Bernard Roses’ Candyman (1992) is a great horror flick. It is a great horror flick because it added a new texture to the landscape of horror at its time. It is a great horror flick because it introduced a unique, terrifying, and interesting antagonist played remarkably by Tony Todd. It is an urban boogeyman tale that lets audiences into a world that only a small portion of them would probably ever get to see. It is a great horror movie because it doesn’t try to demonize members of the audience, something that the bulk of films made in the age of Identity Politics and woke culture do.
The Cabrini Green projects was an inspired choice for this film to take place. Rose is said to have wanted to showcase people living in poor neighborhoods as regular human beings. But thankfully, as it turned out, that did not mean paint blacks as ethereal, happy gnomes whose only mistake in life was stumbling across demonic white people who want to do bad things to them because that’s what white people, who are of course, demonic, do.
No.
The gang leader (played by Terrence Riggins) who wacks Virginia Madsen’s Helen in the eye with a metal hook is not a good person. He is not a misunderstood person. He is a bad person, who happens to be black. The drug dealers hooting and calling “5.0” while they sell poison to their own people aren’t good people either. Kasi Lemmons’ Bernadette knew that. Were there good people who live in Cabrini Green? Of course, Anne-Marie McCoy played by Vanessa Williams was a single mother just trying to raise her child. The movie made a concerted effort to show that she wanted nothing to do with the foolishness that was happening on the steps of the apartment complex in which she lived. The “progressive” message that was interwoven in the film was that not all blacks are the same. This is, of course, contrary to the message that those who call themselves progressives hold today.
Today, they argue that all blacks are the same, or at least, they should be, otherwise they aren’t ‘real’ blacks. The character of Bernadette would be spat on today, accused of ‘acting white’. Today they would argue that drug dealers have to sell drugs to support their families and by bread, because demonic white people won’t let them earn a living any other way.
What happened to Candyman in the late 1800s was a horrific event. Few would argue against that. But the creature Candyman, who split people from groin to gullet was by no stretch of the imagination a ‘good guy’. He was no better than the drug dealers in the terrorized these neighborhoods so that he could feed his legend. He was evil, but like Freddy Krueger, he was a charismatic evil. The bees, the honey, the music, the tone, the commitment to telling a compelling story with mesmerizing visuals. A story that everyone can take part in. That’s what true inclusivity means. Almost 30 years later Candyman’s name still rings out in the annals of horror. Not by being placed there, but by earning that place. That is how you add diversity. That is diversity done right.
Candyman 1992 is a great horror movie because a horror movie, above all else, is what it wanted to be.
Will we be able to say the same about this new film?
My money’s on hell no.
