Editor’s Note: The new Album A La Carte was not quite ready this week. Instead, deal with one of our boldest Quiet Revolutions ever. I really hope some people weigh in on the comments, so think some things through and let me know what you think about the nature of fear.
Sometimes, it’s really hard to be a horror film fan. We don’t have a lot of examples in the genre of films that can stand by the classics and the one’s that can are often applauded for their small impacts on other films.
Horror is remembered for some of the best films of the genre, which are al mostly remembered for their technical achievements. “Psycho” is remembered mostly for the massive twist in the second act. “Halloween” is remembered for it’s relentless pushing of tension and memorable POV shots. “The Blair Witch Project” became a classic for the ambitious and innovative use of camera, unseen threats and looming dread. All of these movies are respected classics of the genre, but they generally aren’t well loved outside of that.
What I’m trying to say is that horror can be innovative, it’s just rarely art. Horror almost never pushes the limits of the genre or expands past the expectations of the audience. Themes are limited, protagonists are straight forward and the enemies are often single minded in their pursuits.
That’s why “Candyman” is the greatest horror film of all time and one of the best movies ever made. I will stand by this with everything I’ve got. It’s the movie that changed what expectations are and it’s a movie that only one other filmmaker has ever expanded on. We’re getting to that though.
On a primordial level, human fear is about universal myth. We’re afraid of cliche, what we’ve been told we should be afraid of and what generations have taught us to be. By the mid 19th Century, American mythology was dying. We had conquered the continent, seen every impossibility and defeated it. In 1969, we became masters of the moon. There was no unknown left on the planet. Urban legends were the final source of universal fear. Issues like the alligators in the New York City sewers, ghost stories and tales of fully human monsters became something of the norm. These fears spawned the slasher films of the ’80s and the motivations that they were given. “Candyman” looked at this phenomenon from a uniquely American perspective by embracing the twin sources of unspoken fear in the country, race and our past.
Without a doubt, one of the most horrifying images in American cinema.
Helen is a grad student trying to find out the truth behind the Candyman killer, an urban legend that has haunted the poverty inflicted all black projects of Chicago. The film plays wonderfully off the sense of ’90s political correctness, with Helen having to deal with both her unspoken fears of African Americans and the way that it plays against her ability to disbelieve the legend that impacts the city. The film even throws a curve ball in the first 40 minutes, with Helen being attacked by a gangster who assumes the Candyman monger, even wielding his trademark hook.
"I hear you're looking for Candyman, bitch."
The first 45 minutes of “Candyman” are very traditional. After saying the killer’s name five times in a mirror, he begins to materialize, manipulating Helen into stabbing a woman and making it appear that she has kidnapped a baby. It leads to one of the most disturbing sshots of the film, with Virginia Madsen coated in blood, being forced to strip off her stained red bra and panties for her interrogating police officer. We then spend nearly the rest of the movie being forced to question the innocence of a character who may or may not herself be the killer. We watch as Candyman kills Helen’s partner with his hook, materialize around the apartment building and stab people in the throat. He’s clearly committing the crime, but it appears to everyone else that Helen is. The movie goes from forcing us to assume Helen’s innocence, to seeing that she may be the only one behind the crime.
Things don't go well from here.
Morphing into a “Fight Club”/”One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest” examination of the motive of killers, Helen is committed where she is either broken out by the Candyman or murders her way out of the asylum, only to meet up with her cheating husband and to return to the home of the Candyman. there we find that she may have been a part of his origin story, potentially in a past life, and we embrace the idea that the movie comes down to, what the limits of myth are and the power of the urban legend.
Helen ends up dying in the pyre, only to return when her ex-husband whispers her name in the mirror. She becomes a part of fear, giving credence to the existence of Candyman and opening up the film for a pair of not particularly good sequels. The most important thing that Candyman gave us wasn’t in the two films but rather the way that the “final girl” archetype was examined and the way that myth would become one of the driving forces in horror for the next two decades.
Let’s examine the later first. One year after the release of “Candyman,” a little show started called “The X-Files.” Receiving few regular viewers, the show slowly picked up a regular cult audience that built into making the show one of the biggest successes of the ’90s. What most people remember about the show was the focus on aliens but the overarching theme of the show was the way that local legends bumped up against a world that was becoming increasingly urban. At it’s best, the show wonderfully balanced these forces, in episodes like “Home” and “Small Potatoes” to show the way belief is a double edged sword in a world that was more connected than ever. It’s a formula that was potent and became one of the foci of the more recent “Supernatural.”
While I think that the power of myth was the most potent aspect of “Candyman,” it’s also the most difficult one to replicate. The nature of the “final girl,” the generally pure and capable women who can fend off the killer, is explored, forcing viewers to see if their intrinsic trust in a protagonist is always valid. Memorably recreated in one of the few other legitimately great horror films, “The Descent,” viewers are asked to associate with a protagonist who is almost certainly an insane murderer.
“Candyman” was appreciated at the time for it’s impressive cinematography, smart writing and great haunting twists but it’s memorable today for the creative use of genre conventions as well as the way that the movie relentlessly creates a terrifying world that viewers only wish they couldn’t associate with. It’s a perfect film and one I highly recommend for anyone that wants to understand genre defining and challenging cinema.
The Edge News 