Anyone who has ever been to a Halloween party has heard of the 'Bloody Mary' game. You go into the bathroom, face the mirror, turn off the lights, say Bloody Mary three times, and turn on the lights. Supposedly, the spirit of Bloody Mary would appear behind you and kill you, or give you a back rub, or something. This, of course, never happened, but there would always be someone who knows someone who has a friend whose brother was killed by Bloody Mary, and a most kids that try this get fairly freaked-out about the legend. The film Candyman takes the legend even further by by replacing the ghost of Mary with an angry Tony Todd with a hook for a hand and shoots bees out of his mouth. Now that's scary. Based on the short story The Forbidden, by Clive Barker, the movie follows Helen (Virginia Madsen) a grad student writing a thesis on local folklore and urban legends. She comes across the legend of a black artist who had his hand cut off then was smeared with honey and killed by bee stings. His ashes were scattered over the the land that would become Caprini-Green in Chicago, and now the residents of the housing project fear his vengeful spirit. Helen's investigation leads her to the housing project, and as she is interviewing the locals and accumulating data, she is approached by a thug brandishing a hook who claims to be the Candyman and attacked. This man had been using the stories about Candyman to bolster his own reputation, but Helen is able to pick him out of a police line-up and he is arrested. Afterward, while walking to her car, she is approached by the real Candyman.
He tells Helen that his power comes from the belief in his legend, and since Helen does not believe, he will make an example out of her. Helen blacks out, then wakes up in an apartment soaked in blood. Helen then gets into a fight with the woman who lives in the now bloody apartment and is promptly arrested for kidnapping said woman's baby. I love the idea that Candyman is constantly screwing with Helen, framing her for kidnapping a child, randomly appearing in her home. The setting and decaying inner city atmosphere to the horror movie is a sharp contrast to most horror films set in isolated places. Also, Tony Todd owns this role, with his deep, echoing voice and intense stare. His performance here actually reminds me of Bela Lugosi as Dracula, he's just hypnotic every time he's on the screen. This is a great Halloween movie that's well written and one-hundred percent creepy. It's a little slow at times, but that just emphasizes the scary bits.
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