Candyman, the 1992 film adapted by Bernard Rose from Clive Barker’s short story, “The Forbidden,” is perhaps one of the most underrated satirical horror films of the 1990s. Boasting crisp cinematography from Anthony B. Richmond, a haunting quasi-Koyaanisqatsi music score from Philip Glass (with Koyaanisqatsi-like aerial shots of Chicago housing projects reminding one of Pruitt-Igoe), and precise and intelligent direction from Rose, Candyman not only evolves Barker’s vicious take on white academic efforts to understand London slums, but dares to suggest that privileged efforts to understand life in the housing projects are indelibly linked to a more disturbing primordial journey that involves whether or not you’re willing to believe in an urban legend. Plunge into the unwashed lives if you dare. You will find yourself not only confronting the unexpected consequences of your empathy, but the hidden human costs of your interventions. I don’t think it’s an accident that Chicago is such an apposite location for Barker’s transplanted tale. Much as John Cusack and company effortlessly transplanted Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity to the Second City, Chicago, perhaps more than any other American city, evokes a misunderstood sector of society in a manner that is almost seamless.
And yet Candyman has escaped the kind of retrospective accolades one would assume that a complex film of its type would garner. It is not discussed with the same reverential susurrations that the knee-jerk film geek applies to Dario Argento, which is particularly surprising, given that this film is about as close to giallo as mainstream American film is likely to come. This was a film that Rose somehow managed to sneak through the studio system. The film’s racial subtext is unthinkable by today’s play-it-safe standards. Virginia Madsen’s academic colleague is African-American, but lighter-skinned than the residents in the housing project that Madsen’s character investigates. So is the kindly detective looking into the case, who turns hostile as events develop. It takes an assault on a white woman to get people investigating the grisly murders near the housing project. There are mirrors that likewise connote this double standard: a mirror is unsettled in Madsen’s apartment, but a gaping hole in a housing project’s bathroom permits Madsen to climb through a crevice into another graffiti-laden apartment. And it takes Madsen talking with African-American janitors to begin her investigations into the Candyman mystery. When Madsen is asked to remove her clothing by a by-the-book police officer, one is instantly reminded of Alex’s dressing down in A Clockwork Orange (a scene, incidentally, written by Kubrick that wasn’t in Anthony Burgess’s novel). And the film’s bitter finale is a wonderfully skeptical pisstake on how female martyrdom stacks up against upward mobility and class disparities. There is also something within Rose’s many false shock moments as Madsen probes further, as if to suggest that investigating beyond your class unfurls an entrenched fear.
It’s a shame that this highly revealing film has been forgotten, and it’s particularly egregious that there remains little room for a thinking horror film along these lines within today’s studio system.
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (
Thanks for your thoughts, Patrick Bateman.
That’s a sweet clip. I think I need to see this film.