From: nate@bu.edu (Nathan Auclair)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies
Subject: Re: REVIEW: CANDYMAN
Date: 11 Nov 92 23:54:03 GMT
Article-I.D.: bu.101610
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5


Phantom,   

	Your review is too damn long! Shorten it, get a clue.


The Phantom (sbb@panix.com) wrote:
: 
: 			      CANDYMAN
: 		    A review in the public domain
: 			    by The Phantom
: 			   (sbb@panix.com)
:                                    
: [A brief note: the somewhat crabby tone of the Phantom's latest review
: should be attributed more to the fact that it was written during the
: most recent Presidential debate than to the quality of the film itself;
: in retrospect, the debate apparently skewed the Phantom's ability to
: make reasoned -- and above all, brief -- arguments.  CANDYMAN is worth
: about 2 1/2 stars out of 4, and depending on how quickly you read, may
: in fact take less time to get through than this review.  As compensation
: for this, please feel free to smoke, keep crying babies in the room with
: you, and leave empty popcorn and soda containers wherever they may fall.
: Thank you, and enjoy the show.]
: 
:      The Phantom has long held a theory about horror films, but it was
: only recently that he got to confirm it.  Although he's not subjected
: this theory to rigorous testing, he nonetheless now feels confident
: enough to state that to his knowledge the word "thesis" has never
: appeared in the screenplay for a successful horror film.  Actually,
: let's rephrase that: the word "thesis" has never appeared in the
: screenplay for a *good* horror film, as it remains to be seen whether or
: not CANDYMAN will be successful in this unpleasant season of sub-par
: horror.
: 
:      It is with some trepidation that the Phantom has returned to the
: reviewing scene; having seen both HELLRAISER III and INNOCENT BLOOD, it
: occurred to the Phantom that modern horror has now gotten so far
: off-track; so misguided; and so poorly executed that his services were
: perhaps no longer necessary -- that at this point the best he can hope
: to do is to act as something of a morning traffic report for this fall's
: horrible horror films.  Perhaps all he can be expected to do now is
: point out the apparently never ending series of cinematic traffic jams
: and roadside wrecks to phans who are more than likely already in their
: cars and pounding their dashboards in frustration.  Like the morning
: rush, bad cinematic horror is with us always; yet somehow we're always
: aggrieved and surprised whenever we come face to face with it.
: 
:      After all, it's one thing if we're treated to one good horror film
: out of every three or four; it's another if we find ourselves buried in
: cynical, misguided dreck, powerless to stop its production and release,
: and yet helpless in our fervent hopes that *this* time things will be
: different -- that *this* time John Landis or the vaunted Clive Barker
: won't let us down, even though he has now more often than his ubiquitous
: press clippings would have us believe.
: 
:      In fact, although Barker has now lent his name and dubious
: executive producing talent to a half dozen different horror films, he
: has actually directed only one and a half.  The half is of course
: HELLRAISER, the film that guaranteed him future directing offers even
: though the film itself was more or less taken away from him and given to
: Tony Randel to complete.  (Randel also directed Barker's second film,
: HELLBOUND: HELLRAISER II and showed the same sure touch there that he
: did in the first installment.)  Barker's only complete effort,
: NIGHTBREED, had the look of a good horror film; its plot was taken from
: one of Barker's better stories, the novella "Cabal"; it even had the
: benefit of David Cronenberg's quite disturbing performance as the
: psychiatrist Decker, and his alter ego, The Mask.  Yet the film itself
: was something of a mess -- something that pleased neither those who read
: the novella nor those who didn't, disappointing the former and leaving
: the latter in a DUNE-like dark.  Here, as with the visually stunning
: HELLRAISER, Barker seemed much better introducing new ideas and creating
: visually compelling tableaus than he was at the nuts-and-bolts execution
: that any good horror film requires.
: 
:      And HELLRAISER III?  It's a movie that was quite obviously made
: just to rake in as much money as possible from gullible horror fans;
: beyond a few good special effects, there's virtually nothing of interest
: in this installment of the HELLRAISER series.  (In fact, the high point
: of the film for the Phantom came early on, when he got a free package of
: Honey Gold Wheaties to try, just for buying a ticket.  Sadly, the cereal
: in the package had a lot more snap crackle and pop than did the serial
: on the screen.)  This is all quite an achievement, for Barker and
: friends have in just two sequels managed to do what the folks at New
: Line Cinema took four to do with the ELM STREET series: run it
: completely into the ground.
: 
:      All of which brings us to CANDYMAN, yet another film based on a
: Clive Barker short story, and one for which Barker served only as
: executive producer (Hollywood-ese for "the man who gets paid or the film
: don't get made".)  Although far from a successful horror film, CANDYMAN
: is at least technically very well made; competently acted and directed;
: at times visually compelling; and frequently quite scary.  Yet for the
: Phantom, it just didn't seem very *good*.
: 
:      Let's explore this for a moment, keeping in mind the Phantom's
: theory about the word "thesis", and going back to the short story on
: which CANDYMAN was based, "The Forbidden".  Briefly, Barker's original
: story was based on the idea that an isolated community that exists
: outside the realm of "civilized" society might not only develop legends
: about a fearsome boogeyman -- a phantom killer who dispatches his
: victims in gruesome ways and is as capricious as he is vicious -- but
: that it would actively work to keep the legend alive -- and very real.
: Barker's execution of this idea is quite compelling, because he takes
: you quickly from outside this closed community into its heart, where you
: discover a secret that at first doesn't seem to make any sense.  Why
: would a community live with this horror?  Do they even have a choice?
: Do they *want* to?  Interesting, and certainly the stuff of which great
: short stories are made.
: 
:      We've seen hints of this on the screen before: consider, say, the
: beginning of John Landis' classic AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, where
: you stumble into a community that's hiding some strange secret,
: something that outsiders don't understand.  The community is afraid of
: the werewolves all right; yet they don't actively seek them out and hunt
: them down.  Instead, they live with the terror of knowing that whoever
: may stray onto the moors late at night might well become the next victim
: (or perhaps become himself another werewolf).  One of the things that
: makes tales of werewolves so compelling is the fact that by definition
: werewolves are part of a community, at least for 29 days out of every
: month -- it's just during the full moon that they find themselves
: preying on their neighbors.  In much the same way, Candyman has been
: part of the community on which he preys for so long that to kill him
: would be to change the very nature of the community itself.  Isn't it
: worth living with a little horror if it means we can remain comfortably
: in the realm of the known?  If it means that we can keep alive something
: that makes our isolated and shunned community special?  For such a
: slippery and tricky topic, Barker managed a tour de force, both
: frightening and thought-provoking; it's no accident that tales like "The
: Forbidden" made his well-deserved reputation as a master story-teller.
: 
:      Of course, like many great short stories, this one is good partly
: because it's *short*.  That is, the idea is sufficient to hold us
: spellbound for thirty or forty pages, but if it were padded out beyond
: that, things would start to break down and the story would start
: straying to less compelling or original ideas.  Hence, Landis gave us a
: taste of what it means for a werewolf to be part of a community but then
: quickly moved on to the main focus of the film.  Barker kept "The
: Forbidden" very brief -- you're plunged into the community very quickly;
: you discover Candyman's secret alter and why "Sweets for the sweet" is
: written all over the place; finally, you meet Candyman and die with the
: heroine and the baby she finds left for him as a sacrifice.  End of
: story.
: 
:      Could something like this translate well to the screen?  The
: Phantom thinks that only a genius of the form could have carried it off;
: perhaps John Carpenter in his better days, or Frank Henenlotter if
: someone could convince him to stay away from that ever-tempting latex.
: But none of the people responsible for CANDYMAN -- either singly or
: together -- have the talent to do this successfully, which means that
: right from the start a lot of compromises have to be made.  Now,
: compromises in and of themselves are not necessarily bad, as long as
: everyone agrees that they're no longer going to be filming a strict
: adaptation of original story.  Carpenter's version of THE THING is a
: testament to what a little creative re-writing can do for a film;
: CANDYMAN, alas, is not.
: 
:      What does all this have to do with having the word "thesis" in a
: horror film?  Simply that from the very beginning, the screenplay for
: CANDYMAN wanders wide afield of what should be its primary focus and
: spends most of two hours going this way and that, never quite sure of
: its intentions even until the very end.  (Or perhaps especially at the
: very end, which must be one of the most blatant cop-out endings in the
: history of the horror film -- worse even in some ways than the
: ever-reincarnating Freddy and Jason, since it's difficult to get upset
: with films that we hold in so little esteem to begin with.)
: 
:      Instead of putting us right in the community and letting us
: experience Candyman first hand with the people who are living their
: lives with him, the filmmakers focus on a doctoral candidate working on
: her thesis: that the people in a housing project on Chicago's South Side
: would start to blame a mythical boogeyman for some of the gruesome
: murders that occur there with alarming frequency.  (In the short story,
: Barker uses a similar device to get the protagonist into the community,
: but there she goes to study graffiti as a form of youthful expression
: and only stumbles onto the legend by accident.)  But this doesn't really
: make any sense, does it?  The people living in urban ghettos live with
: unspeakable violence and murder every day, and they know exactly who is
: responsible -- for people who must take care leaving their homes not
: just during a full moon but at any time of any day, a boogeyman who
: kills some poor soul with a meat hook once in a blue moon would be the
: very least of their worries.
: 
:      Too, the legend is distorted to fit HELLRAISER-like sensibilities:
: instead of being an unknowable and capricious god, Candyman becomes a
: lot like Pinhead -- look into a mirror and say his name five times and
: he'll appear.  But given that all Candyman will do is kill you, why on
: earth would anyone do this?  At least Pinhead promised you a lifetime of
: pleasure/pain if you solved his puzzle box and thereby called him forth
: from the depths of hell (though this idea was all but discarded by the
: time HELLRAISER III was cranked out).  Wasn't the idea supposed to be
: that Candyman was a horrible monster, perhaps real, perhaps legend, who
: killed the poor folks in the ghetto whenever the spirit moved him?
: 
:      As if this weren't confusing enough, apparently someone saw and
: enjoyed THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and thought that having a spunky
: investigator go after a mysterious serial killer would be just the
: ticket, especially if both investigator and serial killer form some sort
: of relationship.
: 
:      But how on earth does any of this fit with the original story's
: driving idea?  As it happens, not very well at all, and the result is a
: well-filmed, competently made mish-mash of excessive exposition,
: senseless "spring-loaded cat" stunners for an audience growing restless
: with the essential rootlessness of the screenplay, and the sense that
: the rewriting continued long after the cameras started rolling.
: 
:      So instead of using the heroine as a way to keep the focus of the
: film squarely on Candyman himself -- a technique used to perfection in
: SILENCE OF THE LAMBS -- we get involved in her marital difficulties and
: in her quest for a thesis topic; then the film shifts still further away
: from Candyman as more and more of the plot concerns itself with her,
: even though the Phantom doesn't remember seeing her name above the
: shadowy figure in the film's print ads.  Meanwhile, what happened to
: those people in the projects?  Candyman is at least ostensibly part of
: their community, but that's true only for the first half of the film; by
: the time the terribly contrived ending finally rolls around, they've
: been reduced to stoic-looking bystanders.
: 
:      As if to help keep the film on track, the filmmakers load it with
: scene after scene of exposition.  We're even plunked into the middle of
: a lecture on "modern oral history", presumably just in case we don't
: know what a legend is.  Does anyone remember a lecture on the clinical
: definition of "sociopath" in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS?  Were we the poorer
: for its lack?  Or was Demme able to *show* us what a sociopath is, to
: put us right in a cell with one and let us feel a little of what Clarice
: Starling must have been feeling during her interviews with Lector.  This
: is, after all, what people go to the movies for -- if we wanted a
: narrative, we'd read Barker's short story.  (Not that this is an
: either/or situation, but movies are a primarily visual medium --
: filmmakers ignore this at their peril.)
: 
:      By its end, the filmmakers have turned CANDYMAN nearly into an ELM
: STREET sequel, except without the playful sense of fun.  Why does
: Candyman *talk* to this poor woman -- and by extension, to us -- so
: much?  The result is that we're always once-removed from the horror;
: we're always watching him kill someone else.  That's scary, sure, just
: like have a cat jump straight at the screen is scary.  (The Phantom
: coined the term "spring-loaded cat" after seeing ALIEN and noting one of
: Ridley Scott's favorite scare tactics.)  Yet for all the false scares in
: ALIEN, it remains a consummate horror film because Scott lets us
: experience the horror *first hand*.  The alien comes right at us
: throughout the last half the film -- we're not just sitting around
: waiting for it to show up, kill someone else, and put a knife in our
: hand in an attempt to add yet one more twist to an already
: over-complicated plot.
: 
:      Get the sense that the Phantom was somewhat disappointed with
: CANDYMAN?  Well, yes, but let's qualify that a little.  First, the film
: is anything but the usual run-of-the-mill dreck that these days passes
: for modern horror.  It's also head and shoulders above both of its
: immediate predecessors, INNOCENT BLOOD and HELLRAISER III, each of which
: was so misguided and poorly made as to be nearly unwatchable.  Instead,
: CANDYMAN is a good, solid horror film that just didn't click as often as
: the Phantom wished it had; because it was, in a strictly technical
: sense, so good, the Phantom's disappointment that it didn't deliver on
: its promise was all the greater.
: 
:      In fact, one of its greatest flaws is that it introduces and then
: neglects more good ideas than we're likely to see in the next dozen
: horror films.  Among them, the way the filmmakers flirted with some of
: our most primal fears about mirrors and walls was both exciting and
: disturbing, at least as far as it went.  Mirrors have always featured
: prominently in tales of horror, but rarely are they featured as plot
: elements in horror films (with the notable exception of THE BOOGEYMAN, a
: HALLOWEEN clone that was nearly as good as the film to which it paid
: homage).  And the notion that the very walls which provide us with a
: feeling of invulnerability and safety might harbor terrors of their own
: is a very compelling one; alas, it is dispensed with almost as soon as
: it's introduced.
: 
:      Ah well.  On balance, you won't go too far wrong in seeing
: CANDYMAN; but don't expect either a faithful rendition of Barker's
: remarkable short story or even a film that operates on a level higher
: than the easy scare -- to the Phantom, CANDYMAN seemed a ghost story
: without a payoff.  (Need to know if a horror film is overly complicated
: or lacks focus?  Here's a good test: try to relate the film's plot --
: that is, explain the film -- to someone, campfire optional.  If you find
: it the least bit difficult, chances are the screenplay either got worked
: on too little or much too much.)  In the Phantom's opinion, we need more
: filmmakers willing to at least attempt to create a subjective and
: personal horror experience for their audience, rather than bombard them
: with shocks, gore and excessive exposition in an attempt to cover over
: the flaws in their screenplays.
: 
:      (Or perhaps this means that good writing is just as important in
: the cinema as it is on the page, that special effects and spring-loaded
: cats can't substitute for intelligent, well-considered terror.  If
: nothing else, CANDYMAN is an example of a horror film that is far better
: directed than it was written.)
: 
:      To close, it is the Phantom's fervent hope that this review has
: given you something to think about as we approach the season of ghosts
: and witches, even if it has left you no better informed or prepared to
: make a decision than did those brief glimpses of nationally televised
: hell, the Presidential debates.  Where oh where was Pinhead, Candyman,
: Freddy and Jason when we really needed them?
: 
: : The Phantom
: : sbb@panix.com
: : cmcl2!panix!sbb
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies