Bee Mine—Once Again, or It Was Always You: A Review of Bernard Rose’s Candyman

by Tony Fonseca

01/30/2007

Candyman. Dir. Bernard Rose. 1992.

Despite the recent spate of vampire lover novels (both heterosexual and homosexual in nature), most people don’t associate horror with romance. This is especially the case when it comes to the movies. My suspicion is that screenwriters and directors of horror films are under a lot more pressure to produce the “scare,” that nebulous sense of accomplishment (after all, each person has his or her definition of scary) that usually equals box office success. So it is much more difficult for a film crew to create a fictional tale that straddles both worlds—than it would be for a novelist or short story writer.

My nomination as the best film to actually manage to marry horror and romance, in fact my nomination for best and second scariest horror film of all time (after The Ring), is Bernard Rose’s 1992 Candyman, an often overlooked masterpiece by fans. The brilliance of Candyman led to various award nominations: four Saturn Awards by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films (winning for best actress—Virginia Madsen); an Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival Grand Prize nomination, and a nomination as the  Fantasporto International Fantasy Film Best Picture.

The movie, often called Clive Barker’s Candyman, is only loosely based on a Barker short story called “The Forbidden.” The true mastermind behind its production is a virtually unknown director—both in 1992 and in 2007—named Bernard Rose. Rose began his directorial career with music videos, and had only one successful movie under his belt when he was hired to undertake Candyman, that being a little known gem called Paperhouse (1988). Being familiar with both Barker’s story and Rose’s film, I feel safe in stating that by all rights this should be named Bernard Rose’s Candyman. Rose came up with the idea of moving the story to Chicago, locating it in the blighted urban area around the Cabrini Green Housing projects, and creating what is easily the best ever treatment of urban FOAFlore¹ with the legend of Candyman.

In fact, it is Rose himself, playing minor character Professor Archie Purcell, who gets to explain the myth in the film. In a wonderfully eerie dinner scene at a posh restaurant, he tells the two female leads, Virginia Madsen and Kasi Lemmons, that Candyman is so called because a white slaveowner “exacted a terrible vengeance” on a free black portrait painter who fell in love with and impregnated his virginal daughter: he cut off the right hand, replacing it with a hook, and covered the man’s body with honey, right before releasing an apiary full of bees who stung him to death. The revenging revenant, however, decides on an interesting twist. He does not haunt white people and kill for vengeance; rather, he haunts the shadowy areas or poor urban tenements, as his main purpose seems to be to serve as a reminder of exactly how dangerous and murderous life is in such communities. But even though he seems to limit his influence to areas notorious for black-on-black violence like Chicago's Cabrini Green, housing project Candyman becomes the embodiment of just about every horrifying urban legend: the person who places razorblades in candy; the monster under the bed; the man with the hook hand who slices and dices lovers; the kidnapper of small children; the castrator of boys in restrooms; the monster who comes out of the mirror. And to top that off, he seems to be the largest producer of ominous graffiti in the projects.

While he spends his immortality “spilling innocent blood” in the black community, it is the white community, based at The University of Illinois and in a posh condo which is the mirror image of the high rise projects, that becomes most interested in him. Helen (Madsen) and her research partner/friend Bernadette (Lemmons) are looking to make a name for themselves by publishing a masters' thesis on the “Myth of the Candyman.” Their fatal mistake is that they trivialize the urban legend—even going as far as to mockingly invoke the monster by repeating his name five times while looking in the mirror (Rose based this on the famous Bloody Mary folklore). When Helen convinces a young boy in the Cabrini Green projects that he can help her do her research, Candyman the revenging revenant (played by Tony Todd in his first starring role after Tom Savini’s remake of Night of the Living Dead, in which he played Ben) comes to her because she is beginning to threaten his existence by, as he puts it, making him seem less real to his “congregation.”

A lesser writer might here take the easy route and have Candyman simply rip Helen, a white woman from an affluent condo, into shreds. Rose, however, has a much more grand scheme in mind. His vision of the tale is not simply as a story of horror; Candyman seems to be as much about mythmaking as it is about murder and mayhem. Perhaps this is why the principles, Todd and Madsen, are both extremely attractive people cast as (ultimately) mated monsters. What better way to represent the lure of evil than to have it personified by beauty. Candyman recognizes in this beautiful, well-to-do, intelligent white woman a chance to branch out of the projects. In short, he does not wish for her to be his “victim” (he repeatedly asks Helen, “be my victim,” as if she must grant permission) in the literal sense. He wants her to be his apostle. His intention is to create around her a myth as frightening and as grandiose as his own legend.

Rose’s subplots make it clear why Helen is the perfect candidate for this: as a woman in academia, she is often oppressed and belittled. Her husband, a professor (Trevor, played by Xander Berkeley), has already begun to undermine her research when the movie begins; she walks in on one of his lectures that seems carefully designed to call into question the validity of the survey she and Bernadette have been conducting with students. In addition, almost immediately we find out that Trevor is having an affair with one of his undergraduates. Later in the film we find out that to Trevor, Helen is easily replaceable, perhaps moreso since she is beginning to assert herself intellectually, something that Trevor might find threatening, especially since her research is in his field of expertise. So he finds another young, pretty woman, and it is no accident that she is one of his adoring students. In one sense then, Candyman is a love triangle on two fronts. On one front we have Trevor, his student, and Helen the grad student, and on the other, the now discarded Helen, Candyman, and Trevor the unfaithful husband. The film moves forward so that inexorably Helen is left with nothing except Candyman’s desire for her (a line that is actually stated in the movie).

How Candyman achieves the creation of the myth of Helen is ingenious. He places her in situations where she looks like the murderer of Bernadette, and the kidnapper of a black infant from the projects. In fact, one could read the movie as Helen’s degeneration into madness—in other words the entire Candyman part of the story is in her head. Rose himself comments to this effect on the special edition DVD (which includes voice over commentary by Rose, Madsen, Lemmons, Todd, and Barker). But I do not believe that Rose is trying to have it both ways here; while we may stop for a second and think that Helen’s tale is one of insanity, enough small hints are given throughout that indicate that this really is a monster movie. For example, Helen in one scene watches while strapped into a wheelchair as Candyman guts a psychiatrist. The reaction that follows throughout the mental hospital indicates that this did not occur in her head.

The ultimate irony is that while her husband undermines her attempts to create a name for herself, Candyman actually creates Helen anew, fixing events so that she is fated to crawl out of a bonfire in the movie’s final, climatic scene, hair ablaze, with the missing infant in her arms. And in case the audience isn’t aware of the potential mythological significance of this, Rose plays the scene in slow motion, with a soaring Philip Glass score in the background for emphasis. It isn’t until the credits roll at the end of the film and we see Candyman’s most recent graffiti image, that of an iconic painting of Helen in imitation of St. Joan de Arc, ascending towards heaven with her hair seemingly ablaze with what looks like the sun's rays. That last image brings the myth full circle. The once demure, docile helpmate is now the patron saint of slighted women everywhere (It is important that the single, much put upon ghetto mother Anne Marie, played by Vanessa Williams, is responsible for Helen’s being given the hook she will use at the end of the film, right after she [Anne Marie] gives Trevor an “if looks could kill” stare at Helen’s funeral). She rises from the dead to get her revenge, and in the process is immortalized by her new lover.

¹FOAFlore refers to those sort of urban legends that are supposedly really true because they were related to the teller by a "trusted source," a friend of a friend, hence the name FOAFlore.