CANDYMAN
Dare you say his name three times? Calum Waddell looks back at one of the classics of ’90s horror...
Maybe you had to be there. Or at least be of a certain age. But those of us who first caught Candyman on VHS can probably still remember someone too afraid to spit out that name three times in a row while standing in front of a mirror. Nonetheless, such silliness only attests to the terrifyingly effective mythology behind Bernard Rose’s exceptional Clive Barker adaptation: repeat the word whilst staring at your reflection and suffer for your sins...
An instant success, Candyman came along on the heels of multiple Oscar winner The Silence
Of The Lambs (1991) and indicated, for many critics, that American fright fare was once again becoming serious, sophisticated and overtly political. Doubtlessly produced after the box office appeal of Barker’s Hellraiser franchise, and loosely based on the author’s short story The Forbidden, the film focuses on a young academic (Virginia Madsen) researching an urban legend. In modern day Chicago, inner-city African-American residents still fear the story of the Candyman.
The titular tormentor (played by Tony Todd) was the eloquent son of a slave. After impregnating a white woman, however, he was tortured to death – his amputated right hand replaced with a hook and his naked body covered in honey so that it would be stung to death by bees. Over a century later and the Candyman’s spirit is said to live on and challenge anyone who dares to forget his suffering. And so the sins of the past continue to cause carnage in the ethnically-divided America of the early 1990s...
“I was writing the script and the idea of making him an African-American came from me,” states writer/director Bernard Rose, whose genre work also includes the British classic Paperhouse (1988). “Clive’s original story was set in England as well – but because this was going to be an American film we had to switch to a US setting. I went to Chicago and did some research out there and I thought it would be the perfect place to have this character come from. There had been some real murders when I was out there and talk about racial tensions too – with the conservative press taking a particularly tawdry stance on things – so that influenced me too. The whole idea of him coming from the mirror, after you say his name three times, was the old legend of Bloody Mary. It might sound obvious but I was still the person who introduced that and now the rights holders of Candyman cannot use any of that without paying me [laughs]. So, today, whenever someone says ‘I bet they are going to remake Candyman’ my answer is always ‘bring it on and write me the cheque [laughs].’” What also makes Candyman such a memorable slice of modern macabre is its casting. Tony Todd had already made some waves as the leading man in Tom Savini’s 1990 Night Of The
Living Dead rehash but it was Rose’s film that made the handsome and statuesque actor an overnight genre icon.
“Tony was a great find – and there were a
few actors who came in to read for that role,” continues Rose. “It was also a difficult part to play: he had to be frightening and yet we also needed to feel some sympathy for him. He was not Michael Myers or anything like that – the Candyman was a very romantic and disturbed soul. For a while it also made Tony quite a hot property. Michael Bay gave him a very big part in The Rock after Candyman was a success.”
WRONG MESSAGES
In recent years, a little controversy has surrounded Candyman’s completion. In the DVD liner notes of the film (in which Clive Barker somehow becomes “Clive Barnes”) it is claimed that Rose never actually finished the movie. Such an assumption led to Barker himself going public to repudiate this claim.
“Yes, that was rather weird wasn’t it?” sighs Rose. “Who knows who the source was? But, yes, it was absolute nonsense and I am glad that Clive also mentioned it is rubbish. My own opinion was, ‘Well, if Clive is angry about it I will let him deal with it instead’ [laughs]. I would have liked it if they had pulled those notes and let me correct them – but what can you do? I think you can tell from Candyman that it has not been mucked about with because it flows along very well. When a movie has been played around with by someone else you can usually tell because the result is very disjointed. Sadly, the world is full of inaccurate information but when it comes from the company distributing your film it is inexcusable.”
Further controversy arrived when the film’s soundtrack artist, the legendary Philip Glass, found himself unaware of the nature of the movie he had agreed to work on...
“Yes, Philip Glass did not know he was scoring a horror film when he got the Candyman job,” laughs Rose. “By that time it was in post-production and we never met. He finally saw Candyman in Times Square and it really offended him. As a result, he was telling people, ‘I would never have done the music to this bloody and violent horror movie.’ I think when they hired him he must have just seen a very early assembly of the picture – probably a much tamer cut! So he was very embarrassed at creating music to the movie and when he finally put the soundtrack out years later he still seemed very bitter about the experience. However, if you want my opinion, I think that Philip probably did enjoy Candyman. Maybe it was just his guilty little pleasure [laughs]. A lot of people simply do not like the feeling that horror films produce. I remember back in the ’70s, for instance, I would go to the cinema and catch late-night showings of The Devils or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. These were sticky pleasures, man, they attacked you – and you either love it or you hate it. And with Candyman I wanted to make something that would really shake people up – and also be quite wonderfully gory!”
Candyman would quickly spawn a sequel. Unfortunately, 1995’s Bill Condon-directed
Farewell To The Flesh – even with a wide theatrical release in the USA and the UK – was a certified flop. Slower-moving and less exciting than the original, Farewell To The Flesh fails to capture the malevolent mix of contemporary concerns and gruelling, hook-handed, bee-belching horror that made Rose’s film so shocking...
“The frustrating thing is that I actually wrote a script for Candyman II and the studio [TriStar] rejected it, which I sort of expected,” he reveals. “After that they decided to remove me from the creative process altogether. It all came down to money and also the producer’s own ideas for the franchise. However, my idea for the sequel was to get rid of Tony Todd because he was dead at the end of the first movie anyway. I am sure there are going to be some fans reading this and saying, ‘Well no wonder you got sacked’ [laughs]. Basically they told me that Tony was the marketable element and, yeah, they were probably right. To be honest, at that point it didn’t interest me to just go and do the same thing all over again, and the problem with horror movie sequels is that this is generally what you have to do. It pretty much needs to be the same sort of thing as what you did before – maybe you add a few more deaths, but otherwise where do you go? So, anyway, they brought Tony back and did their own Candyman II but I was not too upset. I mean, the great thing about sequels is that almost every single time the reviews come out and they say, ‘It’s not as good as the first film’ so at least you get that from it [laughs].”
Following Candyman’s unsuccessful reappearance in cinemas a further film was planned for the benefit of video stores. Yes, a series that had begun with accolades and admiration was now deemed only worthy of a direct-to-DVD release. And even the biggest Barker buff had to admit that Candyman: Day Of The Dead (1999), which starred Baywatch star/Playboy Playmate Donna D’Errico, was a sure-fire franchise-killer. As such, Tony Todd’s once-fearsome figure of urban upheaval and race-fuelled vengeance has not been seen in nearly 20 years...
“As far as I know, the rights to Candyman are quite complicated and the property is now owned by a few companies,” Rose reveals. “It’s a shame that there were not more movies but I suspect someone, somewhere is trying to work out a way to sort it out. I mean, Candyman is such a brilliant horror villain. My only fear is that they won’t use Tony again if there is another movie, or remake, because it’s obviously quite a while since they did the last sequel. And that’s a big hurdle because – as I learned – you really cannot have Candyman without the Candyman...”
Aye, there’s the hook...