Apparently it’s not actually true that Tony Todd negotiated a fee of an additional $1000 every time he got stung by a bee in that scene, which would’ve netted him another $25k or so, but he would’ve deserved it if he had done. Candyman stems from a Clive Barker story I haven’t read (haven’t yet got to the second half of Books of Blood), but despite that I did wonder a few times while watching the film if it wouldn’t be better as a short story than as a film… though you would’ve missed out on Todd’s amazing voice if it hadn’t been made into a film, so. As I said a few posts ago, I’m limiting myself to first-time watches this month, and I’m also trying to knock a few “big” titles off the watchlist too… you know, ones that most people into horror who aren’t me have already seen years ago and I’m preposterously late to… and I watched Candyman tonight cos I was under the impression it was one of the more major gaps in my horror knowledge. Was it, though? I liked it, but I think I was hoping for more from it. Candyman struck me as a film with evident aspirations to be something other than just your regular slasher; this old Slant review describes the titular evil as “a svelte, sexual monument, far removed from the silent brutality of your average serial slasher”, and that’s certainly fair and accurate, plus a lot of violence is actually left offscreen with a lot of the worst stuff just being verbally described. But I felt like I wanted more from it than I got, and I definitely could’ve done with more actual Candyman; Tony Todd is great and his voice (even if electronically massaged) is great, and the character is really interesting, I like the whole idea of him manifesting because his “congregation” stops believing in him and he wants his legend to continue, but there wasn’t enough of him. It’s good, and at times it’s really good. There were just things that didn’t really work for me that stopped it being great.
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