Candyman (1992)
“It was always you, Helen”
Candyman is a fantastic, terrifying gothic horror story that revolves around one of Chicago’s most infamous housing projects — Cabrini-Green. Director Bernard Rose chose to adapt Clive Barker’s story The Forbidden, originally about the British class system and segregation in Liverpool, around the architectural racism in Chicago. Tony Todd delivers a career defining performance as the titular Candyman, a character whose backstory he helped design. Todd as the hook-handed urban legend is hypnotic, haunting, and full of bees!
What makes Candyman work so well is that in any other genre, the main character Helen (Virginia Madsen) would have been rewarded for her plucky ‘can-do’ attitude. She sees herself as the saviour who ‘changes’ the hearts & minds of the downtrodden Cabrini-Green residents. However, she isn’t really trying to help the people of Cabrini-Green, she’s a competitive academic trying to get ahead of her male colleagues. The movie is a manifestation of her narcissism & her situation just keeps making everything worse, for everyone.
Though the movie is incredible, it’s unclear how much of the final product is intentional. There were definitely some unsafe work practices going on behind the scenes (those are real bees in Todd’s actual mouth! They hypnotised Madsen, and she’s also allergic to bees!), and I wonder if Rose actually understood all the different levels of racism that go into his story. The actual history of Cabrini-Green is rich and heartbreaking. It was a public housing project that initially helped many families, but the land became prime real estate for developers, and a combination of corrupted city officials and corporations condemned the project. Urban legends are just a simplified explanation for systemic problems, and Cabrini-Green is a perfect example of how gentrification & greed create structural violence.
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