| Candyman | | Cast : | Xander Berkeley, Virginia Madsen, Tony Todd | | Director : | | | Studio : | Sony Pictures | | Format : | Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC | | Released Date : | October 16, 1992 | | DVD Released Date : | August 17, 2004 | | Language : | English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), Portuguese (Subtitled) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | September 18, 2005 | | Summary | How do you make an urban thriller? | Content
 | Certainly not like this! Too much weight was on the slicing end and not enough on the true chills.
Virginia Madsen and Tony Todd are excellent, as always. The story has potential, but they missed the mark somewhere. The scenes where The Candyman is haunting Madsen's character are very good, but short-lived. More attention should have been paid to these scenes and less to the blood and gore.
Much better gore-fests are out there with better developed stories.... I recommend... ANY of them. |
| Rating | | | Date | September 15, 2005 | | Summary | Outstanding modern horror classic | Content
| I find it very strange that some people reviewing this film have classified it as a failure, with not enough gore, no "hot" women and not enough Candyman on screen.
First of all, "Candyman" easily blows away all of the Freddie, Jason and Michael Myers trash that filled cinemas in the 80's and 90's. I guess there's a type of movie-goer who likes to hero-worship the villains and gets a kick out of the evil caricatures appearing in all of those films. But "Candyman" is something else altogether. This story involves an inquisitive woman named Helen (Virginia Madsen -superb) who is trying to piece together the reasons behind some strange and frightening events that may or may not have something to do with an urban legend, a run down housing estate, and her own family and background. What Helen gets subjected to during this movie is a heartbreakingly cruel catalogue of horrifc violence that no living person should ever go through.
I'm not exaggerating, but I'll confess that my opinion of this film is extremely high. Everything seems to work for me. Right away, the opening credits and music are wonderful, already doom-laden and menacing. The character of Helen is wonderfully believable, and the introduction of the Candyman legend is handled with just enough veracity to make you dread the (inevitable) invocation of something terrible. But the story is clever enough to mix in the danger that Helen finds herself in on the Cabrini Green apartment block estate along with the supernatural element. When she explores the empty sections of this buildng and finds a stinking derelict apartment that has long since gone rotten, the tension is racked sky-high. Even worse is to come when Helen is beaten up by thugs who are seemingly behind the Candyman-related violence being investigated. The truth is sadly far worse. And the violence, when it happens, is shockingly effective. I disagree with people who say the gore is tame in this film. Many scenes are brutally realistic and often come with the added punch of surprise.
I have nothing but praise for actress Virginia Madsen who fills her part with life, making a truly great heroine - plus she's beautiful, but yet in no way exploited for her looks, her only nude scene being in the uncomfortable setting of a police examination, which is particularly heartless. The film cleverly digs out every possible way to make Helen suffer, and the viewer is carried along with her right up to the cracking ending - another shocking moment that fittingly ends a film that is full of similar scenes. If only the legend had been left at this, but the inevitable sequals were trotted out, featuring far too much of Tony Todd as the title character, who was (rightly) kept in the backround in this film - probably helping to make his portrayal so effective.
Similar to Hellraiser (obviously, with the Clive Barker connection), it can be recommended to fans of that movie, but I would rate Candyman as better, as it does not dwell so much on supernatural outlandishness, and instead brings horror very much closer to everyday life. People who want more (more??) gore and topless bimbos should stick to the drive-ins - this is class, and outscares most of it's closest rivals. |
| Rating | | | Date | September 10, 2005 | | Summary | Cerebral horror movie, but undercooked | Content
| Bernard Rose's adaptation of Clive Barker's novel starts out wonderfully. University researcher Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen) is investigating urban legends and finds that one of them might have a basis in reality. Numerous leads draw her to the Chicago's infamous Cabrini-Green housing complex where residents speak of a supernatural killer who appears when his victims say his name five times in front of a mirror, then disembowels them. Is it a myth? Is the Candyman some kind of serial killer associated with the drug trade? Or is he something supernatural after all? It's a great setup and the early scenes are handled masterfully, establishing the requisite tension and an engaging subtext about sexual double-standards, marital infidelity, and yuppie race anxiety - Helen discovers that her own apartment block was built as a housing project but then converted to condos when social planners realized it was too close to the white folk's suburbs. Unfortunately, the movie goes off the rails almost immediately after the Candyman himself appears. Helen is confronted in a parking station by a mysterious black man then wakes up in a blood-soaked apartment back at Cabrini-Green. She is accused of kidnapping a baby and things go from bad to worse for Helen - and for the audience - as the story lumbers from one violent confrontation to another. Is the Candyman really a supernatural force of evil empowered by those who believe in his legend, or is he a manifestation of the victim's own tortured conscience? "Candyman" admirably taps into a range of white, middle-class anxieties and delivers something certainly more cerebral than the average horror movie, but it isn't quite as successful as it should have been. |
| Rating | | | Date | September 06, 2005 | | Summary | Thanks Candyman! | Content
| Thanks to you, I vomited, and I went to the hospital, dont get me started people, cause im not kidding, this movie is sooooo gross (And yes im a fan of horror movies) but when I saw this man opening his chest (It was full of bees and it was full of blood, it looked real...) it was gross and I was throwing up cause of his fault, I couldnt eat meat for like a week, thank you! Avoid this movie at all cost! |
| Rating | | | Date | July 23, 2005 | | Summary | Quite OK | Content
| This movie is kinda.....corny. It is that Black slave thing, and take on the revenge being a "candyman" or "batman" or "spiderman" or "Boggieman" or whatever man you want to be~! LOL |
|
|
|
|
