I just discovered Becky, a movie that shocked me with its depth and ferocity. I had no clue how you could make a sequel to that film, but after watching this, I feel satisfied.
Filmmakers Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote were approached to write and direct this sequel by producer J.D. Lifshitz with only three weeks to write the script. Luckily, star Lulu Wilson had thought a lot about her character and wanted it to be more mature. I was worried that the previous team who made the first movie wasn’t involved, but co-writer Nick Morris and directors Jonathan Milot and Cary Murnion were the executive producers.
Years later from the first movie, Becky is working at a diner and living with an older black woman named Elena after living with different foster families. Her only constant is her beloved dog Diego. One day, while waiting on three Noble Men in town to meet with their cell leader (a nearly unrecognizable Sean William Scott) as they plan on an uprising during an appearance of Senator Hernandez (Gabriella Piazza). They act like you’d expect them to act and treat her as you’d expect them to treat her. She pours hot coffee in one’s lap and he decides to get revenge by finding out where she lives, killing Elena ad stealing Diego.
As you can imagine, Becky continues to be as efficient as a slasher maniac in her intensity, except this time the film takes breaks where she explains things, much like an Edgar Wright film. Woe be to the men — and one woman — of this racist terrorist cell, including Twig (Courtney Gains), DJ (Aaron Dalla Villa) and Sean (writer Angel).
Does that magic key from the first film get explained? Kind of. Are the bad guys so dumb that they explain their entire plans to her after tying her up? Of course. But is it also incredibly cathartic to have a female heroine chop an ultra MAGA guy to bits after he tells her his son’s name is Adolph? Most definitely.
Honestly, this sets up a sequel that I can’t wait to see. They could make a hundred of these movies and I’ll watch every single one.
This movie is part of the Calgary Underground Film Festival, which for twenty years has been dedicated to elevating Calgary’s cultural landscape with the best in international independent cinema. Recently, CUFF was named one of the Best Horror Festivals in the World, 2022 by Dread Central, and one of the World’s 50 Best Genre Festivals and one of 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee in 2021 by MovieMaker Magazine. CUFF continues to attract audiences with its programming of films that engage audiences and defy convention.
It’s running from now until April 30 and you can see the entire schedule here.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This movie was watched as part of Salem Horror Fest. You can still get a weekend pass for weekend two. Single tickets are also available. Here’s the program of what’s playing.
Directed and written by Alexandra Spieth, Stag is about Jenny (Mary Glen Fredrick) and her attempts to reconnect with her former best friend Mandy (Elizabeth Ramos) during a bachelorette party at a seemingly haunted campground.
What drove these friends apart? Why does Jenny have such difficulty connecting with anyone? Why are the religious beliefs of sisters Constance (Katie Wieland) and Casey (Stephanie Hogan) just so strange? Is this what it’s really like when women get together?
We can all feel for Jenny. Her only anchor in this unfamiliar territory is Mandy. There’s something unspoken that drove them in two directions yet there’s still some love between them. Yet as everyone else’s motivations are so unclear at best and malevolent at worst, it makes me glad that I skipped that bachelor party weekend I was supposed to go to last month.
What the film misses in proper lighting and color balance — the outside footage nearly washes out the movie at times — it makes up for it in writing and acting. A better budget would have done wonders, but let’s just forget that. Let’s concentrate on a movie that takes a great elevator speech — “What if Bridesmaids and Midsommer had mimosas?” — and delivers something special.
Kaiko City is plagued with poverty and crime. When a mass murder at a bathhouse occurs and yet local businessman Wataru Gojo (Lily Franky) is acquitted, the cops realize that traditional methods no longer apply.
Three members of the Violent Crimes Unit join a disgraced former police captain in jail for murder named Torada (Hitoshi Ozawa), to get evidence on Gojo, his dealings with the yakuza and even worse — his connection to South Korean organized crime and a yearning for a career in politics.
Hitoshi Ozawa is sixty years old but has made a career of playing roles just like this: hard men willing to do hard jobs no matter the cost. You may know him from Takeshi Miike’s Dead or Alive or may even go deep and know Japanese V-cinema. He’s the best part of this very good movie. And Tak Sakiguchi (Versus) is in this as a silent killer gunning for the police.
Directed by Kensuke Sonomura and written by Ozawa, this is a film filled with twists and turns but most importantly action. It also has so much of what works in Japanese crime cinema, that being the ever-twisted connection between cops and crime, with characters that have a foot in part of each world and yet pushed and pulled by concepts like duty and honor.
But this is all about the stunts and fights, too. Sonomura has made a career in stunts, from directing the action in movies like Baby Assassins, Black Ratand The Machine Girl as well as directing Hydra. He’s also lent his fight choreography to video games including Devil May Cry 3, Devil May Cry 4, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and Resident Evil 3. He’s also choreographed the action scenes for some world-class directors including Mamoru Oshii, Yudai Yamaguchi, John Woo and Donnie Yen.
This movie is deliriously exciting. Make sure you catch it.
I saw this as part of the Calgary Underground Film Festival, which for twenty years has been dedicated to elevating Calgary’s cultural landscape with the best in international independent cinema. Recently, CUFF was named one of the Best Horror Festivals in the World, 2022 by Dread Central, and one of the World’s 50 Best Genre Festivals and one of 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee in 2021 by MovieMaker Magazine. CUFF continues to attract audiences with its programming of films that engage audiences and defy convention.
It’s running from now until April 30 and you can see the entire schedule here.
April 26: American Giallo — Make the case for a movie that you believe is an American giallo.
This Italian/German/American — yes, I am cheating on the American Giallo theme — giallo comes from some of the same people who made 5 Dead On A Crimson Canvas. Shot in Florence, Italy, it concentrates on Roberta Parenti (Yassmin Pucci), who was once an artist but has now settled into being a politician’s wife and, if you’ve seen enough giallo, you know what that means. She’s exploring her sexuality after being assaulted in the past. Her husband forbids her from being an artist, which leads her into the clutches of a man killing the most beautiful women in the city. And he’s wearing the mask of a man within her artwork.
Directed by Giovanni Pianigiani, who wrote the story with Bruno Di Marcello, you may notice that unlike nearly every other giallo you’ve seen this isn’t dubbed and everyone is speaking English. Dubbing is something that throws off people not used to Italian movies. A lack of dubbing conversely threw me off.
But you know what made this work for me? Joe Zaso shows up and not just to be a producer. He plays Derek, a detective with an incredibly keen sense of smell to make up for his blindness. That’s the kind of character that can only exist within this genre and it’s absolutely great, as is the music by Marco Werba.
While this doesn’t push itself to have the Argento camera angles and Bava colors of so many modern giallo that try and tackle the look, if not the story and experience of 1970s yellow postered psychosexual murder movies, this gets the lunatic feel of those films right.
Also: I love that so many reviews are like, “This has some really gratuitous sex scenes.”
Tell me you’ve only told people you’ve watched giallo without telling me.
Admission is still only $15 per person each night (children 12 and under free with adult) and overnight camping is available (breakfast included) for an additional $15 per person. You can buy tickets at the show or use these links:
Beyond being the CEO of Blue Underground, Bill Lustig will get a forever pass just for making the films Maniacand the three movies in this series. I mean, Bruce Campbell, Tom Atkins and Robert Z’Dar in the same movie? And it’s written by Larry Cohen? Count me in.
There’s a series of murders going on in New York City, all being committed by someone in a police uniform, which leads to complete panic. However, that policeman is even more frightening than anyone dared dream. He’s not just a cop. He’s a…Maniac Cop.
Ellen Forrest thinks that her husband Officer Jack W. Forrest, Jr. (Campbell) is the Maniac Cop, following him to a hotel where she catches him in bed with fellow officer Theresa Mallory (Laurene Landon, Yellow Hair and the Fortress of Gold, Wicked Stepmother, your teenage dreams). She runs from the room right into Maniac Cop, who kills her, a murder for which Jack gets the blame.
Detective Lieutenant Frank McCrae (Atkins) believes that Jack was framed. He gets Jack to tell him about his fling with Mallory, who is currently undercover working as a prostitute. She and McCrae fight off the Maniac Cop, who is cold to the touch, doesn’t breathe and shrugs off several bullets.
The trail of the killer leads to Sally Nolland, a fellow female officer who Mallory confided in. She’s played by Sheree North, whose life was pretty interesting. In the mid-1950s, 20th Century Fox groomed her as a replacement for the studio’s leading — and volatile — leading lady, Marilyn Monroe. They even had her test for two roles — The Girl in Pink Tights and There’s No Business Like Show Business— that Monroe was up for. To add insult to injury, the studio gave her Monroe’s wardrobe.
In March 1954, North dealt with a scandal when a stag loop of her in a bikini surfaced, but the studio capitalized on the bad press. Her next leading role was opposite Betty Grable in How to Be Very, Very Popular, a part Monroe had turned down. She was suspended by the studio as a result and this led to North getting into Life magazine with the headline “Sheree North Takes Over From Marilyn Monroe” emblazoned on the cover.
How to Be Very, Very Popular is a forgotten film today, but at the time, North’s “Shake, Rattle and Roll” dance proved memorable. The studio kept trying, casting her in two movies with Tom Ewell, Monroe’s co-star in The Seven Year Itch. While their second pairing, The Lieutenant Wore Skirts, was a success, the studio soon grew disinterested and began hyping a new blonde star — Jayne Mansfield.
Part of that reason may have been North standing up for herself. Her agent advised that she turn down a role that parodied Monroe in The Girl Upstairs and when Elvis dropped out of The Way to the Gold, North hated his replacement, Jeffrey Hunter.
After North’s contract with Fox ended in 1958, her career slowed. She did a series of TV shows, appeared in John Wayne’s last film The Shootist, was in Destination Inner Space and finally acted alongside Elvis in The Trouble With Girls. Ironically, she played Marilyn Monroe’s mother in the made-for-television film Marilyn: The Untold Story.
Today’s audiences would probably remember her best for two sitcom roles: Blanche’s sister Virginia on Golden Girls and as Cosmo Kramer’s mother Babs on Seinfeld.
But I digress…
McCrae follows Noland to a warehouse, where she meets with the Maniac Cop. She calls him by his real name, Matt, which leads McCrae to discover the history of Matthew Cordell (Z’Dar), a cop who was jailed for brutality before his fellow prisoners mutilated and murdered him. Of course, he was also set up after discovering corruption all the way up to the mayor’s office. It turns out that he survived — barely — and has been waiting to get his revenge ever since.
From here on, we get the shock and awe we were looking for, with Officer Cordell wiping out cops left and right. Yet even being impaled on a pipe at the end of the film can’t stop the rage of this now undead peace officer, who rises to murder the mayor as the film closes.
Look for Sam Raimi, Richard Roundtree and boxer Jake LaMotta, Lustig’s uncle, in cameos.
April 26: American Giallo — Make the case for a movie that you believe is an American giallo.
Jade was not destined to succeed.
David Caruso had left NYPD Blue after the second season of the show because he wanted a film career. Critics and the media were ready to attack him for that hubris, especially after his first post-TV film, Kiss of Death, also bombed.
Linda Fiorentino had a huge success in The Last Seduction and didn’t want to play a similar role, but ended up making the film.
After making $3 million for Basic Instinct, Joe Eszterhas was due for a fall, which was either going to be this movie, Sliver, Showgirls or all three. He got $1.5 million for this (and a total of $4 million for his next movie One Night Stand). The script changed so much that he threatened to take his name off the film.
William Friedkin was struggling as well with his last two movies being the tree demoness movie The Guardianand Blue Chips. He would say of this movie, in his book The Friedkin Connection, that it had “a terrific cast. A wonderful script. Great locations. How could it miss?” He’d add that Jade “contained some of my best work. I felt I had let down the actors, the studio, and most of all, Sherry. I went into a deep funk. Was it the Exorcist curse, as many have suggested, a poor choice of material, or simply that whatever talent I had was ephemeral? Maybe all of the above.”
Caruso is Assistant District Attorney David Corelli visits the murder scene of Kyle Medford, a wealthy businessman who set up several wealthy and powerful men like Governor Lew Edwards (Richard Crenna) with gorgeous women, including Patrice Jacinto (Angie Everhart). Corelli is told by Edwards and his henchman Bill Barret (Holt McCallany, who most people know from being on Mindhunter, but come on, he got laid and paid as Sam Whitemoon in Creepshow 2) to never let this info out; seeing as how his brakes are soon cut, that’s to be considered a warning.
The seductress who gets the most requests goes by the name of Jade. Seeing as how Anna Katrina Maxwell-Gavin’s (Fiorentino) prints show up on the ancient hatchet — yes, that kind of murder weapon points to this being a giallo — that killed Medford, so it seems like perhaps she could be Jade. She once dated Corelli before marrying his fellow DA Matt Gavin (Chazz Palminteri). Medford’s safe is filled with sex toys, drugs and video tapes and, oh yeah, bags filled with pubes. But back to those video tapes. Anna Katrina is on one of them.
It also seems like she may have killed Patrice, but her husband cuts the interrogation short. Why would she be on those tapes? Well, didn’t he have his own affairs? Of course, the governor sends his men, which also includes bad cops Bob Hargrove (Michael Biehn) and Pat Callendar (David Hunt), to kill Allison, who gets saved by Corelli — who was nearly seduced by her — and Gavin — who wanted to kill Corelli for perhaps sleeping with his wife. But all along, it had been Gavin who killed Medford to keep the secrets he and his wife keep, telling her to introduce him to Jade the next time they make love.
Biehn would say of the film. “”Well, on Jade, I had no idea what I was doing. I don’t think anybody had any idea what they were doing. It was a Joe Eszterhas script. To me, none of it ever really made any sense. I didn’t realize until the read-through that I was the bad guy in it. It was like a jumbled mess. And the movie came out a mess, too. It had great people on it, though. So a great cast, great director… everything but a script.”
Then again, how many giallo make no sense at all?
But this has an incredible car chase, murder set pieces straight out of Italy, lush production values, a gorgeous heroine/antagonist/who knows in Fiorentino and they threw a lot of money at this movie to make something that Sergio Martino did for about a tenth of the cost. I love it!
In his book Hollywood Animal, Eszterhas said, “”In the week after he was found not guilty and got out of jail, O.J. Simpson went to see two movies. Showgirls and Jade.”
Admission is still only $15 per person each night (children 12 and under free with adult) and overnight camping is available (breakfast included) for an additional $15 per person. You can buy tickets at the show or use these links:
Maniac (1980): William Lustig took the profits from 1977’s Hot Honey to make this guerilla shot piece of sleazy, slimy slasher brilliance. The other money came from half of star Joe Spinell’s salary from Nighthawks and British producer Judd Hamilton came up with the rest of the money (around $200,000) with one condition: his then-wife Caroline Munro would be the heroine.
Originally, her role was to be played by Daria Nicolodi, but she was unable to go to New York for filming because she was still filming her scenes for Inferno in Italy. Supposedly, Susan Tyrrell and Jason Miller were both going to be in the movie too.
Just to give you an idea of how outlaw this movie was, for the scene where Frank Zito — the film’s titular maniac — kills Tom Savini in a scene inspired by the Son of Sam, Savini had a cast waiting filled with blood and leftover food. He blasted it with a live shotgun, threw it in the trunk of assistant Luke Walter’s car and they all drove off. No permits. No asking for permission. No prisoners.
PS — That body that gets its head blown off? Its name was Boris and it also shows up in Dawn of the Dead. After this movie, According to Savini, it was locked in the trunk of the car used in the shotgun scene and both were sunk in the East River.
Maniac is nothing without Spinell, whose rantings and maniacal look lend this movie its soul, as gross and covered with muck as it may be. He was abused by his prostitute mother and has turned his rage into a need to destroy women. He does so in all manner of ways, always ending up by scalping them and placing their hair on the mannequins he keeps in his squalid apartment.
This movie is everything horrible that everyone ever told you that horror movies were. It has no redeeming qualities or pretentions to art. It’s as rough as it gets, like Pieces if that movie wasn’t so funny.
Believe it or not — this is a positive review.
I’ve always held off from watching this movie but I’m glad I did. Spinell was nothing short of brilliant in everything I’ve ever seen him in and this one just keeps that trend going. I love him in Cruising, Nighthawks and the Rockyfilms.
The only strange thing to me is how Anna (Caroline Munro!) is willing to be in the same orbit as Zito. It’s a small point. After all, they did three movies together (Starcrash and The Last Horror Film are the other two).
Abigail Clayton, who plays a victim named Rita, was an adult actress who successfully moved into mainstream roles. Sharon Mitchell also shows up as a nurse, as does Carol Henry (Bloodsucking Freaks), Hyla Marrow (also in Lustig’s Vigilante), Rita Montone (who was in Bloodsucking Freaks and The Children) and Kelly Piper (Rawhead Rexand Vice Squad),.
Maniac was a green movie, as it recycled two big things from past films: you can spot the headless corpse of Betsy Palmer from Friday the 13th in Zito’s hovel and the helicopter shots were taken from Argento’s Inferno.
This was remade in 2012, but I still haven’t seen that yet. I kind of don’t want to ruin the power of this movie, a film so strange that it’s not even sure of the fate of its main character even as the film draws to a close.
April 26: American Giallo — Make the case for a movie that you believe is an American giallo.
“Erotic mystery thriller.”
That’s 1994 for giallo.
Dr. Bill Capa (Bruce Willis) is color blind after an unstable patient named Michelle (Kathleen Wilhoite) jumps from his window and explodes on the street below, her bright green dress covered in deep red blood. This is a total giallo moment that can only happen in one of these movies but I love this movie for that. That and the fact that this movie starts with her literally sucking off a handgun. What kind of therapy session is that?
His friend Dr. Bob Moore (Scott Bakula) invites him to Los Angeles and to sit in on his group therapy sessions. But in a few days, Bob is dead and Bill is at the center of trying to find out why, all while cajoled by Lt. Hector Martinez (Ruben Blades). Martinez thinks that everyone could be the killer in that group, even Dr. Bill. And what a group of suspects he’s looking at.
There’s OCD-suffering lawyer Clark (Brad Dourif); suicidal ex-cop Buck (Lance Henriksen); Sondra (Lesley Ann Warren), who wants to sleep with everyone or steal from them; BDSM painter Casey (Kevin J. O’Connor) and Richie, who is a teenager drug addict with gender dysphoria. There’s also a reason why I’m not telling you who plays Richie, because it gives away the entire film.
What’s amazing is that it turns out that everyone in the group — including Dr. Bill — ends up involved with the same woman, Rose (Jane March). And her brother Dale (Andrew Lowery) has messed with her head to the point that she’s not even sure who she is any longer and oh yeah, they used to have a brother named Richie who killed himself after being sexually abused by his psychologist.
Director Richard Rush hadn’t directed a movie since 1980’s The Stunt Man. Despite a past making Hells Angels On Wheels, Freebie and the Bean, Thunder Alley and Psych-Out — and being paid to walk away from his last project Air America — Rush couldn’t get producer Andrew Vajna to agree with his vision for the film. They went to war in the press, with Variety on the side of Rush, The Los Angeles Times on the side of Vajna and the Director’s Guild trying to fix things. It took Rush having a massive heart attack before everyone calmed down.
The sex scenes in this movie are, well, volcanic. So much so that MAXIMMagazine — remember that? — picked one as the best sex scene ever. What’s wild is that Carmine Zozzora, who was Bruce Willis’ best friend and associate producer on the film, ended up dating and marrying her during the pre-production of this movie. Well, once filming started, you can imagine how he started to react to the making of those scenes. In the end, Rush kept his Best Sex Scene from MAXIM in his bathroom. He reportedly loved that thing.
Someone goes through a glass door as if they’re in an Argento movie, the group therapy session feels right out of Schizoidminus the wild eyes of Kinski and the sex scene lasts so long that they take a break to eat a steak and salad that Rose cooked naked (I mean, have you ever?) and then have sex again and hey, there’s Bruce Willis’ penis in the pool.
In 1994, people spent lots of money to make movies like this, absolute messes of movies that may not always work, but wow, they’re so vibrant and full of memorable moments even if flawed that we’d never see on screens today.
April 26: American Giallo — Make the case for a movie that you believe is an American giallo.
Neo-noir. Hitchcock influenced. Mystery thriller.
Or just call it a giallo.
Blow Out is even based on an Italian film — Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup — but switches photography for audio recording and trades future giallo star David Hemmings for John Travolta, a man who follows the path of many a giallo hero. Once he believes that he has recorded the sounds of a killing, he must become a detective as his need to know is too much.
In post-production on the low-budget slasher film Co-ed Frenzy, sound technician Jack Terry (Travolta) is searching for better wind effects and the perfect scream. As he takes his equipment into a park late at night, he watches a car fly off the road and with no hesitation, dives into the water to save Sally Bedina (Nancy Allen). As he sits with her in the hospital, he asks her to get a drink and is asked by associates of the man killed in the car — Presidential candidate Governor George McRyan — to get her out of the hospital.
Sally has used her feminine wiles to ruin men before, working with Manny Karp (Dennis Franz), a man who just so happened to film the accident. Jack wants Sally to work with him to solve the murder, but he’s blinded to her because, well, she’s gorgeous and he’s the hero, a man who left behind a government commission to stop police corruption after an exposed wire caused the death of an undercover cop named Freddie Corso.
This is the kind of conspiracy where you think there is one because there is one. Sally and Karp were just pawns in the schemes of Burke (John Lithgow), who wanted to go beyond just getting photos of the politician with a sex worker and blew out his tire with a bullet. But now that he’s ruined that, he has to clear up loose ends and is killing any hooker who looks like Sally as the Liberty Bell Strangler.
He eventually lures Sally to meet him and we learn that Jack is the hero, but not a perfect one. He’s able to stop Burke but not before Sally dies. All he has left of her is her final scream, recorded as he tried to find her, and that’s what lives forever, or as long as Co-Ed Frenzy plays grindhouses. He covers his ears because he’s reduced someone he grew close to into just another piece of sound in just another movie.
I literally yelled at the screen.
Working again with Travolta and Allen, De Palma also gathered others he’d made movies with before. In this, he is different than Argento — an artist I often compare him to, as they have so many similarities such as the same age, following Hitchcock, marrying and divorcing their leading lady, having a middle-age career decline — who seemingly switched up crews between films. Here he’s working with De Palma filled the film’s cast and crew with a number of his frequent collaborators: Dennis Franz (Dressed to Kill, Body Double), John Lithgow (who was in the Tenebre ripoff shot in Raising Cain) cinematographers Vilmos Zsigmond (Obsession) and Lazlo Kovacs (who came in when the parade scene footage was lost), composer Pino Donaggio (who also scored modern giallo Nothing Underneath) and editor Paul Hirsch (who worked on another giallo-tinged De Palma film, Sisters).
Pauline Kael said that this movie was one “where genre is transcended and what we’re moved by is an artist’s vision…it’s a great movie. Travolta and Allen are radiant performers.” Roger Ebert said that it was “inhabited by a real cinematic intelligence.” It sits with Rio Bravo and Taxi Driver as Tarantino’s top three movies. And yet it failed with the public. Today, however, it’s seen in a much warmer light.
I have no idea why I waited so long to watch this movie. It’s perfect — a film about making films, a movie where movies don’t play out like movies and a thrilling exploration of how De Palma can guide you through a film and into places you had no idea you would go.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This movie was watched as part of Salem Horror Fest. You can still get a weekend pass for weekend two. Single tickets are also available. Here’s the program of what’s playing.
I was just discussing slasher movies and their lack of blackness with one of my friends last week and we struggled to come up with many movies where there was a black killer. Sure, there’s Snoop Dogg’s turn in Bones, which is pretty much a remix of J.D.’s Revenge. Then we remembered — Candyman.
Bernard Rose has directed some really interesting films, like 1988’s dark fantasy of growing up Paperhouse. He was also behind the videos for Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax” and “Welcome to the Pleasuredome” before he met with Clive Barker, expressing interest in adapting the story “The Forbidden.”
While the original story is more of an examination of the British class system, Rose moved his story to the inner city of Chicago, where he could better focus on the racial, social and cultural divides of America. Some of its story was inspired by journalist Steve Bogira’s articles about the murder of Ruthie Mae McCoy in Chicago’s Abbot Homes housing project. In particular, the detail that she was murdered by someone who entered her apartment through the opening behind her medicine cabinet becomes an integral part of this story.
Amazingly, Eddie Murphy was the original choice for the titular role, but he was too expensive for the production. Enter Tony Todd. He told IGN that despite fears of being typecast, “I’ve always wanted to find my own personal Phantom of the Opera.” As he was concerned about the threat of being stung by the numerous bees he would contend with, he negotiated a bonus of $1,000 for every sting he suffered during filming. He’s a smart man — he ended up earning an extra $23,000.
Not to name drop, but I had the honor of working with Todd when he came to Pittsburgh to inaugurate the Pittsburgh Public Theater with a performance of August Wilson’s King Hedley II. I’d written a radio commercial promoting it and instead of struggling with a casting agency to discover the right voice, I inquired if Todd would be willing to do the recording session. He was happy to promote the play, as he’d acted in the same play on Broadway. However, the PPT had one condition.
I was told, “No matter what, please do not mention that horror movie he was in.”
So cut to me standing on the sidewalk of Liberty Avenue, waiting outside Todd’s hotel. Talk about nerve-wracking. Suddenly, he was ten feet away from me, his six foot five-inch frame even more imposing in person.
“Do we have time for a salad? I’m dying for a salad.”
Not the first thing you’d expect to come out of Candyman’s mouth.
Literally we were ten feet down the street, on the way to a restaurant when someone jumped in his way and started yelling “Candyman! Candyman! Candyman!” He laughed a jovial chuckle, signed a quick autograph and I said, “They told me you hated that movie and I shouldn’t mention it.”
He smiled and said, “Look, the first one is great. The second one isn’t bad. The third one? You gotta put your kids’ in college. I’m always happy to talk about a movie that let me live the life I live today.”
Of all the moments in my professional career, there is truly nothing quite like closing your eyes and hearing Tony Todd’s deep voice intone your words.
Thanks for indulging me. Back to Candyman.
Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen) is a Chicago graduate student researching urban legends. She learns of the Candyman, a demon that appears whenever you say his name five times into a mirror, at which point he’ll stab you with the hook where his right hand once was. This tale is remarkably similar to the story of Mary Black from my rural hometown of Ellwood City, PA.
She begins to investigate the murder of Ruthie Jean, a resident of the Cabrini-Green housing project who two cleaning ladies believe was killed by the Candyman. She’s not alone — 25 other people have been killed in similar fashion.
That night, Helen and her friend Bernadette Walsh (Kasi Lemmons, who was in Silence of the Lambs and would go on to direct The Caveman’s Valentine) do the ritual, saying Candyman’s name into a mirror. Nothing happens.
As Helen begins her thesis: Candyman is a way to cope with the despair that Chicago’s African-Americans feel as they struggle to survive in the projects. A professor shares the story of Candyman’s origins, which begin with him as the son of a slave who would soon become free and known for mass-producing shoes. He grew up free and became an artist of some fame before marrying a white woman in 1890; however, her racist father hired a lynch mob that cut off his artistic hand, replaced it with a hook and smeared him with honey. The stings of bees nearly killed him before he was burned alive and his ashes scattered across he fields where the Cabrini-Green now exists.
As part of her study of the legend, Helen meets Anne-Marie McCoy (Vanessa A. Williams, Melrose Place) and a young boy named Jake, who tells her the story of a young boy who was castrated by the Candyman. Helen is attacked by someone when she visits the scene of the crime but her attacker is human. He’s arrested based on her testimony and the world thinks Candyman is gone.
That night, as Helen is getting into her car, the real Candyman appears. She’s made people think his legend isn’t true and now innocent blood must be spilled so that he may survive. Helen wakes up in Anne-Marie’s apartment, covered in blood. The dog has been beheaded and her son is missing, so she attacks Helen, who is arrested by the police.
At each turn, Candyman comes closer and closer to ending Helen’s life as he snuffs out the existence of everyone around her. After she’s committed for a month, a psychologist interviews her to see if she’s fit for trial as she’s suspected in the death of her best friend Bernadette. She offers to summon Candyman to the unbelieving doctor who is soon dead at the hands of the so-called urban legend. I love this scene, as the formerly disbelieving protagonist of this tale has willingly given in to the unreality that her world has become. As for her husband Trevor, he doesn’t care at all — he’s taken up with one of his students in her absence.
Helen runs to Cabrini-Green where she discovers murals depicting the lynching of the human being who would become the Candyman. He appears and tells her to surrender to save the life of the child, offering her immortality as he opens his jacket, revealing an open ribcage filled with bees. He believes that Helen is truly his lover Caroline Sullivan, reincarnated and ready to become immortal at his side.
Candyman promises to release the child if Helen helps him incite more fear, but he decides that instead, he will set the entire project on fire. She saves Anthony by shoving the monster into the flames of a bonfire before it takes her life too. The residents of the apartment building all attend her funeral, throwing numerous flowers and finally Candyman’s hook into her grave.
At the end, Trevor must face both grief and guilt in the mirror, where he says her name five times. As he turns, his wife has appeared, along with Candyman’s hook. As we return to the projects, the graffiti of Candyman has been replaced by a woman with her hair on fire. Helen has now become part of the immortal world of folklore.
The music for this film comes from minimalist composer Philip Glass, who was upset that the film came off as a low budget slasher. However, he told Variety in 2014, “It has become a classic, so I still make money from that score, get checks every year.”
Madsen is really amazing in this film and used hypnosis and a trigger word to make her even more frightened for her scenes with Todd. However, this process was too much for her so she didn’t use it for the entire movie. The two actors also took ballroom dancing classes together to create an element of romance between their characters.
B&S About Movies 
You must be logged in to post a comment.