaged (like a mask), sets up a lab in an abandoned warehouse (his batcave/fortress of solitude) and poses with gargoyles (like a superhero bitch). In this makeshift lab, Peyton uses his synthetic skin machine to create gangsters’ head masks, using them to foil the gang from within.

The gangsters are led by Robert G. Durant (Larry Drake from L.A. LAW, soon to be DR. GIGGLES in 1992); the corporate head is Aussie Colin Friels (also using an American accent). These two characters are the nominal villains to exact revenge upon.

The trailers blast, “Crime has a new enemy” – but no, it doesn’t. Peyton is not really a “super” hero, and only out for revenge on the men who “killed” him. Written by Raimi and a bunch of questionable friends, DARKMAN boasts some interesting transitions, some disturbing concepts, and the worst chromakey since SUPERMAN IV. Filmed like a comicbook, with occasional colorful panels and flamboyant performances, I understand the pulp tone that Raimi is attempting – and maybe it succeeded for comicbook fans back in 1990 – but every scene of the movie is so negligently written and purveyed that we smell either low budget, not enough rehearsal, or striking ineptitude.

Behind the mask – the geek.

Even if we forgive the blustery “indicating” performances across the board (actors “indicating” their emotions rather than experiencing them, with Frances McDormand especially at fault in this department), almost every scene takes us out of the film with its incoherence, mistakes or careless construction:

• The cheesy thunderstorm above the chroma key city (i.e. the filmmakers chroma key the city skyline so they can superimpose a thunderstorm over the whole area, rather than filming an actual thunderstorm over the city, or over a small area to suffice for the city);
• While viewing cells through a microscope, Peyton keeps asking his assistant for the time elapsed – but the digital time is right there in the microscope every time he peers into it!;
• Peyton laments to his girl, “I feel like a rag doll – my insides are on my outside! If you could only see how I feel inside!”— Uh, but if your insides are on your outside, then she CAN see, right?;
• Since when do microscopic cells emit “bubbling” sounds like La Brea tar pits, loud enough for us to hear at our macroscopic level?;
• The synthetic skin remains stable in the dark, so Peyton muses, “The dark: what secrets does it hold?” Why are you questioning the DARK? (The only property of the Dark is absence of light photons.) You should be questioning what secrets the CELLS hold by stabilizing in the dark;
• His refugee warehouse lab springs from nothing. Like a mad scientist, we see Peyton scrabbling in the dark – and suddenly he has all the mod cons for making perfect facemasks;
• Peyton uses a high-end Nikon camera with a telephoto lens. How did he get all this stuff? And this was back in the day of film in the camera. So where did he get his photos processed before he constructed his first facemask? Rolled up into a Walmart pharmacy with his overcoat and bandaged head, bloodied skull peeking through the gaps, and asked for reprints?;
• The CEO opens his office shutters overlooking the new city being built beyond his giant windows. Julie looks surprised that it is already under way. Really? She never noticed the city being built as she drives in to work every day?

There was a gloomier aspect of DARKMAN that went completely ignored: nerve damage. Without nerves to feel pain, you are basically a leper. Contrary to popular belief, body parts don’t fall off lepers due to leprosy itself, but because without the ability to feel pain, your body experiences repeated injuries that are not felt and get infected, until they fall off (nowhere in fiction have I seen this condition better described than in Stephen Donaldson’s fantasy masterwork, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever), so when stricken with the disease, you must be insanely vigilant of your body. And edges. Not so with DARKMAN; whereas our hero could have had another disturbing element added to his psychosis, he instead goes around offhandedly smashing things, flailing in the dark in rage, grabbing sharp objects, breaking through glass – he’s a regular Incredible Hulk.

At one point, Peyton puts a funnel on his head and dances around in anguish, looking like the Tin Man from OZ, singing, “See the dancing freak! See the dancing freak!” Aaaah – freak out! Le Freak, c’est Chic… ’70’s disco – Now he’s really on the dark side…

END