CANDYMAN (August 2021)

CANDYMAN

(August 2021)

“Are you ready for the sacrament?”

The early ‘90’s pre-Scream period saw cinematic horror do some interesting things, like masquerade under the guise of tragic, inevitably doomed romances, its darker, malevolent streak secreted beneath the more palatable facades of love stories.
One such notable title is Francis Ford Coppola’s exquisite phantasmagoria, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992).
Another from the same year, is Bernard Rose’s Candyman.
 
“It was the projects. Affordable housing that had a particularly bad reputation.”
“You would never know.”
“Yeah, because they tore it down and gentrified the sh!t out of it.”
“Translation: White people built the ghetto, and then erased it when they realized they built the ghetto.”
 
Adapted from Clive Barker’s Books of Blood short story, “The Forbidden,” Rose’s Candyman transplanted the narrative’s action from England’s council estates to America’s housing projects, grafting themes of racism and gentrification (among others) onto the source material, like wallpaper of a very particular pattern laid over the original story’s structure.
Nia DaCosta’s Candyman has these same preoccupations, serving as both a deeper exploration of the original adaptation’s thematics, as well as a continuation of its central narrative.
 
“Some of the things that have happened in Cabrini over the years, violence just so extreme, so bizarre… It’s almost as if violence became the ritual.
“The worst part… the residents are afraid to call the police. A code of honor perhaps, fear of the police themselves…
“The easy answer is always, ‘Candyman did it.’”
 
DaCosta’s story (the screenplay is credited to her and co-writers Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfeld) revolves around Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s Anthony, an up-and-coming artist badly in need of inspiration, which he finds in the gruesome urban folklore tale of the Candyman.

“I am the writing on the walls. I am the sweet smell of blood on the street. The buzz that echoes in the alleyways.”
 
Now, as is usual ‘round these parts, I’ll refrain from saying anything more in terms of the plot.
What I believe I can say though, is, just as Rose’s Candyman, despite appearances, didn’t play the way a “regular” slasher film does, neither does DaCosta’s.
And though there is a romantic component to the narrative, it isn’t as central as it was in Rose’s original, which was decidedly a love story, about the love between man and woman, between killer and victim, between deity and worshipper.
DaCosta’s take is more interested in community and legacy and who has ultimate control over society’s grand narrative, pulling its camera back so its lens can take in more of the macro, as opposed to the personal intimacy Rose’s dark love story evinced.
 
“When something leaves a stain, even if you wash it out, it’s still there. You can feel it, a, uh, uh, uh, uh, a thinning, deep in the fabric.
“This neighborhood got caught in a loop! The sh!t got stained in the exact same spot over and over ’til it finally rotted from the inside out!”
 
Ultimately, this new Candyman is a worthy successor to Rose’s original adaptation, and like it, is the kind of horror I treasure, the kind that has Something to say.
And DaCosta and company say it very well indeed…
So if this all sounds like horror to suit your tastes as well, then by all means, check it out…
 
And, oh yes…
Say his name…
 
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, who can take tomorrow,
Dip it in a dream,
Separate the sorrow and collect up all the cream?
Dip it in a dream,
Separate the sorrow and collect up all the cream?
The Candy Man…
The Candy Man can…”
--“The Candy Man”
   Sammy Davis Jr.

Parting Shot: Since the art world also plays a central role in its narrative, Velvet Buzzsaw makes an excellent double feature with this particular Candyman.

  
(Candyman OS’ courtesy of impawards.com.)

10 Slots for the Best Horror I've Seen in the Past Year
[8 of 10]
The TV Horror Slot

And it's a tie!!!

CHANNEL ZERO: NO-END HOUSE

(September 2017)

"God! I keep... waiting for one of you to understand how magnificent this place is!

"All the gifts that it can give you! Because memory is a disease!

“And then this house is the cure! How can you not see that?!”

One of the most amazing things about Channel Zero’s sophomore season is that, though it still fundamentally feels like a Channel Zero story (in so much as the Channel Zero logo doesn’t look out of place in the opening credits), it does so despite the fact that it has a different kind of horror at its core, compared to the horror of Candle Cove.

With its central themes of memory and loss and instinct and co-dependency, No-End House is also surprisingly moving, balancing out the horror with genuine emotion, thanks in no small part to a commendable cast, which includes the excellent John Carroll Lynch.

CHANNEL ZERO:
BUTCHER'S BLOCK

(February 2018)

“... this is the city I come home to.

“When I walk here, I’m in two worlds at the same time. The one you see, and the one I remember.”

With both No-End House and Butcher’s Block making the cut this year, it has become pointedly apparent that Channel Zero is where the best of current television horror can be found.

“You were so scared of losing your mind and then you just gave it away…”

With the insidious spectre of mental illness and the desolation of sacrifice zones some of its preoccupations, Butcher’s Block is “… particularly inspired by Argento films, by Candyman, by Nicolas Roeg films” (in the words of Channel Zero’s creator and showrunner, Nick Antosca).

Directed by Arkasha Stevenson (who brought Lynch to the, ahem, table), Butcher’s Block makes it three for three for Channel Zero, and, once again, the ante is upped for its next season, The Dream Door, directed by E.L. Katz, no stranger to these parts due to Cheap Thrills.*

With reversals, a motley crew of protagonists, and a steady, occasionally hallucinatory build to a Grand Guignol climax, Antosca, Stevenson, and company have brought us a “… particularly bizarre flavor” of horror in Butcher’s Block.

Oh, and did I forget to mention?

Rutger flippin’ Hauer is in this one!

“You know, if you don’t eat enough protein, the body just starts to eat itself. Yeah, I read that in a Reader’s Digest.

“You just get so hungry, your heart will just up and eat itself! And then it moves on to your brain, and then it goes down to your spine, and suddenly, you’re just dead!

“Happens to vegetarians all the time.”

(Channel Zero: No-End House OS courtesy of impawards.com; Channel Zero: Butcher’s Block OS courtesy of dreadcentral.com.)

*Katz also directed “A is for Amateur” for ¡Qué horror! 2015 title, ABCs of Death 2, and was an associate producer on Adam Wingard’s A Horrible Way To Die, one of the Serial Killer Thriller runners-up on the 2012 rundown.

He was also co-producer on the non-¡Qué horror! title, The Aggression Scale, so, yeah… Katz has been ‘round these parts a lot, even when he wasn’t fronting a film.

Here’s hoping he comes back for The Dream Door…

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2018

Candidate #11

CHANNEL ZERO:
BUTCHER'S BLOCK

(February 2018)

“... this is the city I come home to.

“When I walk here, I’m in two worlds at the same time. The one you see, and the one I remember.”

No, you haven’t experienced a time slip.

There are indeed two seasons of a TV show that have staked out Candidate slots in the same year, a ¡Qué horror! first!

With Butcher’s Block, it has become pointedly apparent that Channel Zero is where the best of current television horror can be found.

“You were so scared of losing your mind and then you just gave it away…”

With the insidious spectre of mental illness and the desolation of sacrifice zones some of its preoccupations, Butcher’s Block is “… particularly inspired by Argento films, by Candyman, by Nicolas Roeg films” (in the words of Channel Zero’s creator and showrunner, Nick Antosca).

Directed by Arkasha Stevenson (who brought Lynch to the, ahem, table), Butcher’s Block makes it three for three for Channel Zero, and, once again, the ante is upped for its next season, The Dream Door, directed by E.L. Katz, no stranger to these parts due to Cheap Thrills.*

With reversals, a motley crew of protagonists, and a steady, occasionally hallucinatory build to a Grand Guignol climax, Antosca, Stevenson, and company have brought us a “… particularly bizarre flavor” of horror in Butcher’s Block.

Oh, and did I forget to mention?

Rutger flippin’ Hauer is in this one!

“You know, if you don’t eat enough protein, the body just starts to eat itself. Yeah, I read that in a Reader’s Digest.

“You just get so hungry, your heart will just up and eat itself! And then it moves on to your brain, and then it goes down to your spine, and suddenly, you’re just dead!

“Happens to vegetarians all the time.”

(Channel Zero: Butcher’s Block OS courtesy of dreadcentral.com.)

*Katz also directed “A is for Amateur” for ¡Qué horror! 2015 title, ABCs of Death 2, and was an associate producer on Adam Wingard’s A Horrible Way To Die, one of the Serial Killer Thriller runners-up on the 2012 rundown.

He was also co-producer on the non-¡Qué horror! title, The Aggression Scale, so, yeah… Katz has been ‘round these parts a lot, even when he wasn’t fronting a film.

Here’s hoping he comes back for The Dream Door…

¡Qué horror! 2013

Candidate # 2

SMILEY

(October 2012)

There are a lot of interesting and intriguing ideas that inform Michael Gallagher’s feature debut, Smiley, which is ostensibly a Candyman for the age of the internetz.

Gallagher takes a screenplay he co-wrote with Glasgow Phillips (who’s written for such animated TV shows as South Park and Father of the Pride, and who came up with the story alongside Ezra Cooperstein) and gives us a crackerjack title that explores the idea of evil and nihilism as filtered through the enormity and anonymity of cyberspace.

Plus, we’ve also got Roger Bart in a supporting role, and one of the most simple yet freakily disturbing (and yes, awfully du jour) slasher designs ever seen on screen.

(Smiley OS’ courtesy of impawards.com.)

MASTERS OF HORROR
Season 2 Episode 8

“Valerie On The Stairs”
Teleplay by Mick Garris; based on the short story by Clive Barker; directed by Mick Garris

“`Valerie on The Stairs’ is about a house which has been given by a now-dead writer, a failed writer, over as a kind of hospice for failed writers. They take rooms and they can stay there and the moment they get a piece of work published, they're out, OK? I think in the story there are nine rooms; it's a big house and nine fervent and fevered and desperate imaginations working each in solitude can do strange things to houses...The thing that's fun about it is it's about writers and it's about the agony of it, really, it's about the pleasure of it and it's about the things that haunt you.”
-- Clive Barker

I’m a big Clive Barker fan, so hearing he’d written a 45-page treatment for MoH, well, that got me stoked. Apparently, it’s something he’s wanted to write for quite a while, but never got around to.
Sadly though, this isn’t a particularly strong episode. Maybe this conceit would have been effective on the printed page, with Barker’s exquisite and darkly melodic prose guiding us through the tale. As it is though, an hour-long MoH entry, it just doesn’t work.

Struggling, unpublished writer Rob Hanisey (Tyron Leitso, from the brutally cancelled Wonderfalls) moves into Highberger House, a residence for aspiring writers where they can write their masterpieces free of distractions. Taking a sudden vacancy (suicide in the wake of a sea of rejection slips), it isn’t long before Hanisey starts to hear and see things, chief among these phenomena, Valerie (Clare Grant, seen recently in Black Snake Moan), a beautiful young woman with a penchant for running around starkers, and being pulled into the walls by a menacing Tony Todd (looking like a citizen of Barker’s Midian, as seen in Nightbreed).

Playing like a writer’s version of Barker’s “Son Of Celluloid,” “Valerie On The Stairs” is ultimately about the monstrous egos of writers and the true power of the imagination. A lot of the time, this sort of post-modern story, where fiction intrudes upon reality (and vice versa), doesn’t quite have the power on the screen as it does in print. Past genre offerings that followed this tack, John Carpenter’s At The Mountains Of Madness and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, were both botched attempts at this kind of tricky storytelling.
And perhaps, like Carpenter’s Mountains, “Valerie On The Stairs” doesn’t work because it’s telling a story about the novel and writers and the written word; it’s being post-modern with a different medium, which has a different set of rules. (Having said this, the long-talked about film adaptation of “Son Of Celluloid” seems a more promising match for the silver screen. Set in a movie house, it’s about a sentient tumour which takes the mercurial shapes of Hollywood icons like John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe.)*

Another problem which plagues this entry is a collection of half-hearted performances which badly need some raw infusions of honesty. Only Todd (who made a genre name for himself as another Barker creation, the eponymous Candyman) registers here, his darkly poetic delivery of the dialogue going a long way in making up for all the other off-key performances.
Even Back To The Future’s Christopher Lloyd (as Highberger resident Everett Neely) seems ever so slightly off his game here.

All that, and a climactic effects sequence which looks awkward and comes off flat due to its staging and execution (budgetary constraints are a real b!tch), cripple “Valerie On The Stairs,” leaving a hobbling mess that, like “Haeckel’s Tale” (another Barker adaptation, from Season 1), is a particular disappointment.

* Yes, you read that right.

Parting shot: More Barkerian news in Afterthoughts (11): Archive June 2007.

(Valerie On The Stairs DVD cover art courtesy of fangoria.com.)