Candy
Welcome to Screen Gems, our weekend delves into adjacent queer and queer headlines from the past that deserve a watch or re-watch.
The OG: Candyman
With Candyman’s new revival / sequel hitting theaters this weekend, we find time to revisit the original movie that started it all. Candyman began life as a story of queer horror writer Clive Barker, the brilliant and ghoulish mind behind Hellraiser, Nightbreed, and Lord of Illusions. Readers and reviewers alike often note Barker’s characteristic interweaving between sex and death, pain and pleasure, magic and horror. And, of course, Barker also enjoys working in a good, trendy homoeroticism.
Writer / director Bernard Rose adapts Candyman from Barker’s original story, The Forbidden, transplanted from Britain to the United States. The ever-wonderful Virginia Madsen plays Helen, a graduate student investigating urban legends. Her research took her, along with her classmate Bernie (Kasi Lemmons), to Chicago’s Cabrini Green apartments, social housing that by the 1990s had become synonymous with drugs, violence and poverty. There, she learns the legend of the Candyman (Tony Todd), a demonic entity summoned by saying his name five times in a mirror. The people of Cabrini Green attribute a series of murders to Candyman, and when Helen begins to have visions of the man herself, she begins to suspect the legend is real.
Candyman became an unexpected hit in 1992, thanks in large part to Rose’s psychedelic and hallucinatory visual style, and thanks to the tremendous performances of Madsen, and in particular Tony Todd. The two actors reverse the usual trope of the maiden chased by a monster by leaning into the erotic tension between the couple: the horror of meeting a demon might turn Helen on a bit. For the Candyman, killing Helen is the same as making love. Todd knows the perfect way to use his massive build and bass voice to intimidate and seduce. He embodies the sex and death mark of all of Clive Barker’s work better than any other actor. It’s just a great performance.
The film also became a hit because it offered African American viewers a flamboyant yet likeable monster, a sort of phantom of the opera that evoked both fear and pity. Candyman’s story reveals that he once lived as a highly educated African-American artist, murdered by mobs of lynchers. The horror of this event turned him into a demonic slayer. Additionally, given that much of the story focuses on African American characters and makes subtle observations on systemic racism and classism, the film had special sociological relevance.
Seen today, as artist and commentator William O. Tyler recently pointed out, the film shows its age. As a character, Helen falls into the silly “white savior” trope. This Candyman also spends most of the movie terrorizing other African Americans rather than the white woman who actually summons him isn’t playing well either. Yet while Candyman may be a film from another era, it still has a lot to offer today, starting with Todd’s remarkable performance. It’s a horror film about more than gory ideas, an atmosphere more than quick cuts and loud noises designed to startle audiences. Candyman argues that injustice perpetrated against a man can haunt a community for generations.
Now that is really scary.
Streamed on Peacock, Amazon, Hulu, and YouTube.
