Clive Barker, author of 'The Forbidden' on which the film is based, has a tendency to fuse horror with something creepily romantic - thus Tony Todd's Candyman believes that Virginia Madsen (good) is the reincarnation of his lost love. There's something of Val Lewton (again) in the back story of a black man who's brutally murdered for daring to fall in love (think
I Walked With a Zombie), and the projects setting is a welcome change (love the way she crawls through a hole in the wall and emerges from a painting of his face through the mouth - this stuff is quite dreamlike). The way he keeps setting her up as the killer is funny (ultimately she pulls off the same trick with her boyfriend's lover). But as I observed on 23 April 1995, the Candyman figure is just rather corny (processed scary voice, for example) and Rose is a bit of an oddball (he made the rather misjudged
Paperhouse, a riff on Catherine Storr's 'Marianne Dreams').
Like many horror films it doesn't follow its own logic - how do you 'kill' the undead?
With Xander Berkeley, Kasi Lemmons, Vanessa Williams. Shot by Tony (
Don't Look Now) Richmond.
Q remarks that there are far too many disgusting toilets in the film too.
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