Cutting Deep into Horror | Candyman (1992): Exploring Urban Legends in the Spooky Season - Weekly Spooky: Scary Halloween Stories | Terrifying Tales to Creep Your Night

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Rachel, Rachel, who is that?

Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm going to cut you from your croy to your gulet.

Speaker 1 (00:11):
That doesn't that's not that's not nice. Why why would
you do that?

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Oh no, no, it's it's the motto of my bee far.
That's a very different motto for a bee farm. Well
do you have to differentiate? Differentiate yourself? I just learned
that word.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
So why are you why?

Speaker 2 (00:37):
A bunch of them are.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
No, no, no, they're all over me. Don't get them off.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
It's okay. Just let them into your mouth. That's all
they want in mouth. You just want into your mouth. No,
you don't want them to want into anywhere else, trust me.
Oh god, don't just try to breathe, but don't breathe wrong. Yes,
that's breathing wrong. Yeah, that's not good.

Speaker 3 (01:13):
This podcast is about why horror scares us, what deep, dark,
secret scary cinema shines a light on. The discussions are
frank and involve conversations about abuse, trauma, and mental health.
There are also spoilers, so keep that in mind too. Now,

(01:34):
sharpen your machetes and straight raisers, because this is cutting
deep into horror.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Hello, my spookies, and welcome back to Cutting Deep into Horror.
I am, of course, your host Enrique Kuto here with
my co host on Cutting Deep, Rachel. We'redulphy Rachel. How
are you?

Speaker 1 (02:02):
I am doing pretty all right?

Speaker 2 (02:04):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Are you sure?

Speaker 1 (02:07):
Now I'm questioning everything?

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Very good, very good. Well, no, it's you know, you
doubt everything. It's important.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
It is especially you know, and especially in this line work.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
Eh, what line is that?

Speaker 1 (02:20):
I don't know. I was just trying to make conversation.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
Oh wow, wow, okay, wow, okay, well that's a little hurtful,
but okay, okay, Well before we jump in, you know,
we're knee deep into spooky season now. Yeah, we're over
halfway through October, and we'll be talking about the nineteen
ninety two two or three, a nineteen ninety two film,

(02:46):
candy Man, which is one of my favorite supernatural horror
movie deals. It's not quite a slash room. It's kind
of a slasher movie, you know, it's slasher adjacent. Yeah,
there's a lot of debate. There's a lot of debate
about candy Man in general. I can see that candy

(03:08):
Man was kind of of the lower string of horror franchises,
you know, in the first string you had night ren
Elm Street Fright of the thirteenth Halloween, and then on
the second string you had like Child's Play and Gremlin
not Gremlin's Critters and hell Raiser. Yeah, you know, they

(03:32):
were kind of and I don't mean to say that
there's anything wrong with him, it's just that their later
entries went direct to video, as opposed to Night ren
Elm Street Fright of the Thirteenth Halloween, where they always
managed to stay theatrical. Even though there was a lot
of debate about Halloween going the way of home video
direct to video, especially in the late nineties, there was

(03:53):
a lot of money to be made in direct to
video back then, so I could see why. Yeah, but
Candy Man is one of those where it has two
technically three sequels if you count the twenty twenty one.
I think it was how a Candy Candyman movie, Yeah,
which was a fine kind of sequel. I like the movie.
It was not bad, but I don't remember that much
about it, to be honest. But we're gonna be talking

(04:16):
about Candyman as we talk about all the films here,
which is mostly from the standpoint of it being standalone.
If I throw in some nerdy stuff about the sequels.
That's just food for thought. It's not really you know,
exactly Yeah, it's not exactly that. But before we get
to that, I do want to say we actually have

(04:37):
a sponsor here, one of our first partnerships that Weekly
Spooky has had in a while, and I just wanted
to bring it up. Since this is a more conversational show.
It is literally a conversational show, it's a little easier
to bring it up and not just like go into
commercial mode. But we've partnered with a coffee company called
savor Resta Coffee, which you can find it resta dot

(05:01):
com sa v r I s t A. And the
reason I really dig this place is because, well, number one,
they're supporting the show. If you go to save Aresta
dot com and choose some coffee and buy it with
promo code Spooky at checkout, you get twenty five percent off,
which is five percent more than their new customers normally get,

(05:23):
and you can know that that purchase is going towards
supporting Weekly Spooky. But one of the reasons I thought
this was a really great partnership was not only do
they have a bunch of different flavors, but they're caffeine conscious,
and I am somebody who has to be very caffeine

(05:45):
conscious because I am super sensitive to caffeine. We talked
about it last last week when we were talking about
Nightmarre on Elm Street all the caffeine I was consuming.
And they specialize in half calf and decalf, gourmet drinks, coffee,
grounds and beans. So if you guys, get a chance,
if you're already a coffee lover, and if you love

(06:06):
coffee at night when you really should be watching your
caffeine so you can get a full night's sleep, head
to Savoriesta dot com. Use the promo code Spooky at checkout,
get twenty five percent off and it helps the show.
So I really do appreciate it. So I just wanted
to bring that up. I know, Rachel, you're you're thinking
about getting some savory stuff I am.

Speaker 1 (06:27):
I was looking at the flavors and they really do
look good.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
Yeah, Colombian inspiration, barely buzzed, half calf, dark roast, They've
got a bunch. They've got medium roasts and light roast
as well. I like when I do drink coffee, I
like fancy coffee because I drink like two cups a year,
So why not spend twenty dollars on the bag of
beans that's barely going to get used anyway. But yeah,

(06:52):
so it seems pretty cool. So the link will also
be in the show notes all the information you could need.
But uh yeah, thank you to Savory Sta for helping
us bring you the Spooky.

Speaker 1 (07:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
So, who knows, maybe we'll be drinking it sometime soon.
I don't know. I mean, right now, it's been all tea,
trying to keep my throat alive through thirty one days
of shows here at Weekly Spooky. We did a novella
this week, and next week we have two novella length
shows on Monday and Wednesday.

Speaker 1 (07:24):
But wait, there's more.

Speaker 2 (07:26):
In fact, this will be the first time I mention
it so that you know, people can know. On Monday,
I'll be releasing a show I'm very excited about, which
is a over two hour deep dive into the paranormal
investigating couple the Warrens, whom the Conjuring movie series is
based on. I'm going to dive super deep into what

(07:50):
they claim happened, which is like the first half of
the show, which is all ghost storytelling, and then how
there's no evidence for most of what they claim and
how they might have been at at worst they were
a little crazy and or at best they were a
little crazy and at worst they were like legitimately bad people.
So it's a really interesting show that'll be dropping Monday

(08:12):
as the final terrifying and true episode for October. And
I've been looking, I've had I've been sitting on that
one for almost a month and a half, excitedly wanting
to release it and then realizing that it is two
and a half hours almost of talking. So pretty exhausting show.
But but yeah, otherwise, spooky season's going all right, haven't

(08:34):
had a chance to go to a haunt yet because
all my friends are lame and don't want to do anything. Ever,
that's the going to haunts by yourself is not recommended. No,
not for safety, it's just bad for the haunt because
they have trouble dealing with small groups. Yeah, because they
have to reset everything because the haunts, if you haven't
been to a haunt in a while, they ain't like

(08:55):
they used to be. They're they're big and impressive and
full of props and costumes and sound effects and cue things. Yeah,
so yeah, ideally groups of four really keep it moving,
but groups of two are all right, just depends on
how busy it is. But I'm hoping to get to
one this weekend and drag you along.

Speaker 1 (09:15):
That's the plan anyway.

Speaker 2 (09:16):
Well it better be or else. But we're going to
take a quick break and then we'll talk a little
bit more about Candy Man. We'll get into Candy Man
maybe or maybe just candy right after this. So I

(09:38):
feel like candy Man is a pretty solid Halloween choice.
I think it brings the scary very aggressively. It's a
haunting movie. I of course, I saw Candy Man probably
when I was eleven or twelve years old. It was
on USA and stuff like that. When was the first

(10:00):
time you saw Candy Man?

Speaker 1 (10:03):
It was, I mean relatively recently. It was probably only
about like six or seven years ago, right, because you
and I had gotten through the big tent pole horror
movies and trying we were trying to figure out like
what kind of horror movies to watch, and it was

(10:24):
around Halloween time and had I had mentioned to someone like, oh,
you know, I'm trying to think of something to watch,
and he he said, well, what about Candy Man? And
I'd never even like I somehow had missed it. So
when I mentioned to you, like I was thinking about
watching Candy Man, like, you really lit up and I

(10:48):
really enjoyed the first experience with it.

Speaker 2 (10:51):
What stood out to you the most?

Speaker 1 (10:54):
Well, I think that, like anyone, the first thing, the
biggest thing that stood out to me was definitely Tony
Todd himself and his performance and just the gravitas that
he brings. But the other thing that really stood out
to me and continued to kind of impress me with
the second viewing, was how gothic the story feels, and

(11:19):
the way, like especially the architecture of Chicago and like
all of the different scenery is portrayed. There's kind of
like this classic Gothic feel to it. But also just
the way that the way that they're trying to tell
the story of folklore and how folklore is made and

(11:41):
built and maintained, I think is very interesting because it
is similar in a way to Nightmare on Elm Street,
where belief is what gives power to you know, either
Freddy Krueger or Candy Man, depending, but they're both, you know,
they both are very different on how they go about

(12:04):
praying on that belief because Candy Man he draws you
into his reality, whereas Freddy Krueger enters your subconscious. So
there's kind of that big difference.

Speaker 2 (12:15):
Well, there are some other weird things about candy Man
as well. One of the big ones. Well, first of all,
it's worth mentioning a couple of things. This film stars
Tony Todd, as we mentioned, who has become horror royalty
from being not only candy Man, but then two years
prior performing as Ben in The Nightmare or Nightmare the

(12:37):
Night of the Living Dead nineteen ninety remake directed by
Tom Savini, which he was also very very good in.
But Virginia Madsen plays Helen. And this film is very
loosely based on a Clive Barker short story called The Forbidden,
which was a part of one of his gosh what

(13:00):
were they called? They were called the Books of Blood collections,
and the original story was very different in a lot
of ways. Because some of the things that I find
most interesting about Candy Man are the way it digs
into inner city life, the way it digs into the

(13:24):
two worlds. The academics, who are generally speaking very well off,
very affluent, a bit dismissive, but also with a bit
of a savior complex about the lesser people in Cabrini Green,
which is a real neighborhood and one of the most

(13:44):
legendarily crime ridden and abused communities in America. And those
are the things that I think make Candy Man the
most interesting and the most memorable. Is that whole thing,
because literally we open with Helen played by Virginia Mads
and recounting this Candy Man legend and then talking about

(14:06):
the mirror and how Candy Man's legend involves a mirror,
and how Cabrini Green housing was basically built like her
fancy ass rich people apartment is literally the same apartment. Yeah,
it's literally built identical to Cabrini Green, except this one
is full of rich people and it's on the other side.

(14:28):
They use the L train. They reference like using the
L train and stuff to kind of stop people from
getting out of the projects. Basically, and I grew up.
I didn't grow up in anything like Cabrini Green, but
I didn't grow up in housing projects. But I did
grow up in basically like a tenement building, which is
a similar concept. Yeah, it's where you pack people who
are very poor. And my point is that that's a

(14:52):
wonderful point about mirroring. Basically, like it's at their mirror
of each other, but they're completely different worlds. You know,
her FA building and Cabrini Green, and you could see
Cabrini Green from her building, yeah, just barely, and vice versa.
I'm sure. So the reason I bring all that up
is that in the story The Forbidden, it takes place

(15:14):
in London, and Candy Man is a white guy. All
of that stuff is because of Bernard Rose, the writer
and director. Bernard Rose brought all of those elements. In fact,
in The Forbidden, Candy Man doesn't have a backstory. Really,
it's not really about that. It's about the concept of

(15:35):
folklore more so. And also Helen in the story is
not investigating urban legends. She's investigating graffiti, which which leads
you to a similar place though, of what do all
these graffiti referencing Candy Man mean? Yeah, so that part
I think is very similar, But none of the racial
stuff is in the original story at all. Candy Man's

(15:56):
described as having thin blue lips, yellowy skin, patchwork coat
matching his patchwork pants. It's very different. Yeah, it's very different,
and I'm not saying that it's not good. I don't
have an opinion about The Forbidden. I've only read rundowns
of the differences between the movie and The Forbidden. I'm
sure it's a perfectly good novella or short story. But

(16:19):
the things that really make Candy Man compelling to me
are not in it.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
Huh.

Speaker 2 (16:25):
And I find that really bizarre and fascinating. Yeah, and
Candy Man, especially because of all of its references to
racial inequality and the inequality of the legal system in America.
All those things make people have tons of theories and
opinions about what candy Man is about and what happens

(16:49):
in Candy Man. None of that is in the original concept.
It just isn't.

Speaker 1 (16:55):
So in a way, it was all Bernard Bernard Rose, right,
it's pronounced Bernard.

Speaker 2 (17:05):
Close. You're close. Still offensive and racist. Somehow, I think
he's a whit. I appreciate it, okay, but but no.
So that's a lot of the stuff that I find
most poignant about candy Man. And I'll tell you some more,
but only after this. So, the basic story of Candy Man,

(17:34):
as we mentioned, is a woman named Helen who is
a graduate student at the University of Illinois in Chicago.
Is researching urban legends and becomes aware of Candy Man,
a spirit who kills anyone that speaks his name five
times in front of a mirror, which probably reminds a
lot of people of Bloody Mary, very similar concept. When

(17:59):
I was growing up, I thought Candy Man was an
actual legend because of the movie. I thought that that
was an actual thing. Like my sister and I would
dare each other to say Candy Man five times in
the mirror, and it's not even real. It was made
up by the Forbidden and then used in this in
this film. So she learns that there was a murder

(18:19):
at the Cabrini Green Cabrini Green housing project and that
it was attributed by locals to Candy Man. So she
decides to go down there and investigate. And that's that's
and and she finds it. That's the I mean, that's
like the the long of the short of it is
she she definitely finds him. So uh yeah. And one

(18:41):
thing I want to mention is there's a lot of
like questioning sanity and stuff like that, but I want
to point out that Candy Man himself is never seen
by anyone other than Helen, Yeah, in the entire film,
including and she's the one recounting all of the stories

(19:01):
where we see him as well, which leans into a
lot of people, including to some degree myself, wondering if
there is no candy Man at all, and if it's
the delusions of a woman driven insane or something along
those lines. Oh but we can get into that later.

(19:22):
But yeah, so Candy Man super super fun, scary, creepy
horror movie. A lot more. It does bring the gore
a few times. In fact, when the gore happens, it's
very very shocking. Yeah, but overall, I want to say
it's it's psychological, but those gore scenes are really they're pretty,

(19:45):
they're really startling, and they hit hard when they do.

Speaker 1 (19:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:49):
So, but it is available to watch on Amazon Prime.
You can rent it. It's available on AMC Plus with
a subscription, and maybe on to B I'm checking. Nope,
no longer available on to B thanks Google. So it's
not super available. But if you haven't seen it, that's
your own fault. It's been out for a really long time.

(20:11):
So but with that all being said, you wanna you
wanna get us started on this journey.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
Yeah. Well, it's like you said, the introduction is great
because not only does it give us the backstory or
kind of like the mythology of Candy Man, it's also
a really good introduction to Helen. Like you said, she's
a student of mythology. And after she you know, after

(20:41):
she recounts the story of Candy Man, she's kind of there.

Speaker 2 (20:46):
When you say story of candy Man, what do you mean?

Speaker 4 (20:50):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (20:50):
The the opening scene is the is her talking about
if you say the name five times into a mirror,
then can Candy Man will come and like, you know,
he's he's responsible for you know, violence and murdering people.

(21:11):
And then it goes into her interviewing different people who
live at Kabrini Green.

Speaker 2 (21:17):
Which are the cleaning staff at her college.

Speaker 1 (21:20):
That's oh, that's right, yeah, and they're you know, they're
kind of expounding upon the effect that Candy Man has
actually had on their community. Like he's not just a
story to them, he's a reality. And this really picks

(21:40):
Helen's interest, and so she and her friend is it Bernadette,
you know, that's when they hatch their plan to go
to Kabrini Green. And investigate. But first Helen wants to
talk to her husband, Lyle, who is a professor or

(22:02):
a lecturer at the professor and we what's interesting about
thee His.

Speaker 2 (22:09):
Name is Trevor, Trevor, his last name is Lyle. Both
of their last names are Lyle.

Speaker 1 (22:14):
That's where I got Lyle. So their their relationship was
interesting because as you and I were watching this again
the other night, we both commented how even though they're married,
they don't interact like they're married. They don't like really
feel like they're married.

Speaker 2 (22:31):
Yeah, he seems to just kind of come and go.
It made me think they were more like kind of
casually dating.

Speaker 1 (22:36):
Yeah, and I have to agree. And this this first
introduction with him, we get the sense that not everything
maybe right, because first off, he's giving this lecture about
you know, urban legends, and she's a roll upset at
the end of the lecture because he had promised that

(22:57):
he was going to wait until she was there, like
fully there to give the lecture and he had just
you know, kind of gone ahead without her. And then
she was also noticing that he's getting a lot of
attention from one of its students and he's just you know,
kind of writing it off as like, Oh, she's just
a kid, you know, she's just infatuated with me. But Helen,

(23:20):
she already seems kind of suspicious of that.

Speaker 2 (23:23):
Well, and it's worth mentioning, I don't. I think the
reason she was mad that he was diving into urban
legends from an academic standpoint is she was worried about
him priming the students against her presentation. Mm hmm, because
that's kind of a I mean, that's a thing. You know,
if you follow somebody respect saying this is all kind

(23:44):
of bull crap, then it kind of destroys the ability
to get people to care about what you're writing about.
And her interest in the Candyman legend is a little
deeper in that her and Bernadette believe that their thesis
is is Cabrini Green residents are using the Candyman legend
to cope with racial inequality. Basically, yeah, that they're using

(24:08):
it to cope with the fact that they live in hell.
By many people's standards, they live in an awful place
full of scary people, and people get killed all the time,
which is very like the is very perfectly academic lensed
that it's like we're gonna look at this urban legend

(24:29):
through the veil of racial inequality. In fact, when they
tell the candy Man legend, the legend itself, there's a
really odd detail I don't know if you picked up
on when they describe the jock guy and the girl
like kind of making out on the bed, you know,
when the whole thing happens. And I'll explain that right

(24:50):
after this. So when she is telling a version of
the Candyman myth, not his real quote unquote backstory, which

(25:10):
we get to in a little bit, it doesn't even
take place in Chicago. It's in a small suburban house
in Indiana.

Speaker 1 (25:19):
Oh, you're right. I didn't notice that.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
I mean, do you remember that, though. I mean they're
they're they're nowhere near Cabrini Green. Yeah, I think they're
outside of Gary or something. They're in Indiana. Yeah, and
they're and they're literally it's like a like a stereotypical
urban legend. The guy is wearing a letterman jacket and
the girl has a ponytail, and maybe tonight's the night
she's gonna give it up. You know, It's it's so

(25:43):
urban legend. Codd, It's just completely urban legendy that has
nothing to do with Cabrini Green, that has nothing to
do with any of the elements of candy Man that
we come to know later on. Yeah, which I find
really really interesting and kind of strange. Yeah, I just

(26:04):
thought that was kind of worth mentioning that it doesn't
really Yeah, it doesn't really seem like he like it's
to me, it's much more generic than what we find
out later, much more generic. So, and it's it's the
classic you know, they're hanging out together and then as
a goof they say candy Man in the mirror five
times and they get slaughtered. Basically, well, she gets slaughtered,

(26:27):
and that he discovers her dead body after blood is
dripping through the ceiling. Yeah, which is really shoddy workmanship.
But maybe that's the real horror of the story.

Speaker 1 (26:38):
I would say so.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
But I just wanted to mention that too. I mean,
that's a very interesting side note that makes me wonder
about candy Man in the context of the first film,
because when we start, I mean, in the movie does
open with a few elements of candy Man that aren't
necessarily directly related to Hell And I mean, we get

(27:01):
a little opening monologue thing from Tony Todd and the
Bees flying kind of over Chicago. But after that, like,
she's talking about candy Man, and at first he's just
a hook, and as time goes on he keeps kind
of morphing mm hm. We see more and more and more. Now,
of course that's a normal trope that you don't see

(27:21):
all of the killer right away. You get more and
more of him as you go. But it does seem
strange to me that Helen knows so little about him,
so we see so little, and then as she learns more,
we see more.

Speaker 1 (27:34):
That is a very interesting point.

Speaker 2 (27:36):
It makes me wonder if candy Man is in her head. Yeah,
and maybe that's it or something. I don't know, because
obviously if you follow the sequels, candy Man is definitely
a real thing because he lives beyond Helen.

Speaker 1 (27:50):
Yeah, but in.

Speaker 2 (27:52):
The context of only the film, it really does make
me wonder, So, yeah, I think that's worth mentioning. So
they truck on down to Cabrini Green to figure out
what's going on. And this is another thing I mentioned
when we were watching it that I think is worth
pointing out too. While they don't Heman hall like crazy
about going to Cabrini Green. There is trepidation about going,

(28:15):
especially because they're two women, two tiny women. I mean
they're like, you know, very petite women, Helen and Bernadette.
Bernadette is a black woman, but obviously it's very clear
she's from a very different socioeconomic background than the residents
of Cabrini Green. If anyone in her family came from

(28:36):
that background, it was a very long time ago. Yes,
she has no sense of awareness of those spaces. So
they go there, and they're in the bill. They well,
first of all, the moment they get out of the car,
they're accosted by gang bangers, guys wearing gang clothes, asking
what you do and what you hear for? What you

(28:56):
do and what you hear for, over and over to them,
clearly trying to intimidate them. They look like cops.

Speaker 1 (29:02):
Yeah, And Bernadette even says like, oh, I told you
we shouldn't have dressed like this, And Helen's like, I
just told you to dress professional.

Speaker 2 (29:11):
Yeah, I know, she said, casual, Oh, casual, because they're
where I mean they are. They're like corporate casual. They're
not like well it's also not it's like.

Speaker 1 (29:18):
Cold out, Yeah, so they wear their jackets.

Speaker 2 (29:21):
So they're wearing like jackets and a nice blouse and pants,
you know, like a pants suit kind of thing. They
do they look like I mean, they don't. I mean,
they look like cops that are not in any way
even vaguely undercovered. They don't look like they're trying to
fool anybody. Yeah, but of course that's gonna make people nervous, Yeah,
that they're walking around because as it becomes very clear
the further we get into Cabrini Green, the police don't

(29:44):
help them. White people don't help them, you know whatever.
They even say a few times, like whenever white people
start stomping around here, whenever police are stomping around here,
it never helps. It always makes things worse. And when
you consider that, depending on your worldview, Cabrini Green in
all housing projects again depending on your worldview, were built
to help people m M. But very few people feel

(30:08):
that way about housing projects now that they help anybody. Yeah,
you know, and there are some people who believe they
were built from the beginning to harm, and then there's
some people who believe that they were good intended they
just didn't turn out. So if you take housing projects
at face value, then yeah, this was yet another thing
done thinking it would help and it did not. Yeah. Yes,

(30:30):
But as they're walking through the hallway taking pictures of
very creepy graffiti that's refreferencing the candy man saying things
like sweets to the sweet all of that, they encounter
a young woman who lives in the housing project, and
I find her really fascinating. Her name's Anne Marie, and

(30:53):
she is very clearly a waitress, I believe.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
Yeah, it's pretty clear because she's got the small yeah,
the smock.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
Yeah, and the name tag that says Anne Marie. And
she's a single mother raising an infant son named Anthony
or Anthony. I'm not trying to be funny. I don't
know if she was supposed to be in the script,
if she was supposed to just like have that affectation,
or if she literally because some people do name their
kids literally. Yeah, the sound like Anthony instead of Anthony

(31:24):
and stuff. So I don't know if that was intentional
or not, or how that was planned. But one thing,
what did you notice when she she eventually reluctantly invites
them into her apartment.

Speaker 1 (31:36):
The thing that I noticed is the juxta position of
the outside, like the hallways and you know, stairwells and
everything of Cabrini Green and how they're you know, the
walls are covered in graffiti and there's trash everywhere, and
you know, it's broken down and run down. And then

(31:57):
the inside of Anne Marie's apartment is like Homie's nice,
beautiful and like well kept and it's very obviously like
a little safe haven inside the mess of the you know,
the projects, which I thought was you know, it's it's

(32:18):
great storytelling, and it's also just great character development for
Annerie because you learn so much about who she is
and what she values as a person just from that
introduction of going into her apartment and her you know,
holding her baby and talking about life well.

Speaker 2 (32:34):
And she makes it very clear that her whole world
is Anthony.

Speaker 1 (32:36):
Oh yeah. I mean she literally says it that he's
everything to her. And that's I mean, when we lived
in a tenement building, our house was nice, or our
space was nice, mm hmm, it was everywhere else that
wasn't so nice, you know, And that's the way it works.
I Mean, you kind of have to take some pride
in your home and make it nice, and she's very
clearly one of those people who's trying to live her

(32:59):
life in the circumstances that she's in. And we find
out that she is literally the next door neighbor of
the supposed candy man's most recent victim. And we'll talk
about that more right after this. So Anne Marie is

(33:29):
talking about what she heard, things like that, and she
doesn't really have much. She's also been reassured over and
over that Helen and Bernadette are not police and that
no one's going to get in trouble, that they're from
the university. Yeah, So they're trying to figure out what's
going on, and they end up going into that apartment

(33:53):
which is just kind of sitting there and taking pictures.
And this is where you get some of the wildest
stuff because they go into the apartment where the murder
happened and they pull the mirror off the wall. Yeah,
and it reveals like a Narnia of Hell just on
the other side.

Speaker 4 (34:12):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (34:12):
Because when they when they reveal the big you know,
the big hole in the wall, it they they they
already have an idea of the layout because again Helen's apartment,
the layout of her apartment complex is exactly the same

(34:33):
as this one here is Cabrini Green. So she's even like,
as they're walking through this rundown apartment, she's like, I know,
like if we go here and we remove this, then
we'll just be on the mirror side of the other apartment.
And she she crawls through, and the camera like zooms

(34:53):
out and we realize she she's crawling out of a wall,
and the wall behind her is a graffiti mural of
Candy Man's face with his mouth open, and she's crawling
out of his mouth, which is creepy enough as it is.
But then as she's walking around in this darylic space,

(35:15):
she looks and she sees a bunch of candy and
she realizes that the residents have like basically left an
offering for Candy Man there. So she's you know, like
taking pictures, and Bernadette's kind of panicking.

Speaker 2 (35:32):
Well, and I want to mention, by the way, that
that's the first time that she I mean, like we
see her see that Candy Man portrait or what we
believe is a Candyman portrait, and then Candy Man looks
like that portrait. Yeah, I just want to put that
out there because I've been thinking a lot about the
idea that maybe this is her perception and we like
she did not see Tony Todd as Candy Man before

(35:54):
she saw that. I'm almost certain of it. So I
just wanted to throw that out there. That's very, very
But yeah, they're getting freaked out because like she's literally
walking through this like haunted house basically yeah and yeah please.

Speaker 1 (36:07):
So that's that's when Anne Marie like stops them. She
because she comes with her dogs and she's like, basically
like what are you guys doing here? Like why no
one wants to come here? Like why are you here,
especially you know, a white lady, And she invites them
into their apartment, and that's, you know, when she starts
talking about the murder. She really explains how helpless she

(36:34):
felt as the neighbor because she had called nine one
one and tried to get the police out there and
they just basically ignored her. And what's really interesting is
as I was as I was looking it up, uh,
that's that's all actually inspired by a real murder.

Speaker 2 (36:56):
Oh yeah, I've heard that before the details though.

Speaker 1 (36:59):
So her name was Ruth May McCoy and she lived
in in Chicago in the ABLA Homes, which stood for
it was a housing project that was basically like four
different housing projects all mushed together, and very similarly, the

(37:24):
mirrors of the bathrooms on like the far ends of
the buildings had like two feet of space between them,
and so in eighty seven, there was a lot of
gang violence that was going on, and gangs were using
that space to like break into people's homes. So one night,

(37:45):
some people broke into Ruth's home and she called the
police as it was happening, as they were like breaking
down the mirror, and she told them that people were
coming through her bathroom and she was in danger, and
they never responded. And her neighbors actually called later that

(38:07):
night because they heard all the commotion and they heard
her being murdered, and they all reported it and the
police still don't didn't come out, and it wasn't until
the next day a neighbor called again and said, I
still I haven't seen her in twenty four hours, like
you need to get out here, and then the police
finally came out. So it was very similar circumstances that

(38:34):
a lot of people think had inspired Bernard Rose for
some of the details of this part of the movie.

Speaker 2 (38:40):
Sure, well, And it's important to keep in mind bathrooms
are i mean apartments, They do do that. Bathrooms are
built next to each other in order to save money
and complication on running pipes, because the further you run
pipes from a central place, the more risk of freezing
there is and and other things. But also it's more complicated,
more risk of leaks and things like that. So bathrooms

(39:03):
are almost always put back to back. Apartments are usually
done that way. And I've seen video of people who
have revealed that their medicine cabinets do connect to the
neighboring apartment. Yeah, if you remove the medicine cabinet, which.

Speaker 1 (39:17):
You're not supposed to do, but it's still there.

Speaker 2 (39:20):
Well sure, sure, it's very creepy though the idea. So yeah, no,
that's really interesting. I had heard a little bit about
that years ago, but I had not followed up on it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:31):
Well, and this all, you know, this all reminds me.
You'll remember the incident that happened, like, you know, five
years ago, when I was living in that apartment and
the guy and the apartment next to me was like
insane and was like tearing down the walls, and I

(39:52):
had even told you. One night, I was like, man,
he's like really going at it, like he's banging really loud,
and it was the wall right like in my bed bedroom.
And the next day the guy got arrested and I
was looking like he'd torn the whole front wall of
his apartment down at the at like the ac unit,
and I was looking and it was like, yeah, he

(40:13):
was literally like taking a hammer and breaking down the
adjoining wall. To me, he was like there was just
a little bit of plywood there. Yeah, so uh, yeah,
shit happens.

Speaker 2 (40:25):
Yeah. I do not miss apartment living in the least
in the least, and as an adult, I only lived
in one apartment and my neighbors were like shitty, but
they weren't like scary.

Speaker 1 (40:37):
Yeah yeah, they weren't breaking down the walls.

Speaker 2 (40:41):
Yeah. Well, actually it's funny because my next door neighbor
was everybody was afraid of him, but me, I don't.
I've ever told you that story. Like he was a
hard as nails black man, and he wore all leather,
like I mean you wore I mean you wear like
a leather jacket, leather hat. I was just like, hey, man,

(41:01):
I I grew up around people like that. I did.
I just did. I never find them intimidating. I mean,
I mean unless they're really intimidating. And we ended up
becoming really good friends. He was from Cleveland. Of all,
this was in Jersey because he noticed my Ohio plate
and that was one of our icebreakers because then I said, oh,
I'm from Dayton and he was like, my brother worked

(41:21):
at the right pat Air Force Base. And I was
like really, no way. Yeah, So it was like very yeah.
We got along great. His family would come and visit
and I would like play with his nieces and nephews
and stuff. It was but he you know, but like
he got mad at one of our neighbors for like
making noise and he would like yell through the walls
he was going to kill them and stuff. I mean
when he was mad, he was mad, but I never heard,

(41:44):
you know, he was always nice to me. So the
end on that. But now, after this experience where they're
at Cabrini Green and they get out of there mostly unscathed,
they end up going well, no, they all do. Helen
and Bernadette go to dinner with Helen's husband and Bernadette's

(42:04):
boyfriend or some guy. It seemed like it was her boyfriend. Yeah.
But they go to dinner with Professor Philip Percell, a
Englishman who happens to be an expert on the Candyman
myth because he wrote a dissertation on candy Man and
this is where we find out the story behind candy

(42:28):
Man right after this. So as they're having dinner with
Professor Philip Purcell, it's a really interesting exchange because Helen

(42:50):
is a little bit moderately like combative with him, because
he's like, I want to know what you're you know,
what you're working on, and she's like, it's not ready.
He's like, that's precisely when you should tell me about it,
because that's when I could be of the most help,
when it's not done. And he's very amused when he
finds out that they're talking about candy Man at Cabrini
Green and he asks her if she read his paper

(43:13):
on him, which she hasn't, which is also kind of
interesting because it sounds like the way he was talking
that it's like the only record, you know, like academic
record of the Candyman myth. But he goes into this
whole myth that candy Man was the son of a
slave in the eighteen hundreds who ended up being wealthy

(43:37):
because his father had made a fortune on patents for shoes.
And then I'm sorry, do you want to take over?
You're looking at me like, oh, you were looking at
me just totally blank. I was like, am I making
this up?

Speaker 4 (43:53):
No?

Speaker 1 (43:53):
No, no, you're doing good.

Speaker 2 (43:55):
Oh. So he then he became a painter, and he
fell in love with a woman he was painting, who
was a white woman. Yeah, impregnated her, and then her
father basically sent a lynch mob after him, who sawed
off his right hand in order to make him, you know,
unable to be an artist anymore, and then smeared him
with honeycomb stolen from a nearby apiary, which attracted bees,

(44:21):
which then stung him to death. His corpse was then
burned in a pyre, which was on the site of
what inevitably became the Cabrini Green Homes. So that's the story.

Speaker 1 (44:33):
Yeah, and it's a it's a very powerful story just
from from a narrative standpoint, because of because of the
racial tension, just because of the way that the way
that Chicago is in the real world and because of

(44:58):
the way that they're setting up the story of the
residents of Cabrini Green and how they've all been kind
of relegated to living in this hell hole because of
their racial history. And then he talks about you know
him talking about Candy Man's origins as someone who could

(45:22):
have you know, he he if he would have fallen
in love with this woman and gotten her pregnant, pregnant,
but he was a white guy, Like it really wouldn't
have mattered as much a little bit, Yeah, but I
don't think it would have been like Lynch Mob mattered.

Speaker 2 (45:37):
Yeah, probably not. I mean I think it was supposed
to be eighteen seventy Yeah, yeah, I mean, getting any
wealthy person's daughter pregnant unexpectedly would probably be.

Speaker 1 (45:48):
A bad move, Yeah, but not recommended.

Speaker 2 (45:51):
And this begins this odd connection between Helen and Candy
Man where it seems like he's seducing her. And again
that doesn't start until after she hears the story. That's
also when she starts to see him with bees. This
is all after this guy had told her. And I've

(46:12):
heard people theories. Some people have said that they think
Philip Purcell, the Professor's character made all that up like
for his article, because that does happen to some extent
that Yeah, fill in blanks. Who knows because he's the
only source. Yeah, he's the only source for the backstory,
but to a myth that's clearly spread further than Cabrini

(46:34):
Green by the fact that one of the first tellings
of it is not anywhere near Cabrini Green. Yeah, I
mean it's a state over so I guess it's vaguely close,
but not extremely close though. No. So after that, Helen
returns to Cabrini Green and meets this young boy named Jake,
and Jake is very like street wise. I mean, he's

(46:59):
a little kid, but he's pretty smart.

Speaker 1 (47:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:02):
But of course, the way she gets him to talk
is she basically says, like, you know, you don't have
to be afraid. He's like, I'm not afraid of anything.
So then he starts helping her out, which could literally
get him killed. Yeah, But he tells her a story
about a developmentally disabled boy who was castrated in this

(47:23):
local bathroom near Cabrini Green a long time ago, supposedly
by candy Man.

Speaker 1 (47:31):
Yeah, and that picks her interest, so she goes to
investigate that site, and she gets a little bit more
than she bargained for, because then she does run into
some people there as she's in the bathroom.

Speaker 2 (47:46):
Well, she runs into Candy Man. I mean, he introduces
himself as Candyman.

Speaker 1 (47:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:53):
So, and he does indeed have a hook and he
doesn't pear to be afraid to use it. And what
happens next you'll find out after this.

Speaker 1 (48:17):
So in the bathroom, Helen gets confronted by this guy
who calls himself Candy Man, and he you know, attacks her,
but she manages to get away, and then, you know,
the very next scene is her at the police office
looking at a lineup of guys trying to identify him,
and she does. And so the police are able to

(48:41):
connect this guy who's calling himself Candy Man, and he's
like a leader of the gang, you know, one of
the gangs there. They're able to connect him to one
of the actual crimes, to the development developmentally disabled kid
who was castrated and some other I think, I think,
like one or two other murders.

Speaker 2 (49:00):
Right, they didn't connect him to the kid who was
castrated that was in the nineteen seventies.

Speaker 1 (49:04):
Oh, I thought, didn't they connect him.

Speaker 2 (49:06):
To they connected him to the two murders. The murders, yeah, yeah, yeah,
the kid was castrated. I remember, like the guy who
ran out was wearing a friggin' beret, like it was
like the sixties or seventies. Oh yeah when that happened.
And the guy who was saying he's Candy Man was
like twenty three years old, Yeah he was. Yeah. Yeah,
So it's very clear that he's been using the Moniker
and to an extent, the mo of Candy Man to

(49:29):
enforce his street control and now he's busted.

Speaker 4 (49:35):
Now.

Speaker 2 (49:35):
Another point worth mentioning too, is it took this one
white woman getting the shit beat out of her in
near Cabrini Green to get this guy taken down, although
they claimed that the reason they could never take the
guy down because they knew who he was, was that
nobody would would testify against him. Yeah, and she agrees
to testify against him, as long as that means that

(49:56):
the young boy, oh gosh, what's this oh Jake doesn't
have to yeah, because it would potentially ruin Jake's life.

Speaker 1 (50:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:06):
So yeah, they've now they've got the candy Man. But
also I think that's a really interesting turn of events,
because that tells you that the fact that they were like, oh, yeah,
Candy Man is who did it? They weren't saying it
was literally a ghost. They were saying, there's a guy
freagain named Candy Man who will kill you if you

(50:28):
don't pay your drug debt or if you, you know,
get in the way of their business or whatever. Nobody
ever said he was a mystical being. They said he
came through the mirror and killed somebody with a hook,
which literally this guy could do yeah and had done.
So I think that's worth pointing out as well. You
know that that really it seems like he was just

(50:48):
a garden variety inner city psychopath who happened to have
a flourish for the dramatic. I guess, yeah, you know
who liked folklore. I suppose.

Speaker 3 (51:01):
So.

Speaker 2 (51:02):
I don't know. That was something that always stuck with me,
was the whole fake out Candyman thing.

Speaker 1 (51:06):
Yeah. No, I think it's a really good fake out
because it not only not only does it as the
audience kind of deepen the mystique behind Candy Man when
we do finally see him, because it's it's coming up soon,
but it also it kind of makes Helen even more

(51:28):
determined to like figure this out because even though it
feels like, even though she realizes like, okay, the community
is literally talk about this guy, why has the story
stuck around for so long? Like how did he? You know,
how did he keep this going? So she's still like

(51:50):
very interested in how this Candy Man myth has evolved
to the point that somebody is willing to take up
that moniker.

Speaker 2 (51:56):
But there's a but there's an element to that that's
really strange though, which is it's nineteen ninety two and
basically there have been no mention of Candy Man for
like twenty years until recently in Cabrini Green, because other
than that boy being mutilated, there's been no reference to Candyman.
No people have been killed by Candy Man, nothing, So

(52:17):
that's worth mentioning too. Like his his his legend in
Cabrini Green was not much of anything. He was more
a you know, a whispered story for campfires and sleepovers
and things like that. So and I mean, I think
she is not as curious until she sees Candy Man,

(52:37):
until he reveals himself to her, because she had been
convinced that that Candy Man is actually this you know,
horrible reality of the inner city life. And that's you know,
what she's going to turn her report to. And that's
when Candy Man reveals her, reveals himself to her in
a parking garage. Yeah, and he's just standing there in
broad daily and that's something Candy Man does that most

(52:59):
horror villains do. He's always, not always, but he's often
in the broad daylight. He's just right there to you. Yeah,
which in part is because apparently only Helen can see him.
Which I'm not saying that I one hundred percent believe
that this is all in her head, but I think
they laid a ton of hints and clues, including the

(53:19):
fact that everybody around her believes it's in her head. Yeah,
and that nobody gets killed by Candy Man unless she's around. Yeah,
the real Candy Man, not the not the fake gun. Yeah. So,
but he explains that the reason he's showing himself to
her is because she's discredited his legend and that because

(53:41):
of that, he has to shed innocent blood in order
to maintain that that legend and that presence, which is
really interesting because that's very grandiose and very egotistical Yeah,
he doesn't come off the way I feel like and
you know, when we're talking in the world of Candy Man,

(54:02):
we're talking in the world of you know, slasher movie
legends and stuff. I'm not saying anything is possible or impossible,
but he doesn't come across as a star crossed lover
who was wronged and needs vengeance. He comes across as
like a narcissistic being who wants his standing.

Speaker 1 (54:21):
Yeah, yeah, you see what I'm saying. It's it's as
much as he wants Helen to, you know, be his
new lover, it is way more about maintaining the hold
that he has in mythology and kind of like keeping
his like you said, keeping his standing in everyone's minds well.

Speaker 2 (54:44):
And I want to mention whenever he basically hypnotizes her,
it's romantic and I mean, but not subtly like I
don't know if you noticed, But they don't just give
her like the soft filter lens treatment. They do her
makeup nicer. Yeah, when they cut to the close ups
of her face looking at him. Every time they do that,

(55:06):
her makeup is like perfectly done, even if the scene
before she was wearing almost no makeup. But I mean
that makes sense because it paints a picture. It gives
you a scene, a literal scene, and a figurative scene.
The scene is a beautiful woman and this man. But

(55:28):
this is why I really wonder about the feasibility of
there being a candy Man. Helen didn't have any of
these moments with candy Man like that until she heard
the story, yeah, about the original guy and the fact
that they called him candy man because he was covered
in honey as he was stung to death by bees,
which is so cruel and brilliant, I mean, like brilliant storytelling. Yeah,

(55:52):
not a brilliant insult. It's honestly kind of lazy. But
like the moment is, it's so weird though. It's like,
she hears about the hook, she sees a hook, she sees,
she sees the image in the in the abandoned apartment.
Now she's you know, seeing silhouettes of a black man
that looks like that, and now she hears the story
about a love affair with a you know, a beautiful

(56:14):
white woman, and now she's a part of a love
affair with him.

Speaker 1 (56:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:19):
Yeah, And that's what makes me like really wonder if
her psyche is breaking or something m hm. Because and
also the fact that as we get further in, everybody
thinks her psyche is breaking. And as much as you know,
you could say, like, well, that's the point. The point
is to make her, you know, doubt reality so that
she's you know, it's the scary thing. It's like, yeah,

(56:41):
but if everybody was right and she was just crazy,
that's a really scary ending.

Speaker 1 (56:45):
Yeah, no, it is.

Speaker 2 (56:47):
Really scary ending. So but I mean, but again, like
I don't know in the movie, that's one of the
best parts is it doesn't tell you, yeah, in any way,
you know, straight up what happened, you know, what really happened,
which I like, yeah. So but remember he said like
he has to spill innocent blood every time Candy Man

(57:09):
appears to her. This is the other questionable thing. She
blacks out, and when she wakes up, horrible things have happened,
and we'll talk about those right after this.

Speaker 1 (57:32):
So Helen comes to and she is covered in blood
and in her hand she's holding a knife, and there's
blood all over the walls. When she looks down at
the floor, she sees something on the floor and then
she realizes it's the head of a dog in the hallway.

(57:55):
It's in the hallway, and she hears screaming and whaling
and crying, and she's very obviously, very confused and disoriented
because she doesn't quite recognize where she is.

Speaker 2 (58:08):
And from the audience's perspective, that's clearly Anne Marie's dog
because he pops up early on when she meets Anne Marie.
It's a very big rottweiler. So it's, yeah, it's very
obvious that that's Anne Marie's Rottweiler, and that the screaming,
whaling must be Anne Marie h and it's it's a
real horror scene, without a doubt. So she's carrying this

(58:32):
knife and the dog has clearly been slaughtered. And rottweiler's,
you know, especially in the inner city, especially in that
period of time, they were very common protection dogs. I
feel like, you know, in the modern era, they've been
replaced a lot by just pitbulls. Yeah, just everybody has
a pitbull. But back then, rottweiler's were like what you

(58:53):
got if you didn't want anybody to mess with your stuff. Yeah,
So as she goes to find Anne Marie, Anne Marie
is in Anthony's bedroom, screaming and wailing and the crib
is just drenched in blood.

Speaker 1 (59:10):
Yeah, and Helen kind of like approaches her, and Anne
Marie whips around and just starts screaming like you you
killed him, you hurt my baby, wears my baby? What
did you do with him? And an Anne Marie kind
of like goes to attack Helen, and Helen, you know,

(59:30):
still has the knife, so she defends herself and and
cuts Anne Marie and then you know, the police come
and they arrest Helen and then her husband, you know,
kind of he manages to bail her out of jail.

Speaker 2 (59:47):
But you left out one of I think one of
the most horrific scenes in the film when when she's
being she's standing in front of the police covered in
blood and they're making a remover her bloody clothes and
hand them over for evidence, and she just keeps saying like,
can I please take a shower? And they're just like
not take off your bra your brazier, you know, and
they're making your hands it over. I just think that

(01:00:08):
scene is like really raw. It is and and and rough,
and I mean, like, as a woman, I feel like
it would hit harder no.

Speaker 1 (01:00:17):
That that scene is very tough I think that it
was kind of a kindness that they had. The officer
who was instructing her to like get undressed was a
female officer. And it's kind of funny because we saw
that actor in something else recently.

Speaker 2 (01:00:39):
The actress was in a final episode of Better Call Saul.

Speaker 1 (01:00:43):
But no, it's and and Helen. The whole time is
she's asking, you know, she's kind of like begging, like
can I take a shower? She's also saying like is
That's when she even then starts saying like it wasn't
like it wasn't me And of course no one's no
one's listening to her.

Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
Well, she's saying she doesn't know what happened, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
Which is true. She what I mean, you know, she
was not clearly conscious. So yeah, that that was a
pretty powerful scene and it really makes Helen way more
vulnerable throughout the rest of the movie. So that's after

(01:01:27):
after that, after you know, she's been interrogated in everything
is when her husband Bailts are out of jail, right who.

Speaker 2 (01:01:36):
And he did not answer the phone when she called
him with her one phone call, it went went to
the answering machine, which would suggest he wasn't home. So
when he shows up, she's like, where were you when?
He was like, I was at home, fast asleep. I
didn't the call didn't wake me up. I mean, that
could be true. He clearly drinks a lot. Yeah, I mean,

(01:01:57):
I mean, because there's a there's a scene where we
have one of her early like fake out scares earlier
in the movie. Is he like jumps into bed and
scares the hell out of her, and literally he's just
like I am wrecked or something. You know, he just
like falls asleep. So he's clearly he'll he'll go out
and tie one off. So I mean that could be believable. Yeah, that,

(01:02:19):
you know, maybe possibly it seems sus though.

Speaker 1 (01:02:23):
And yeah, yeah, especially you know, along with that female
student give him and given him all that attention. But
then when Helen's back home, she's looking at the pictures
and photographs and everything that she took while she was
at Cabrini Green.

Speaker 2 (01:02:42):
The ones she thought had been destroyed.

Speaker 1 (01:02:44):
Yeah, and she realizes that in the background of some
of the pictures she can see a figure that looks
like candy Man. Yes, and she wants to or no
because uh, candy Man attacks her again.

Speaker 2 (01:03:04):
Then yeah, he shows up after she recognizes him and
the images, and again recognizes him in images after she's
already become aware of what he looks like and stuff. Yeah,
which I think is just worth pointing out that there
is a lot because I mean, she's the main you know,
it's tricky because she's the main character, so you're already
everything is from her perspective for the most part. But

(01:03:25):
I do think there's a lot of sussness with the
whole fact that she observes everything, and the the the
order of a lot of stuff is kind of strange.

Speaker 1 (01:03:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:03:36):
Yeah, you know, she hears these stories about him, and
then the next thing is that, yeah, you know, is
what she just heard. And that's the way folklore works,
you know, is the more details you get there you
have it. I Mean, one other thought I had about
Candy Man was that if it isn't just her being insane,

(01:03:58):
then it could be that Candy Man is literally just
whatever you think he is, because that's how folklore works.
So it's just oh, if you know, if you have
it in your head that I'm, you know, a black
man who was you know, the son of a freed
slave who got murdered, then I'll be and then I'm
that now, because it's whatever haunts your dreams, whatever makes
you scared, and I don't hate that idea. In the

(01:04:21):
Candyman remake sequel from twenty twenty one, they kind of
leaned into this idea that that society creates Candy Man,
like every thirty or forty years, there's just another one.
Oh okay, and it just kind of happens again and
again and again. Because there are so many things about
the human experience and about human suffering that are cyclical,

(01:04:42):
they just happen again, like Pete wrongful, people get killed, Okay,
it just happens. Yeah, and especially and because again it's
a very I mean, it's a it was directed written
maybe written as well, but it was directed by Naiada Costa,
and she's a pretty good director by and large, and
I think, you know, especially say that about the Inner
City is very fair.

Speaker 1 (01:05:02):
Oh yeah, absolutely so.

Speaker 2 (01:05:04):
Yeah. So now he attacks her, he cuts her neck,
she bleeds and passes out, and at that point Bernadette
arrives at Helen's apartment, and we don't see anything other
than Helen awakening and Bernadette has been friggin' murdered. And
that's one thing I will say, you know, because I

(01:05:25):
do find this movie to be very cerebral, but it
really does not shy away from the like really shocking,
bloody deaths. Yeah, and we'll talk about those more right
after this.

Speaker 1 (01:05:51):
So one thing that I really like about the art
direction of Candy Man and you know, the visual and
special effects is oddly enough, the murder scenes, because they
they frame it in such a way and they have

(01:06:12):
everything set up where it really feels like crime scene photography.
And it's especially effective because Helen, you know, Helen's kind
of the character that we're seeing everything through her eyes.
She's the main narrator and she's the person stumbling on
these crime scenes or causing the crime scenes. But she's

(01:06:37):
you know, she's not conscious, she's not aware while the
crimes are happening, So we don't see the physical violence.
We just see the aftermath.

Speaker 2 (01:06:46):
Yeah, they're that viral. Only a couple of deaths where
we actually see violence as it happens, and a lot
of that was cut out of the R rated version
we did watch when we rewatched it the other night,
we watched the uncut yeah, which only I mean, it's
like it's like eight or nine seconds more stuff, Yeah,
mostly involving the soon to come psychiatrist. But yeah, the

(01:07:08):
every time she comes out of her blackouts, my first
thought is like, this is so much blood. Yeah, Like
it is just an unbelievable amount of blood. And I
think that I don't know if if it's that there
would be that much blood in real life, or if
it's that that amount of blood will make you think

(01:07:30):
what the actual person would be thinking, because which would
be like, I cannot believe how much blood there is,
because I feel like that would be the reality if
you were sitting in a room and somebody had been
murdered and cut up. No, you would be you would
be shocked by all the blood. Yes, So so part
of me thinks that that's like an artistic way to
get the same guttural response out of us as if
you were actually in the room, because you would be

(01:07:51):
shocked by the blood. So they're just amping the blood
way up, so you go, oh my god, there's so
much blood. Yeah. But at this point the police come
and they take Helen away, and now she is uh
being committed to a psychiatric hospital, which honestly kind of
checks out. Yeah, And there's a really awesome scene where

(01:08:13):
she's tied to her bed and Candy Man starts like
almost hovering, like hovering above her bed, yeah, and talking
to her, you know, doing his usual like weird seductive
talk that Tony Todd does so well because his voice
is just incredible, and she's thrashing and yelling he's under
the bed, he's you know, he's here right now and

(01:08:34):
all the stuff. And then she blacks out again and
when she comes to, she's she's talking to she's talking
to a doctor and she finds out that it's been
a month. Yeah, which that is such a scary reveal
when time is completely moving along and you have no idea.
That's so scary. That's really like just so unsettling. I

(01:08:56):
mean talk about feeling feeling all killed her and confused.
It also is like there's a sense of violation, like
your time was taken from you. Yeah, you know that
was a month of your life. You didn't get somebody
took it from you. It's it's insane, and it's because
they've been trying to find the right drug cocktail to
stabilize her, because she's been, as far as they can tell,

(01:09:19):
just killing everybody. And this scene is another one that's
really interesting because when she sits with the psychiatrist, the
psychiatrist is very direct with her. He tells her, you know.
She's like, so, you're trying to prove, you know, I
killed these people, and he goes, I'm on your side.
I'm trying to prove that you're not sane enough to

(01:09:42):
stand trial. Like he's basically saying, like I'm trying to.
My point is that you don't deserve to be tried
for these murders because you don't understand what you did
or that you did it, which is funny because you
know that's fair, but it also like doesn't click. You know, yeah,
just like all I'm hearing is you think I'm crazy.

(01:10:02):
He's like, yeah, but I'm saying you're not. You don't
deserve the death penalty, is what I'm trying to say.

Speaker 1 (01:10:06):
And it's like, yeah, yeah, but that doesn't necessarily make
me feel just.

Speaker 2 (01:10:10):
Like, women, I'm trying to keep you from being killed.
You think I'm crazy, I'll show you crazy just like
I want. Man no, uh but but no. Uh So
he shows her a video of that moment when he
was hovering over the bed and it's only her yeah,
there's no one else there. But the doctor even says
like was he there when that was happening, Like did

(01:10:34):
you see him? And she is just completely confused. She's like,
I don't understand because.

Speaker 1 (01:10:38):
Yeah, because he was there, he was there, I saw him.

Speaker 2 (01:10:41):
Yeah, and he wasn't standing on the other side of
the room or something. He was so close she could
probably spell him.

Speaker 1 (01:10:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:10:46):
And again though, this is where I start to wonder
if he really is in her mind, because.

Speaker 1 (01:10:54):
Yeah, because she they got video evidence of.

Speaker 2 (01:10:57):
Her just thrashing by herself. Now, of course you'd be like, well,
candy Man only you know, showing himself to her. Sure, absolutely,
but that doesn't bode well for the idea that she
might just be insane that only she can see him,
because that's also an insanity thing.

Speaker 1 (01:11:13):
You know, is that that's not the slam dunk I
think you think it is.

Speaker 2 (01:11:16):
No, no, no, So she tries to prove her innocence
by saying Candy Man's name into a mirror in the room. Nothing,
you know, seems to happen, and then all of a sudden,
the doctor starts spitting up blood and Candy Man has
shoved a hook through him and ripped his guts out basically.

Speaker 1 (01:11:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:11:37):
He then and this is one of my favorite, just
like totally terrifying scenes. And then he just calmly walks
over her and just undoes her her restraints and does
her restraints. That's it, you know, He's just like, yeah,
you can go, basically, and she ends up deciding like okay,
And now yet again someone has died killed by candy Man.

(01:11:58):
Only she saw candy Man. Only she was in the
room with the person who died. Now, of course, you
could make the argument while she was restrained, where did
she get the hook or whatever? For all we know,
that's just her perception, and in reality, he had undone
her restraints for some reason that made sense, and then
she freaking murdered the shit out of the guy.

Speaker 1 (01:12:20):
Yeah fair.

Speaker 2 (01:12:20):
I mean, I'm just saying, like that would be the
argument I would make for it to just be in
her mind, is that it's just the order of incidence
is inaccurate. I mean, if you're imagining an entire other
human being doing things, I think you could misremember or
misobserve how you got unrestrained. Yeah, you know, and the
fact that he unrestrains her suggests that that was a

(01:12:41):
part of if it was a delusion, that would be
part of the delusion would be how she got unhooked.
So I don't know, like some part of me really
kind of thinks that that makes a lot of sense,
that he's just in her mind. But that is also
what they're trying to push to us as the audience.

Speaker 1 (01:12:58):
Yeah, well, and that's that's the thing, is the you know,
the institution, the you know, the doctor, the police, the everything,
they all assume just what you're saying, that Helen's just
absolutely insane, that she's hallucinating a killer, and she's actually
the one that's been committing these murders. So and that

(01:13:21):
that also the very end kind of throws a wrench
in that theory. And we'll get to that. We'll get
to that, like yeah, for sure, Well yeah, but it's
still a very interesting theory.

Speaker 2 (01:13:33):
Well, and there's also I mean, the white savior element,
which is like, how am I hurting? I only came
here to help, Like I don't know, I don't know
how I hurt these people. Yeah, yeah, you know that
that's a little bit of odd subtext too. But now
she's escaped the hospital and she's heading home, but home
isn't exactly what she remembered right after this.

Speaker 1 (01:14:06):
So Helen, having just broken out of the hospital, returns
back home and the walls are different. They're a different color.

Speaker 2 (01:14:16):
Which is a sign of insanity. I mean it could
be I'm just I'm just now, I'm just into gas lamping.

Speaker 1 (01:14:25):
Hey, hey you. So she walks into uh, she walks
into their home. The walls are a different color, there's
new furniture everywhere, and she is livid, rightfully so and

(01:14:47):
because uh, well her suspiion, I did I did bury
the lead a little too much. So her husband has
moved in, uh the student that was given him the
guy eyes and is dating her now. And Helen, she's
got a good point, Like she was only gone for

(01:15:08):
a month, so that moved pretty fast.

Speaker 2 (01:15:13):
Yeah, in his defense, it appeared there was incontrovertible proof
that she'd committed murder. So what was he expecting her
to come home soon? I don't know about all that, man.
I do love how Stacy, his new squeeze, is like terrified.

(01:15:35):
Like the moment she sees her, like standing there, she
just starts almost crying and saving and screaming for Trevor.
Once she you know. She confronts about that, he basically says, like,
you know, I didn't expect you to ever get out.
It didn't look good. No, I mean her best friend
was slaughtered in her apartment. Yeah, and we don't even

(01:15:58):
know all the details there because she came to all
ready like tied up, like was she covered in her
blood entirely? Who knows. So she ditches out of there
and heads to Cabrini Green to rescue Anthony, because that's
something we kind of glossed over. Anthony was not found,
his corpse wasn't found, and they did at one point

(01:16:19):
point out that the blood was just from the dog.
All of that blood was from the dog. Yeah. At
the first at Anne Marie's place, so and uh, and
Candy Man had hinted that he had Anthony the baby.
So she finds Candy Man in his little layer in
Cabrini Green and he tells her that if she surrenders
to him, he will ensure that Anthony can stay alive.

(01:16:44):
Basically yeah and uh. But then to try to sweeten
the deal ha ha ha ha this candy Man, because
bees he tells Helen like, not like if she stays
with him. He's offering her immortality because she would get
to be with him forever. But then he does one

(01:17:04):
of the big moments of the movie, which is he
opens his coat and reveals a rib cage covered in bees.
Bees coming out from his insides. They start pouring out
of his mouth, which I don't know if you're aware
of this, but that was real. Tony Todd put the
bees in his mouth and got stung a ton.

Speaker 1 (01:17:27):
Wasn't it his agent who told him, like, you need
to negotiate a per sting pay.

Speaker 2 (01:17:33):
Well, an agent's job would be to negotiate. Okay, yeah,
I'm curious because I didn't see it in the Wikipedia
candy man Stung by bees. Tony Todd was paid one
thousand dollars for each of the twenty seven bee stings
he got during a scene. So the article then says,

(01:17:57):
I was recently stung twenty four times and got paid nothing.
So he was stung twenty seven times, so he got
twenty thousand dollars and he was wearing a dental dam
to prevent the bees from going down his throat.

Speaker 1 (01:18:10):
That's probably good.

Speaker 2 (01:18:12):
Now. I have to say that is an incredible bit
of dedication. The bees coming out of his mouth for real,
very startling. I've known a lot of weird people over
the years, and I've known people who have done bee beards.

Speaker 1 (01:18:27):
Oh yeah, yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (01:18:28):
Am not one of them because I am allergic to bees,
very allergic. But that's the thing to keep in mind too,
is people who do b beards and stuff, they have
zero allergy. That's the whole point. Yeah, because when when
I asked them, like, how do you not get stung?
The oh, you get, you get stung. That's kind of
the point is you get, but you only get stung
like ten, fifteen, twenty times. You don't get stunge that bad.
You just go home and go ah. And then he
takes them might be broken and you go to bed, yeah,

(01:18:50):
you know, And I'm like, oh, that's cool. I would
not live so but yeah, so he has bees, you know,
in his mouth. It's a very effective sequence, very memorable.
Probably one of the most iconic moments of the whole
film is the rib cage and the bees in his mouth. Yeah, yeah,
and yeah, it's just a nasty one. So then he

(01:19:14):
kisses her with the bees and the beast. But then
he vanishes and takes Anthony with him, and this is
we're pretty much at the end of the film. Now. Yeah,
he disappears with the baby, which enrages her because like
they had a deal. But then as she blacks out again,
she forgetting she blocks out so much. But she awakens

(01:19:34):
to discover a mural of the candy Man with his
lover on the wall, and the lover bears a striking
resemblance to Helen. But this is another point I have
to make toward the idea that maybe this is all
in her head, that Muraal could have been there before.
We don't know, she'd not been in that specific room
looking in that direction, and it doesn't look that much

(01:19:57):
like her.

Speaker 1 (01:19:58):
Yeah, it's just kind of a generic Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:20:01):
So I'm just saying like she could just see what
she wants to see, Yeah, which is kind of what
I feel like this whole. If we make that argument
that it's all in her head, that's kind of the
point is you just see what you want in folklore,
and you see what you want in these old stories,
and you see what you want in these old characters. Yeah.
But again, like I want to make it clear, the
reason I'm litigating it so hard is not because I

(01:20:23):
think it is entirely true. But because it's a new
concept that I've never I'd never thought of or heard
about from Candy Man that I'm working through thinking about
a ton, So I hope it's fun and not just
people going God, he's really selling the idea. It's all
in her head. That's not my point, but I will

(01:20:43):
say that once I started thinking that way, a lot
of things made a lot of sense. So he says that, remember,
he'll release Anthony if Helen helps him strike fear into
Cabrini Green's residence, you know, keep his is whatever, in
order to feed his legend. Candy Man, he goes back
on his agreement and gets Helen to go into the

(01:21:06):
pire where he has Anthony, you know, to save him.
And this is a really important part too. So when
Helen was in his layer, she sees a little something
that could be useful, a little something sharp and curved
and pointy. And we'll tell you what that is right
after this. How's that for a hook?

Speaker 4 (01:21:27):
Ah?

Speaker 2 (01:21:36):
So Helen grabs a hook because there's like a little
collection of hooks, because what else would there be in
candy Dan's layer, And she heads to the pire. This
giant pile of things, which was pointed out early on
when she's walking through Cabrini Green, there's just this giant
pile of like old furniture, shipping pilots and stuff. And
apparently that's what they do. They have a pire every

(01:21:58):
so often, like you.

Speaker 1 (01:22:00):
Know, for they burn You're junk.

Speaker 2 (01:22:02):
I mean, yeah, I suppose so. So she crawls into
the pire, which is not let yet obviously, because she
hears the baby crying and knows that Candy Man has him.
And that is when I cannot. I'm struggling with his name.
The little boy, Jake, thank you. Uh. Jake sees what's

(01:22:24):
going on, but he doesn't see Helen. All he sees
is as she's disappearing into the pire. She sees he
sees the hook that she had taken to bring with her,
and when he sees the hook disappearing into the pire,
he whispers.

Speaker 4 (01:22:36):
Candy Man.

Speaker 2 (01:22:38):
Because Jake is a little boy, he really does believe
in Candy Man. He is a child. Yeah, they believe
in Boogeyman and stuff, you know. So he goes and
gets everybody basically trying to encourage the to push the
idea like burn the pire. Candy Man's in there kind
of thing, and Candy Man is an affront to this,

(01:22:58):
these people and one or another. So candy Man, now
inside of the Pire, has decided he's not going to
go along with it. He wants him, he wants Anthony
to die. He wants all of both of them to
be immolated to help feed his legend. Yes, Helen don't
like that. At this point, the Pire is being set

(01:23:20):
on fire. She grabs a piece of flaming wood and
just stabs him in his weird bee chest and the
flames apparently hurt him quite a bit. Yeah, at least
when you used that way. But here's another thing. Why
why would he put himself in the pire if fire

(01:23:41):
is like the one thing that'll hurt him, unless you
know the reason it actually hurt him is because she
wanted it to hurt him, because.

Speaker 1 (01:23:51):
He believed it would.

Speaker 2 (01:23:52):
And this is where we get to the really fascinating conclusion.
So as Candy Man falls back and basically he dies,
we see all these people standing around the Pire, including
Anne Marie with Jake. Jake has said, and I don't
know if it was true, by the way, but Jake
said that he's Anne Marie's nephew.

Speaker 1 (01:24:14):
Yeah, something like that.

Speaker 2 (01:24:15):
But when he sees Candy Man, he's like sleeping in
like he looked. I think he's homeless. I think he's
just a homeless kid. He doesn't have anybody, or his
parents are a nightmare or something, because when he says
I'm Anne Marie's nephew or she's my aunt, like he's
sitting in front of her place, she's not there. There's
no confirmation. He just kind of says that. So I

(01:24:37):
don't know if he's like literally related to her or
if she just kind of looks out for him or yeh.
But I got the vibe when he noticed the hook
that he was just like that his room was that
cubby hole because he was homeless. That was something I
picked up on this last viewing.

Speaker 1 (01:24:52):
No, because he's always wandering around in the halls or
outside the building. Yeah, he's never shown with an adult,
and that could.

Speaker 2 (01:25:03):
Be because he had he has a horrible home life too,
because that's what a lot of those kids, why they
end up just kind of wandering mm hmm. So yeah,
but yeah, I just thought that was really strange. He's
not in his home, he's not in a bedroom. He's
just in this little like cubby.

Speaker 1 (01:25:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:25:17):
So as the flames are growing and we see Anne Marie,
who is just she looks insane. You know, her hair
is completely crazy. Well, she's wrecked with Yeah, she's wrecked
with grief. And she's watching as the fire is burning.
And the look on her face, that actress really sells
it because it made me like uncomfortable, how incredibly like

(01:25:41):
just destroyed. She looked as all this is happening. Helen
starts grabs the baby and starts pushing her way through
the flames, her hair catching on fire, and as she
pushes out of the pire, this is one of the
most fascinating parts of the movie and there's no candy
man in it at all. She gets out of there
holding the baby. People run to her aid and put

(01:26:02):
her out, but she's already burned very badly, and her
hair was on fire, which is a fascinating element because
that is a very old folklore concept, the idea that
hair is literally flames. They put her out and she
just holds the baby out and Anne Marie comes and
grabs the kid, and you know, has this moment as

(01:26:22):
this woman is dying and I'm not trying to make
it that way, but like such a white savior moment though,
like the she finally did the things she wanted to do,
which was, yeah, in some way or another, save these
people from themselves. I meant to mention earlier, but I
got sidetracked. When they're first talking about going to Cabrini Green,

(01:26:44):
it felt like one of those older movies about like
going to the Amazon. Oh yeah, you know. It just
felt like they were talking about going to another world
and how dangerous it could be, and like, oh, but
what information we could gain stuff, which I just think
is worth mentioning too, Like such a strange combination.

Speaker 1 (01:27:00):
One of those Mondo movies. He likes.

Speaker 2 (01:27:02):
I love me some Mondo movies. But so, now she's died,
and as as she's died, we reveal a new mural
on the wall, and it's of her with the flaming
hair and the baby being saved. Yeah, which suggests that
she has in some way become a legend in and

(01:27:23):
of herself, but as a martyr rather than a tragic
death I guess, or wrong, you know, wrong being righted
or something. She's she's a tragic death. And we then
go to her funeral and the funeral is you know,
all of her academics and her ex husband, well I

(01:27:46):
guess I mean X now because she's dead, they're all
you know, they're paying their respects. But then a very
like picturesque but extremely unexpected thing happens, which we'll talk
about right after this. So as the funeral appeared to

(01:28:13):
be wrapping up, all of the people of Cabrini Green
come in in like a gigantic procession. Yeah, I beautiful,
it's incredible, And and there's basically it's like basically all
white people at the initial funeral and then this procession
of people that clearly don't fit in there, you know,

(01:28:34):
like I mean, but I think that's juxtaposition is important
because it makes a point that like these folks left
there where they're air quotes supposed to be to pay
their respects to somebody who made a difference in their community,
you know. And it's led of course by Anne Marie
holding Anthony, and it's and it's awesome, and it's also

(01:28:56):
you see her walking with Jake and it's awesome. They
all just walk in this giant line to one by
one pay their respects to Helen who saved Anthony and possibly,
as they understand it, killed candy Actually, no, it's not. Possibly,
she killed candy Man, the candy man they were actually
afraid of.

Speaker 1 (01:29:16):
She got rid of him, Yeah, because she got rid
of the gang leader.

Speaker 2 (01:29:20):
And by saving Anthony, that to them cleared her of
the wrongdoing of killing the baby. Yes, so to them,
all she did was help. Yeah, and gave her life
to save Anthony.

Speaker 1 (01:29:32):
Is no, No, that totally makes sense. And I hadn't
I you know, it's pretty easy to pick up on
them paying their respects because she saved Anthony, but I
hadn't quite drawn the connection of that. She really did
get rid of the real candy Man, which is pretty

(01:29:55):
pretty important for all of them, because again, he was
responsible for some very real murders and people.

Speaker 2 (01:30:01):
Were afraid of him. Yeah, clearly, because and this falls
into my point that before Helen's around, candy Man technically
kills nobody that we're aware of. Yeah, like the little
mentally challenged boy in the past. We have no idea
what happened there, and anything could have happened. It could
have just not even happened. It was a little story
Jake had heard from like the whispers of other latchkey kids,

(01:30:24):
So you know, there's that. Then there's the element of
the story with the guy and the girl who aren't
even in Chicago. They're not even in Cabrini Green, They're
nowhere near where this story is taking place. They're they're
just out there in the world.

Speaker 1 (01:30:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:30:39):
So yeah, Like because at first I was thinking, like,
you know, she could have you know, killed Candy Man,
but no, by their perspective, she got rid of Candy
Man entirely. She freed them. And I can't even imagine
what would have been going through Amory's head when she
thought that, or when potentially Helen did kill her dog
and her baby had disappeared. I mean, who knows what's

(01:31:01):
going on there? Yeah, yeah, I really don't know. So yeah,
it's it's really an incredible sequence, Like what were you
thinking when you first watched it? And all of a
sudden they just look over and then there's this, because
I want to overstate, I need to state it properly.
The line is like two hundred feet long. It's an
incredibly long procession of people two by two walking up

(01:31:25):
in their black clothes to pay their respects. It's a
really beautiful shot.

Speaker 1 (01:31:29):
It really is. When the first time I watched it,
I I was incredibly moved, not just by you know,
not just by like how many people were there, but
like you said, how out of place they were and
how far they would have had to come just to

(01:31:50):
pay their respects. Yes, you know, because that's that's the
whole other side of town. You know, like like they said,
you got to take the L train, Like, so here's
a here's a community of people that were so touched
by her self sacrifice that they were willing to make

(01:32:12):
that tremendous journey all together to say goodbye. That's pretty
that's pretty powerful, and it it goes to show like
it was. It was kind of to me. It was
kind of showing those downtrodden communities how close knit they

(01:32:33):
have to be in order to in order to survive.
You know, when all you have to depend on is
each other, you really have to depend on each other.
And they were kind of demonstrating that that in the
way that Helen had sacrificed herself, they were willing to
put themselves out there too.

Speaker 2 (01:32:54):
See.

Speaker 1 (01:32:55):
I think that was I think that was pretty pretty good.
And yeah, and it was the the heartfelt gratitude that
the people from Cabrini Green were expressing was just so
totally different from kind of this sterile sort of grief

(01:33:18):
that her husband and all the other academics were displaying,
like they were just kind of giving like accolades of
like she was just some some person, you know, it's
too bad, brilliant, yeah, yeah, but to the people of
Cabrini Green, like she was an actual hero. And there's

(01:33:39):
a big difference there.

Speaker 2 (01:33:41):
Absolutely. And now we go to the last scene of
the film, which helps tie the movie up in a
nice horror movie bow, but also could potentially say a
lot about maybe my new burgeoning theory. As we are
now back in the apartment that was originally Helen's and

(01:34:01):
her husband's, you know, and he's there with Stacy. He's
sitting on the toilet like hiding from his girlfriend, and
he is so like monstrously grief stricken and guilt ridden.
He's he's miserable, and she's like talking to him through
the do are you okay? So like yeah, I'm fine.
He just like wants to be alone, and she's like
making dinner and getting a big knife out and he

(01:34:25):
is just like distraught, trying to like control his misery
and finally he looks in the mirror and he says
Helen's name four times, then turns the light off and
says her name a fifth time, and she appears at
the mirror and then behind him, which, by the way,
is always how those mirror legends work, because they appear

(01:34:45):
in the mirror first and then they're behind you. Yeah,
And she just cuts him from groin to gullet with
a hook. She's holding candy Man's hook. He gets murdered,
and then Stacy discovers his bloody body in the bathtub,
and she's got the knife. We see that mural of
the woman dressed in white with her hair ablaze in

(01:35:08):
Candyman's layer. The music swells, and all I can think
as the film ends is maybe she replaced candy Man.
Maybe that thing that because one of the ideas, so
one of the ideas I'm playing with the idea of
candy Man, is that what if candy Man is kind

(01:35:30):
of like what Freddy Krueger was like in a New Nightmare,
there is no Freddy Krueger. There's an ancient in the
case of Nightmare elm Street, a New Nightmare, there's an
ancient evil that just simply exists, and it takes the
forms of things people are afraid of.

Speaker 1 (01:35:48):
Yeah, but yeah in Knight.

Speaker 2 (01:35:49):
Bmroren elm Street in The New Nightmare, the whole concept
is that that gets captured in books and movies and
things like that, and that the reason he's killing people
for real is because they are no more Freddy movies
and there's no outlet for that evil. Well what if
it was kind of like that, But it's about the folklore,
the power of folklore, so there really is no candy Man.

(01:36:12):
Candy Man is just this force of the fear and
the whispers and the legend and you know, the the
hearing something that goes bumping the night and feeling this
eerie sense that you just you know what it was
because it was the Boogeyman, it was Candid, it was
Bobby Yaga, it was all these things, because you know
Ombre del Saco Lanna, there are a million of them.

(01:36:36):
So my thought is that in reality, all the folklore
wants is to exist. Yes, the identity doesn't matter at all.
And there's another thing that I want to mention that
I skipped over when he toward the end that I
think is very weird and interesting to interpret, and we'll

(01:36:57):
get to that right after this. So at the end,
right before the pyre, he starts saying, it was always you, Helen,

(01:37:20):
it was always you. How do you take that, because
that's what he says. He says, it was always you.
Do it was always you. What do you feel like
he meant by that?

Speaker 1 (01:37:33):
I don't know, because for such a simple statement, there's
so many ways that you could take it. If we
were to run with your theory that Helen's just totally
insane and Candy Man's always, you know, all in her
head that.

Speaker 2 (01:37:48):
Or possessed by this folkloric concept that I literally just
made up.

Speaker 1 (01:37:55):
But yeah, in that case, it could mean that it's
always her because it's just been inside her. If we
were to take Candy Man as being like an actual
real entity, then that could mean that, you know, maybe

(01:38:15):
the spirit of the woman that he fell in love
with in the eighteen hundreds has come back as Helen,
or they're in some way connected.

Speaker 2 (01:38:23):
Yeah. I feel like that's what most people go with
because it's a little bit more obvious. I'm not. That
doesn't mean it's bad, yeah, yeah, because it's more in
a romantic context, which there is a ton of romantic
context and subtext to Helen and Candy Man. So I
don't I don't want to make it sound like just
because it's like, well, that would be the easiest interpretation.
That doesn't mean it's wrong.

Speaker 1 (01:38:43):
No, it just makes yeah, one of many.

Speaker 2 (01:38:46):
So that's and I think that's what they were. If
there is meant to be multiple layers to this, then
they definitely wanted your first thought to be that he's
referring to them romantically, Yes, because it's very clear that
that there's a romantic pull of some sort.

Speaker 1 (01:39:01):
So yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:39:04):
That's something. Also, Yeah, I just think about it's always you, Helen.
I mean, could it literally be literal as in, it
was always you doing these things?

Speaker 1 (01:39:12):
You were you were the one killing yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:39:14):
Yeah, or that you know, this whole concept of the
folklore staying alive was always with you, Helen. Because I
do wonder if she had if she hadn't discovered the
Candy Man murderer guy and had just written her paper,
would Candy Man have ever shown himself to her, because
she would have helped to establish the legend lore. Yeah,

(01:39:38):
but instead she was going to potentially demystify the legend
and Candy Man can't have that. I don't know. I
don't know, or is there you know, or is it predetermined?
Is it predestination or something that I don't know. I mean,
that's where we're digging really to try and find something.
But that's kind of my thought. Yeah, yeah, is that

(01:40:00):
maybe there is some kind of of a folklore being
and all it wants to do is keep existing.

Speaker 1 (01:40:09):
I tend to go toward that theory just because that
seems to be especially when she initially meets Candy Man,
that seems to be his whole m o. His whole
goal is just he wants to use her to strike

(01:40:31):
fear back into the hearts of the residents of Cabrini
Green so that he can continue existing through their subconscious.

Speaker 2 (01:40:39):
Well, and that's only after she ends the tyranny of
the guy who was pretending to be him, Right, So,
I mean, I'm just saying so like he's he's a
there's a catalyst to why he's doing it too. It's
not like he just picked her because she's like chilling
doing stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:40:53):
No, he picked her because she's the one who ended
the legacy initially, Yeah, ended the fear exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:40:59):
Yeah, Candy Man likes the guy going around killing you know,
people with the hook, because it kept it kept the
idea of Candy Man alive.

Speaker 1 (01:41:06):
Yeah, and and again, like even if, even if the
legend of Candy Man like had been under the surface
at Cabrini Green, it is very clearly something that is
woven deep into the tapestry of their subconscious because again
there's a lot of the a lot of the graffiti

(01:41:27):
and stuff that we see all across Cabrini Green, it
references candy Man, it references sweets, It references you know, sweets.

Speaker 2 (01:41:36):
For the sweet So even which is a romantic gesture statement,
but it is.

Speaker 1 (01:41:41):
Yeah, there and and again when they were first investigating,
when Helen and Bernadette were first investigating Cobrina Green, and
they she crawls through the mural of Candy Man, and
she finds the offerings to Candy Man. Like again, the

(01:42:02):
residents have kept Candy Man alive through these stories and
through these gestures, through the different things that they do.

Speaker 2 (01:42:16):
Yeah, no, I would have to agree. And so here's
where I get really deep in the in the woods.
So when I was a boy watching this movie, and
I don't know, I might have even been eight or
nine years old when I first saw it on TV.
It might have been on HBO or something. I remember
watching it with my older sister one time, and when

(01:42:38):
Helen came out of the mirror at the end, my
childhood interpretation was that she became bloody Mary. That was
my childhood interpretation was she became bloody Mary. Now, obviously
when I watched it all, I'm like, well, she didn't,
I mean, because you had to say Helen, yeah, you know,
but she became bloody Mary. But that's where it gets

(01:42:58):
really interesting because I love the bloody Mary mythos because
no one can agree where it came from, and there
are so many options. Yeah, I mean, you know, there's
Elizabeth Bathory, which wasn't even named Mary. There there was
Mary Queen, I think it was Mary, Queen of Scott's
might have been one of them because she oh yeah yeah,

(01:43:19):
because she she ordered tons of death, tons of killings
with her armies and stuff. Also had like never been
in Scotland for real. That's a whole all other thing.
But and then Mary Worth, which is what a lot
of people like because Mary Worth was like a burned
as a witch. There's a lot of elements there. But

(01:43:39):
what's what's most interesting and something that made me curious
when I think about Candy Man as a piece of folklore,
is there are versions of the bloody Mary myth where
you summon her and she kills you or whatever. There
are versions where it's just saying bloody Mary, bloody Mary,
bloody Mary, and you you're dead meat, you know. But

(01:44:01):
there are also versions where the only way that anything
bad happens is if you antagonize Mary.

Speaker 1 (01:44:08):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:44:09):
So this is something that I mean, I know this stuff,
not even just from reading books, but from growing up
and loving these stupid sleepover stories and stuff like that.
So that's what makes me wonder because with Candy Man,
it's like he was murdered wrongfully over love, and now

(01:44:30):
when you say his name, he comes to mirror and
kills you. And they do expand in the sequels on
like why it's a mirror and stuff, but that's not
really important to this specific conversation. Mirrors have always been
considered like a spiritual portal. Yeah, yeah, and almost all
Anglo Saxon conjuring involved mirrors, yeah, tons of it. In fact,

(01:44:51):
that's something people have mentioned about this is that in
African American cultures, mirrors aren't a conjuring tool. Generally, they
have other things that come from their tip to Africa
and Catholicism. And depending on where how they got to
America in the first place, if they came through the
Caribbean verses, if they came through wherever. Okay, So that's
one to consider. So when you look at bloody Mary,

(01:45:15):
there is a there supposedly a more devious way to
call upon her that guarantees you a truly horrific death.
And I'll tell you about it right after this. So

(01:45:40):
when it comes to Bloody Mary number one, the name
bloody Mary is pejorative, so you are to an extent
insulting her by calling her bloody Mary. So I guess
in that way that could be what's pissing Candy Man
off as you're calling him the name that the people

(01:46:00):
who killed him called him. But when you dig deeper
into the Bloody Mary myth, one of the most chilling
ways to do it was to be alone in a
room with a mirror and instead of saying bloody Mary,
you say marry Worth, I killed your baby five times.

(01:46:22):
That was one of the versions that was going around
you'd say, Meryworth, I killed your baby, because the whole
thing is that Maryworth is angry because her baby was
taken from her. Oh and supposedly that would guarantee horrible death.
Because it should also be mentioned there are all kinds
of party games from the early nineteen hundreds where it's

(01:46:42):
like you look in a mirror and you'll see the
face of the man you're going to marry, and stuff
like that. Yeah, yeah, all kinds of things, all those
divination games. That's the exact term, Yeah, divination games. And meanwhile,
we have candy Man, which I kind of answered my
own questions. I realized, like, I guess candy Man's a pejorative,
so that's why he comes. When you say candy Man,
he cut you're pissing him off. But the bloody Mary thing,

(01:47:04):
Like I just remember when I first heard like Maryworth,
I killed your baby, I was like, holy shit, that
sounds like that sounds like how you get got, yeah,
by by a demon. So anyway, those are my my
basic thoughts about candy Man and stuff like that. And yeah,
and Helen could be you know, it could all be real,
or she could be truly insane in kind of doing

(01:47:26):
the bidding for whatever it is that is candy Man.
That could be as well. The story about the couple
in Indiana may have never happened. It was clearly a
my cousin knew a guy at the Burger king whose
you know, ex wife was best friends with the guy. Yeah,
that kind of thing. So that I don't know, and

(01:47:46):
I just know that I love the picture they painted
very efficiently in Candy Man. Because it's not a super
long movie. It's thick with mythos and atmosphere, and I
just think it's a really great addition to your Halloween lineup,
especially if you haven't watched it in a while, because
the visuals are stunning. The performances are truly excellent. Mmmmmm yeah,

(01:48:10):
what do you have to say, Well.

Speaker 1 (01:48:13):
It's a beautiful movie.

Speaker 2 (01:48:16):
Again.

Speaker 1 (01:48:16):
I love how gothic the shots are of the architecture,
even when they're in you know, this rundown tenement building
and everything's crumbling around them. The mural like the wall
with the mural of Candy Man with his mouth open
and this you know, big empty room. They filmed it

(01:48:37):
in such a way that it feels like the inside
of a cathedral. Yeah, like it it feels like there's
a reverence to it despite being run down and decrepit.
And the soundtrack is also very gothic. It's got, you know,
a lot of organs and stuff going on in it.
It's not at all what you would generally expect from

(01:49:00):
slasher film, which is very refreshing and very nice. It
makes Candy Man himself feel more classy as a movie villain. Yeah,
I could see that he's just got a lot of
class to him, which I really like, you know, whereas
you know, Freddy Krueger's kind of crass and gold and

(01:49:22):
you know, but it's it's a very fun dichotomy as
far as you know, movie villains go, especially considering because
Freddy Krueger and Candy Man both deal with the realm
of the subconscious. It's very interesting how they're both so

(01:49:42):
different but so similar. And I really do like the
the train of thought behind the fact that Candy Man
exists in our subconscious and that he gains his power
from us just believing in him, and again, very similar
to Freddy Krueger. But whereas you know, in Nightmare on

(01:50:06):
Elm Street, they're kind of able to stop believing him.
In believing in him and take away the power in
Candy Man. She just completely falls head over heels into
believing him and gives him all of the power, which
I think is very very interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:50:22):
And Candy Man being a seducer is is a relatively
unusual mentality for a for a slasher villain or a
horror movie villain, aside from like Pinhead. Yeah, and even Pinhead,
he's he's a seducer in a very unusual way because
he is saying like you're going to suffer forever and

(01:50:43):
all this shit. Yeah yeah, And Candy Man is seductive,
I mean without a doubt. I mean like when he
starts talking and she's like looking at him all hypnotized.
You know, it could very easily turn into an early
nineties Calvin Klein at Obsession by Calvin Klein. So you know,
I think it's uh, it's really carved its own niche.

(01:51:06):
I want to revisit the Candyman sequel remake from a
few years back, because I liked it fine when it
came out. I feel like it was missing a lot
of that artfulness that that really kind of made candy
the first candy Man click because it was a success
of the box I was called eight million dollars, made
twenty six million at the house. I was very successful.
People were crazy about it. It was it was huge on

(01:51:27):
home video, and Candyman was being spoken of with Freddy
and Jason almost immediately. So yeah, he was very well
taken to by horror movie audiences.

Speaker 1 (01:51:39):
That's good. That's good.

Speaker 2 (01:51:41):
So with all that being said, we're going to be
wrapping up October next week with one more film for
cutting Deep, and then we'll be back a couple times
in November, a couple times in December. But we're we're
going a little extra hard for October because why not
everything else I've gone extra hard on. But do you
want to do you want to tell everybody what next
week's movie is?

Speaker 1 (01:52:01):
Yeah, because you and I we had we had a
plan about how October was going to pan out, and
then as we were watching Candy Man, I think it
was right before we put it on, you turned and
you looked to me and you basically said, Hey, the
plan we had, let's change it. So I think now

(01:52:24):
we're going to be doing the Blair Witch Project.

Speaker 2 (01:52:28):
Yes, a movie that I think it's funny that it's
polarizing because I just find that movie scary. It is scary,
and I'm really excited because I bought God I'm a nerd,
I bought the import Australian Blu Ray I believe was
Australian that has the fully remastered and director approved version

(01:52:48):
and a fully remastered director approved original cut which was
a little bit longer the one they showed at film festivals. Oo,
so we'll have to decide which one we're going to
watch for it. But yeah, so make sure to check
out the Blair Witch Project before we come back next
Friday to help make sure your spooky season stays spooky.
But now, I guess all that's left to say is

(01:53:11):
thank you guys so much for joining us on another
episode of cutting Deep into Horror. I hope you enjoyed
talking or hearing us talk about Candyman as much as
we enjoyed watching it and recounting it to you. If
you enjoyed what you heard here, headweklyspooky dot com for
all your spooky needs all October long. We're doing a
show every day, so there's something to scare you at

(01:53:34):
Weekly Spooky. Just find it on your favorite podcasting app
and if you love what we're doing, head to Weeklyspooky
dot com slash join, where you can support us for
as little as one dollar a month, or head to
savorista dot com and buy yourself some coffee with a
promo code Weekly or Spooky geez I am tired at checkout, Rachel.
Anything you want to say before we get out of.

Speaker 1 (01:53:54):
Here, Ah, be careful of the bees.

Speaker 4 (01:53:59):
Okay, empty man

Speaker 1 (01:54:19):
H

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Cutting Deep into Horror | Candyman (1992): Exploring Urban Legends in the Spooky Season

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Cutting Deep into Horror | Candyman (1992): Exploring Urban Legends in the Spooky Season