CANDYMAN (1992)
They will say that I have shed innocent blood. What's blood for if not for shedding? With my hook for a hand, I'll split you from your groin to your gullet. I came for you.
(There will be major spoilers so skip if you don't want to be spoiled)
Helen is working on her thesis with Bernadette about urban legends. Her husband is a teacher at the university who teaches the same theme. The two girls are focusing on a legend about Candyman who supposedly can be summoned by saying his name 5 times into a mirror. He will then arrive with a hook for a hand and kill you. Bernadette and Helen try this one night, but nothing happens.
While investigating she gets a lead about the Cabrini-Green housing project where a woman named Ruthie Jean was murdered by Candyman. The two girls go and investigate and are harassed by a gang. They manage to find the apartment where Ruthie was murdered and inside they find that behind the bathroom mirror is a hole that leads to the next apartment. Inside is some creepy art that suggests the Candyman was there.
When leaving they run into Ruthie Jeans' neighbor, Anne-Marie who speaks more about the Candyman legend and heard Ruthie Jeans murder.
At dinner, Professor Philip Purcell shares the origin of Candyman which is that he was the son of a slave who developed a system for mass-producing shoes during the Civil War and became prosperous. Candyman grew up to become a well-known artist and was sought after. He falls in love with a white woman and gets her pregnant and is soon chased down by a lynch mob for doing so. They cut off his hand and replace it with a hook, then cover him with honey and let bees sting him to death. As you do. His body was burned and his ashes were scattered where the Cabrini-Green now stands.
Helen returns to the projects and meets a little boy named Jake who shares with her more information about Candyman and shows her a public bathroom where Candyman reportedly killed a young boy. When Helen is investigating, the gang returns and beats her up, telling her they are the Candyman.
When she is released from the police station, the gang member caught, she feels like she's finally solved the mystery of Candyman but in the parking lot she is approached by the real Candyman who hypnotizes her.
Helen wakes up in a pool of blood in Anne-Marie's apartment, her dog has been murdered and her baby is missing....was it really Helen that committed these crimes? Or is the Candyman real and using her to prove it?
Alright...so what did I love about this movie?
- So I've only seen bits and pieces of this movie before and finally getting to sit down and watch the whole thing was mind blowing. It was amazing!
- This is a movie you can really sink your teeth into, with so much imagery and deep plot, you need to watch it a few times just to experience everything.
- I loved the scene where Helen came back to her apartment after escaping from the mental hospital to find her husband has already moved in his young student he's having an affair with. Helen just goes nuts on them and is terrifying them and I'm like YASSSS.
- The final fire scene was epic and I was screaming for Helen to get out of there. And her funeral scene was very emotional too.
- ALSO - the very final scene where she shows up and murders her husband. The ending of this movie was SO GOOD.
What I didn't love?
- I LOVED IT ALL!
This was such a great movie and I can't wait to watch it again! Reading up on the making of this movie was almost as fascinating as the movie itself. For the famous bee scene they bred bees specifically and Virginia Madsen who was allergic to bees had to have an ambulance nearby just in case.
The Cabrini-Green projects are real and production actually filmed a few days there but had to make a deal with the ruling gang to allow it to happen. They agreed to put them in the film. But even with that arrangement in place, a sniper bullet went through the van on the final day of location filming.
The reveal of the medicine cabinets having a design flaw behind them and allowing people to get from one apartment to another is actually a real design flaw that has happened and a series of murders were committed this way in real life. Which means I will forever be terrified of medicine cabinets.
This movie was hauntingly beautiful, dreamy, and nightmarish and I loved every moment of it!
9/10
Stay Spooky!
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