A Scream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes

Year: 1997

Director: Robert Kurtzman

Cast: Tammy Lauren, Andrew Divoff, Robert Englund

Run Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

It's that time of year again, folks! Every October I begin a brand new deep dive into a franchise I've never covered on the blog before. Now, consider this fact: Sergio and I are now doing a lot of franchise marathons on our podcast Scream 101. So when I was picking out what series to do this year, I had to select one that was flat-out vetoed from being on the show, so the quality of these movies (which have in the past included infinite Amityville and Children of the Corn sequels) might be dropping precipitously. Pray for me. 

I hope against hope that I have struck a rich vein this year, because at the very least my favorite director Wes Craven is the producing entity that launched the franchise. I'm not saying I have any faith in the man's producing (he also made Dracula 2000, lest we forget), but at least his work is something I have a vast amount of context for and interest in. So. The Wishmaster quadrilogy. I guess we're doing this.

Here goes nothing!

Wishmaster tells the tale of an immortal djinn, so of course it starts off in a wildly misguided ancient Middle Eastern sequence. Nevertheless we learn that the titular master of wishes (Andrew Divoff) is not the babbling blue Robin Williams you've come to expect from genies in bottles. For one thing he's trapped in a gemstone. For another thing, he is a malevolent force of ancient pure evil, and if he grants three wishes to the person who releases him, he will break the veil between the human world and the djinn world, causing the apocalypse I guess. It's not super clear what the djinn would do to our world, but I'm pretty sure they're not just here for the sightseeing.

Oh, also the djinn is powerless unless somebody makes a wish, which he can then misinterpret to accomplish his desires. Upon which point he also steals their soul, which powers up the gemstone. There sure are a lot of rules for a movie about an evil genie. Anyway, jewel appraiser Alexandra Amberson (Tammy Lauren - who some people thought was too controversial to star in a horror movie about genies) releases the Djinn by... rubbing the gem on her shirt? Had nobody done this in millennia? He bursts from his gemstone prison, in the process killing her best friend/wannabe lover Josh (Tony Crane), then wanders around granting random people's wishes in a bunch of slasher setpieces before setting his sights back on her.

All while being dressed to the nines.

It is perhaps now I should mention that director Robert Kurtzman is much better known as one of the makeup effects gurus behind the KNB EFX group, a special effects company that has dominated the horror world from Elm Street 5 to Scream to The Walking Dead. As with most films directed by a special effects wizard, Wishmaster is packed to the grim with drippy, practical gore gags that still look phenomenal.

The two party scenes that bookend the film, in which all hell breaks loose during the Djinn's final bid for power, are pure, unfiltered movie mayhem. Glass shatters faces, skeletons burst out of their bodies and run around, creatures emerge from people's chests to devour other people, statues come to life and smash ancient weapons into skulls... It's chaotic, but an excellent built-in reel for KNB's next pitch meeting. 

These scenes (as well as most of the slasher setpieces that have no bearing on the actual plot) are going to be pure candy to any gorehound. Ditto the endless slew of cameos from horror icons like Robert Englund (given the meatiest role - thanks, Wes! - as a rich collector who orders the statue containing the Djinn's jewel), Kane Hodder (as a security guard, the role he was apparently born to play when not smothered in latex), Tony Todd (as a doorman, which is insulting), Angus Scrimm (as the narrator, which is perhaps less insulting because at least it's a cool trivia tidbit), Ted Raimi (as, guess what, a weaselly assistant), Reggie Bannister (as a pharmacist who gets "cancer" AKA boils that explode and kill him) and (for true devotees of cult film) George "Buck" Flower (as a bum, which he has extensive experience playing considering he's done it over 25 times since the early 80's).

Do you think he's just mad he's constantly forced to face off against people who played villains more famous than him?

And the detail in the Djinn design is something to behold. He's grotesquely organic, full of squishy parts that wiggle and move of their own accord (my favorite moment is when he's facing away from the camera and you can see a pulsing heartbeat in his back), counteracting the slight stiffness of his latex face with pure, realistic nightmare fuel.

Unfortunately, other than appealing to the basest lizard-brain instincts of the horror fan (the Where's Waldo of Horror game continues with an Easter egg Pazuzu statue in the background, etc. etc.), Wishmaster just doesn't quite have the juice to go anywhere. There's a little bit of fun to be had when the Djinn is in disguise trying and failing to trick Alexandra into making wishes, and Andrew Divoff has a blast chewing the scenery into tiny little splinters ("If you can't beat 'em, burn them... baby"), but their interactions are mostly dull as dishwater. When the film's budget briefly cools its heels late in the second act and they're required to match wits in some anonymous apartment, my interest wanes severely.

You see, there's almost nothing compelling about Alexandra as a protagonist. She's trapped in a bland Friendzone Love Story and does nothing but stumble ass backward into revelations about the Djinn despite having a convenient psychic link to him every time he makes a kill. This element is the most Wes Craven-y of a movie that quite openly suckles at the teat of Craven's filmography, and it is the most poorly handled. When a dude gets his jaw ripped off, I don't want to waste time cutting back to Tammy Lauren bulging her eyes, pursing her lips, and fainting left and right. All the interstitial bits between the horror scenes needed a punch-up or two or three before they hit the silver screen, because connective tissue isn't supposed to be tissue paper.

But there's a scene where a dude gets his jaw ripped all the way the fuck off, so who's complaining, you know?

TL;DR: Wishmaster is fun as far as turn-your-brain-off practical effects movies go, but it doesn't have too much to offer beyond its baseline pleasures.

Rating: 6/10
Word Count: 1131
Reviews In This Series
Wishmaster (Kurtzman, 1997)
Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies (Sholder, 1999)
Wishmaster 3: Beyond the Gates of Hell (Angel, 2001)
Wishmaster 4: The Prophecy Fulfilled (Angel, 2002)

Scream Park

Year: 2018

Director: Gregory Plotkin

Cast: Bex Taylor-Klaus, Reign Edwards, Amy Forsyth

Run Time: 1 hour 29 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

You can listen to our podcast review of this film on Scream 101 right here.

TL;DR: Hell Fest is a pretty stripped-down slasher with a surprising nasty streak.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 67

Candy Crush

Year: 1999

Director: Turi Meyer

Cast: Tony Todd, Donna D'Errico, Nick Corri

Run Time: 1 hour 33 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Friday the 13th was a crappy slasher film that captured a zeitgeist and spawned nine sequels, a crossover, a remake, a television series, a video game, and several literary and comic book adaptations. The Howling was a crappy werewolf movie that launched a franchise of eight films as well as three novelizations. Candyman was a terrifically scary, intelligent modern slasher update that incorporated elements of urban legend with the real-life terror of failed urban project Cabrini-Green that got two sequels and bupkis. Art is dead.

But hey! At least that means that this one was an easy marathon. Sergio and I recently finished up Candyman 3: Day of the Dead, and let me just say that this trilogy was an interesting ride. Obviously the sequel, the muddled Candyman 2: Farewell to the Flesh was not going to be quite as good, but I was unprepared for how much more entertaining the final, direct-to-video sequel was going to be. 

Now obviously, Day of the Dead has some budget issues. And in terms of production quality and acting talent, it's a real step down. But the story is so comparatively polished and coherent that it's far more enjoyable. It's like the difference between a Broadway production of Shrek: The Musical and a kindergarten performance of Little Shop of Horrors. Sure, one has more professional talent on the stage, but which will you enjoy more?

No ironic answers. I know who you are.

Day of the Dead follows more clearly in the footsteps of the first film ("Be my victim"; murdering all of someone's reasons to live; etc.), though it caps off storylines left open-ended in the second (Annie Tarrant's survival and pregnancy), which kind of makes it the perfect sequel. It's the little things that bring me joy. Anyway, this film focuses on the daughter of the last film's survivor, all growed up - which, according to my calculations makes this film set sometime in late 2016. I wonder what force propels us to return to some of those repulsive 90's fashions. Retro will be the death of us all.

Anyway, this woman's name is Caroline McKeever (Baywatch's Donna D'Errico, the actress a porn parody company would have on speed dial if they needed to throw together a "Heather Locklear" in a pinch) and she is the last surviving descendent of Daniel Robitaille (Tony Todd), whose lynching after falling in love with a white woman led to his resurrection as the Candyman, a mythical killer who appears after you say his name five times into a mirror. 

She just wants the world to appreciate him for what he was in life - a talented painter with a passionate soul - but her art curator friend Miguel (Mark Adair-Rios) uses his twisted reputation as a gimmick to get warm bodies in his gallery. Unfortunately, warm bodies are all Candyman needs. After Miguel peer pressures Caroline into invoking Candyman in the mirror, he and a ladyfriend die. And the only suspect is his friend David de la Paz (Nick Corri of A Nightmare on Elm Street), who Caroline ropes into helping her investigate the murders and the robbery of Candyman's gallery.

Pursued by the Candyman on one end and the topically racist cop Sam Kraft (Wade Williams) - who wants to pin the murders on David - on the other, they embark upon a deadly adventure through the streets of Los Angeles during the annual Day of the Dead celebrations.

Which, thanks to the budget, largely consist of colorful streamers and imagination.

You may have picked up on a preponderance of Latino names and themes in the previous description. And to that I say, you are a remarkably astute individual. Thank you for being a discerning human being and reading my blog. Yes, this film takes place largely in the Latino districts of East L.A. and treats the culture with remarkable respect for a direct-to-video horror film written by the guys behind The Vampire Diaries. Although the Day of the Dead is more poorly integrated with the film proper than Part 2's Mardi Gras celebrations, it provides a vibrant backdrop for a story much more concerned with the hardships and trials of urban life than one could have reasonably expected, considering its pedigree.

Now, I don't want to sound like I'm touting Candyman 3 as a masterwork of unadulterated genius, because it's adamantly not. But the ways in which it is not a piece of crap astound the mind of this jaded reviewer, despite the myriad of crappy elements clogging up the wings. Even the best DTV affair is still going to be a stunted and withered little thing, but this one is easier to pity and get along with.

Sure, D'Errico's sub-porn acting is so thorough that she even fails to convincingly smoke a cigarette. Sure, the film is keyed far more towards exploitation: nearly every female actress doffs her top, including the one playing the dead mom, and we're treated to a flashback sex scene with the killer because Tony Todd is co-producer on this one and he wanted to see some boobs, damn it. The faux-Philip Glass score with the peculiar Ren Fair flute, the swarm of bees that look like they were animated on Flash, the cops that wear normal civilian clothes and drive normal civilian cars but have jackets that say "POLICE," and a dream sequence featuring the famous L.A. Underground (for those of who aren't regional, this is not a thing) are not what we in the know call quality filmmaking. 

But the crappy elements give the film a three-legged dog type appeal. Sure, it's not the best at its job, but you can tell it's trying and you love it for that.

Sometimes trying too hard, but you've gotta love it for that too.

Plus there's no peyote-fueled Mardi Gras radio narrator in sight, so that's automatically a step up from its forefather. Everything else is merely window dressing. But when that window dressing is as solidly politically-minded (white cops vs. urban neighborhoods - not exactly a closed book in 2014), dedicated (I never thought I'd see a two-parts-later sequel actually pick up on a main thematic through line of the original), and handsome (Nick Corri) as Candyman 3's, it's a good time for everyone.

And though its tension is mostly anemic, there are some decent scare sequences, especially a moment involving a cracked egg (not nonsense, actually - eggs are very significant in spiritual rituals) and some surprisingly wet gore sequences. To be fair, bee horror hits me the hardest, suffering as I do from documented apiphobia, but the film is halfway decent enough that I'm not embarrassed to admit being affected by it.

All in all, Candyman 3: Day of the Dead is never going to be first pick on movie night. It's not the film you'll want on your cinematic kickball team if you're the captain. But as a Candyman fan, it's a real treat to have a sequel that isn't a disorganized, barely connected wisp. Check it out if you're so inclined.

TL;DR: Candyman 3: Day of the Dead is far better than it has any right to be, but as a direct-to-video sequel to a slasher sequel, it's not that great to begin with.

Rating: 5/10

Body Count: 10; not counting Candyman because even though there's not a fourth film, we can't just go ahead and assume that the killer is gone for good.

1. Miguel is hooked in the back.
2. Lina is suffocated by bees.
3. Annie Tarrant slits her own throat in the tub.
4. Tamara is hooked in the gut.
5. L. V. is hooked in the throat.
6. Goth Leader has the chain ripped from his lip and is hacked to death.
7. Goth Gang Member #1,
8. Goth Gang Member #2,
9. and Goth Gang Member #3 are hacked to death with a hook offscreen.
10. Sam Kraft is shot to death.

Word Count: 1334
Reviews In This Series
Candyman (Rose, 1992)
Candyman 2: Farewell to the Flesh (Condon, 1995)
Candyman 3: Day of the Dead (Meyer, 1999)

He's A One Stop Shop, Makes My Pulse Drop

Year: 1995

Director: Bill Condon

Cast: Tony Todd, Kelly Rowan, William O'Leary

Run Time: 1 hour 33 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

There's perhaps no greater indictment of the "90's horror is pure trash" school of thought than 1992's Candyman, an intense urban gothic legend that seamlessly blends Clive Barker's signature sense of the macabre with the real world dereliction of Chicago's Cabrini-Green projects. On the flip side, there is perhaps no greater example of the despicable crumminess that permeated that decade than its followup, Candyman 2: Farewell to the Flesh, which isn't actively bad, but merely reaches a pinnacle of apathy, turning one of the most unique horror properties of the decade into a bog-standard bit of supernatural hack and slash.

Candyman 2 certainly isn't as much of a waste of time as, say Saw III, its companion for my Halloween movie marathon, and it's not even a terribly dreadful film by any stretch of the imagination. It's just such a step down in quality from the almost impermeable original that it can't escape the shadow cast by that horror monolith.

And it's quite a shadow.

In this film, Candyman (Tony Todd) forgoes his old stomping grounds for another territory: New Orleans. The newest victim of his deadly seduction (although he is neither quite so deadly nor as seductive this time around) is Annie Tarrant (Kelly Rowan), a schoolteacher who works with inner city youth and, in an attempt to decry the old urban legend, speaks Candyman's name five times into the mirror, inadvertently summoning him to wreak havoc on her and her family.

Her brother Ethan (William O'Leary) has recently been arrested and wrongly accused of Candyman's first kill - a pompous professor with more ponytail than common sense. And her mother Octavia (Veronica Cartwright, who - of all things - played the little girl in The Birds) is suffering from nonspecific cancer and old age despite looking not a day over ten years Kelly Rowan's senior. Hollywood is a weird place. Annie's father was killed many years ago in a murder suspiciously close to Candyman's MO and his return prompts Annie to investigate further into the myth and its roots in the city.

In the process she finds out that she should have just rented a DVD of Candyman, because pretty much the same thing happens, but with more baldly telegraphed jump scares. I swear, a body can't open a closet or stare out a window in this world without a hand slowly reaching for them or a mysterious figure appearing in the distance.

It's like living in Quentin Tarantino's guest house.

The film's best decision was to set Candyman's psychological torment against the backdrop of the New Orleans Mardi Gras celebrations, which automatically provide a depraved, jangling environment for the horror to take place. It's no match for the original's waking nightmare of Cabrini-Green, but the atmosphere is there. Heck, that carnival even made moments of The Last Exorcism Part II look good, and if that dog wasn't dead on arrival, then I will hang up my blogger's sash and retire from the business forever.

This ambience is vital because it does much to paint over the film's bargain basement production values. This isn't necessarily a slight (I've seen films that are metric tons more soul-crushing than this), but the blood looks a little stagey and the interior design lacks oomph. The locations are like porn sets - just furnished enough to maintain realism but too sparse to entirely separate you from the fiction.

Farewell to the Flesh's best element - the return of Phillip Glass's marvelous score - doesn't help much with hiding this fact. The lush orchestral arrangements contrast with the film's overall aesthetic and highlight just how insidiously plain the entire affair ends up being. Again, this is an average film rather than a bad one, but the music provides a earthquake of pomp and circumstance that cracks open the bitter divide in quality between this film and the first.

An actual photo of the studio heads getting Tony Todd to sign his contract for two sequels.

Besides the Mardi Gras festivities, the best contribution the film has to offer to the Candyman canon is a healthy dose of weirdness, which never seems to receive as much credit for saving average films as it should. The sheer strangeness of some moments (including the implacably persistent narration by a sassy Cajun DJ - Champion Dialogue: "My belly is a mountain of love stuffed with oysters.") offsets most of the film's rough patches with delectable goofy charm.

Whether it's a prostitute dressed like Cleopatra licking snow cone syrup off the arm of a Hawaiian ice vendor/voodoo king, an underprivileged kid being told to go get help and returning with a gaggle of more underprivileged kids instead of the cops, or a Candyman survivor hanging a mirror above her child's bed, Farewell to the Flesh is full of truly bonkers decision-making, one of my personal favorite elements a film can have.

The acting is all-around wobbly, but results in some terrific bad-good moments (the frightened mountain lion yowl that erupts from Rowan's throat is unforgettable), and the half-hearted stabs at some sort of discourse on class disparity are at least commendable for trying to achieve anything beyond the surface level. All in all, Candyman 2: Farewell to the Flesh (Which, now that I think about it, should definitely have been called Farewell 2 the Flesh. This was the 90's, it should have been a moral obligation) isn't a total waste of time, but is only recommendable to fans of the original.

TL;DR: Candyman 2: Farewell to the Flesh is a watered down copy of the original, but is just strange enough to make a name for itself.

Rating: 4/10

Body Count: 7

1. Phillip Purcell is stabbed with a hook in a bathroom.
2. Paul is hooked and split up the abdomen.
3. Mr. Tarrant is hooked in a flashback.
4. Honore Thibideaux is attacked by bees.
5. Detective Ray is hooked in the interrogation room.
6. Ethan is shot by the police.
7. Octavia is hooked through the back.Word Count: 1012

Reviews In This Series

Candyman (Rose, 1992)
Candyman 2: Farewell to the Flesh (Condon, 1995)
Candyman 3: Day of the Dead (Meyer, 1999)

He Mixes It With Love And Makes The World Taste Blood

Year: 1992

Director: Bernard Rose

Cast: Virginia Madsen, Xander Berkeley, Tony Todd

Run Time: 1 hour 39 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

You can't stop people from complaining. For many, it's what they do best. And I may not be excluded from that list. A quick comparison of my negative reviews and my positive reviews won't do much to dissuade that line of thinking.

It's easy to not like something. It's much more of a challenge to praise something in a humorous way than to put it down. So I understand the flak the horror genre in the 90's tends to get, especially considering that Leprechaun, Uncle Sam, and Jack Frost present themselves so prominently, low-hanging fruit ripe for the picking. But this is the decade of Scream, of Army of Darkness, Wes Craven's New Nightmare, and The Sixth Sense.

We may want to forget about the denim outfits, but it does us no good to ignore the vast array of important contributions to the genre that wedged themselves in among the muck. Just like any other decade of horror filmmaking (and popular culture in general), there will be good, there will be bad, there will be godawful. We're only humans.

I'm getting to a point here, I promise. What I'm saying, in a nutshell, is that any decade capable of producing a grim-faced and sophisticated psychological horror film like Candyman - our topic for today - can by no legitimate means be considered a bust.

Even if some of the more horrifying elements include how dated the technology is.

Candyman, adapted by Bernard Rose from a story by Clive Barker, is a tale about urban legends. Specifically, the story of Candyman - a hook-handed murderer that haunts the imaginations of the residents of Chicago's notorious failed urban housing project, Cabrini-Green. Rumor has it that if you say his name five times into a mirror, Candyman will appear and gut you like a fish. They say that he is the ghost of a slave's son, killed by a lynch mob after impregnating a white woman. Over the years, he has become a local boogeyman, a way to scare children away from the crime-filled outdoors.

He captivated the minds of many with his unique calling cards, as well as the fact that he died covered in a swarm of bees (bees - great for eerie effect, terrible for the bee-phobic blogger). For this reason he is the subject of grad student Helen's (Virginia Madsen) thesis. She and her partner Bernadette (Kasi Lemmons) have decided to study the story of the Candyman and how it's connected to a recent hook-related murder in Cabrini-Green.

When her skepticism washes over the residents of the projects, including young mother Anne-Marie McCoy (Vanessa Williams) and helpful little boy Jake (DeJuan Guy), Helen is visited by Candyman (Tony Todd) himself and thus begins a dark seduction. You see, he needs her help. Without the belief of his "congregation" and his constant presence in their thoughts and nightmares, Candyman loses his power. He's like a homicidal Tinker Bell.

As Helen gets blamed for a string of murders that ensue, endangering her friends and her husband Trevor (Xander Berkeley), she must fight the tantalizing call of becoming Candyman's next victim and living for eternity as the next great urban legend.

It's either that or lung cancer - I swear I got secondhand smoke from how often the characters lit up.

That's the magic of Clive Barker. No villain is a villain and no hero is a hero. Everyone is merely human - fueled by the battle between desire and morality, caught up in a sick, deadly, macabrely sexual game of cat and mouse, much like the writer's self-directed magnum opus, Hellraiser. Although his translation through director Bernard Rose makes the intimate details of the plot a little tough to follow the first time through, Candyman is so wholly and vividly experiential that is blares through you like a cannon blast just the same.

Among the many filmic elements battling for supremacy in the film, perhaps the most powerful is the setting itself - the projects are a bleak labyrinth of graffiti and exposed cinder block, virtually crushing the inhabitants with its sheer weight. Although it's so over-the-top it almost seems like the work of an overzealous production designer taking the idea of urban decay and running a marathon with it, Cabrini-Green is one hundred percent real. The tactile and bone-chilling awfulness of the projects seeps into your bones, providing a skin-crawling display of human degradation before the horror story even begins in earnest.

This is a location so dismal that the filmmakers had to get special permission from the gangleaders to shoot the movie there - in exchange for featuring them as extras, another alarming touch of realism. The building is far more wicked and soaked in bad energy than any mere film set could possibly achieve, and the fact that the people behind and in front of the camera barely made it out alive is palpable in the tension onscreen.

"The next film I do is taking place in a Marriott or I'm retiring." - Literally Everyone

So, besides the location, what else is good in the film? The answer: Pretty much everything. The score by Philip Glass is a gothic masterpiece of mood-setting (and knowing when to stop and let the imagery speak for itself). The acting (even from the children) is incomparably sophisticated for a film of this mint, and although I've never been a huge fan of Tony Todd as a physical performer, his voice can reverberate through your very soul. And the imagery evoked from nearly every frame is stunning.

Through the many aerial shots (intercut with Candyman's narration over a frame-filling swarm of bees), we can see that the city is laid out like a honeycomb, with the cars and people buzzing through it like drones. 

No funny caption here. Just appreciate the majesty.

Compound this with the subtly hexagonal lighting and the constant presence of buzzing bees and Chicago becomes one massive hive of activity. Hives are what destroyed Candyman (the literal bees) and hives are what brought him back (the drones buzzing around Cabrini-Green). Their oppressive presence in the film's visual schema locks Helen into her place in society until she is given a chance to break free, mirroring Candyman's escape from the cruel bonds of a world that viewed him as a monster.

As the people around Helen slowly start to perceive her the same way, the imagery becomes more and more focused and relevant.

And... alarming.

In addition to a heaping helping of actual symbolism, Candyman achieves the impossible - slasher death sequences that are actually scary. Because the focus is on the people being killed rather than how they are being killed, these scenes achieve a visceral impact largely with sound design and implication and approximately a cement mixer-full of Karo syrup. The deaths themselves aren't particularly gory but the aftermath will blow you away.

I'm getting close to signing off here, so I won't bore you with the (not so) gory details, but this is the one slasher movie in months that has made me and Sergio watch over our shoulders on the walk home. And that doesn't count for nothing.

I'm reluctant to give it as high a rating as this review would imply, if only because the intellectualism can get so dense at points that it obscures the movie (this renders the film not entirely scary in the moment - but after it's over the terror seeps down your spine like a sinister snake). But Candyman is a darn rewarding flick, straight from the supposed cinematic detritus of 1992. So there.

TL;DR: Candyman is a terrific, eerie, and intellectual slasher film.

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 1288

Reviews In This Series

Candyman (Rose, 1992)

Candyman 2: Farewell to the Flesh (Condon, 1995)

Candyman 3: Day of the Dead (Meyer, 1999)