By contrast, the white community is dependent on employment: Helen’s circle of friends are academics (in the source story, “their circle seemed entirely dominated by educated fools”), while the neighbouring apartment is unoccupied. The cleaners at Helen’s university are black (and straight away, we have a class and race schism) and know each other from Cabrini-Green. The film’s black community is predicated on inhabitation. A “god’s-eye view” of traffic moves along freeways choked with cars, regimented and bounded. Virginia Madsen plays Helen, a grad student studying urban myths, who investigates the legend in the housing projects where Candyman is the spectre (literally) behind the walls.įrom the opening credits, overlaid with Philip Glass’s stunning score, we are watching a film about distance and distancing: segregation. The resulting film is a progressive, intelligent take on the 80s slasher movie.Ĭandyman himself – played with great charisma and elegance by Tony Todd – is a figure from urban myth, a hook-handed murderer who (in the film) appears before – and then eviscerates – anyone who says his name into a mirror five times.
In addition to the source material’s look at class, this – because Cabrini-Green’s population was overwhelmingly African-American – introduces the issue of race. Bernard Rose’s 1992 film horror Candyman was adapted by him from Clive Barker’s 1985 short story “The Forbidden”, published in volume 5 of the groundbreaking Books of Blood.Ĭandyman transports the action from Barker’s Liverpool to Chicago, specifically to the “projects” (US term for “housing scheme”) of Cabrini-Green.
0 kommentar(er)
