Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.0

Candyman Blu-ray Movie Review

What's the matter with Helen?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 15, 2019

One of the supplements included in this two disc release from Shout! Factory’s Scream Factory imprint features various talking heads discussing so- called “urban legends”, but Candyman probably owes its genesis more squarely to the fertile imagination of Clive Barker rather than to any supposed folkloristic aspects. Barker’s story “The Forbidden” was adapted into this film (as is also discussed in some of the supplements accompanying this set), and once again Barker’s sinister take on menacing spirits finds an apt personification (monster-ication?) in Candyman (Tony Todd), the malevolent spirit of a one armed descendant of slaves whose life was marred by tragedy, and who seems intent, spectrally at least, to continue wreaking havoc on anyone who dares to repeat his name five times into a mirror. One such hapless répétiteur (sorry) is graduate student Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen), who is drawn to the supposed urban legend of Candyman and who begins investigating some suspicious murders in the infamous Cabrini Green housing projects. Kind of half jokingly, half seriously, Helen summons Candyman, initially thinking it's all just a silly story, until of course Candyman shows up and Helen finds herself committed to an insane asylum after a grisly murder or two.

What’s kind of interesting about Candyman is how it flirts with aspects of social justice while also delivering some more “straight ahead” horror offerings of gore and mayhem. The film also traffics in the same kind of damsel in distress surrounded by disbelievers aspect that has been a staple of horror since time immemorial, only here due to Helen’s predicament, there’s almost a tinge of things like Shock Corridor or even Frances in terms of the mental hospital element. And in fact it’s in this very fact that Candyman tries to combine radically different facets that some may feel it can wander a bit, especially once a reveal is made that Candyman and Helen’s “meet cute” (if you want to call it that) may not have been the first time the two were together, so to speak.

Still, Candyman is often a really arresting experience, one that takes everything from slavery to bees and manages to meld things together into a generally satisfying, and often quite unsettling, whole. It’s also interesting to see this film as a real standout for Tony Todd, whose portrayal is both “racially” distinctive (there aren’t that many African American horror title characters that I can personally think of right off the bat other than arguably campy outings like Blacula / Scream Blacula Scream), as well as nicely balanced between menace and an ability to evoke a certain amount of sympathy in the audience.

Candyman Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Candyman is presented in two versions (more about that in a moment) courtesy of Scream Factory, an imprint of Shout! Factory, with AVC encoded 1080p transfers in 1.85:1. These new 2K restorations off of 4K scans of the original camera negatives had significant involvement and ultimate approval by director Bernard Rose and cinematographer Anthony B. Richmond, which may help to allay some fans' fears of rather noticeable "changes" in some grading decisions here, though as one of the commentaries gets into, these supposed "changes" are actually only changes when compared to incorrect gradings on previous home video releases. The entire palette looks at least slightly cooler to me across the board than on some previous home video releases, but things still pop extremely well, with some of the bold primaries, especially blues and reds, looking extremely vivid a lot of the time. Detail levels are generally very good, and in several close-ups, excellent, but there are certain understandable diminutions in detail, and especially fine detail, levels due to the film's old style compositing for some special effects, as well as several dissolves. While grain resolves naturally for the most part, some may find compression here intermittently improvable, as there is a tendency for a slight yellowish, chunky, quality to intrude, even divorced from such exacerbating aspects as low light or opticals (you can see the splotchiness quite easily in a number of screenshots accompanying this review). Arrow UK has also released this in their own version, assumedly from the same master, though they haven't yet sent me a screener and so I can't authoritatively comment on any differences between the two versions.

In terms of the two versions, those perusing the special features below, where I list the timings of the two versions, will notice they bear the exact same running times, certainly an oddity in the world of "Theatrical Cuts" vs. "Director's Cuts". As one of the film's fans has discovered and mentioned in the Forum thread about the film, the Director's Cut includes approximately 10 frames of material that the Theatrical Cut does not, but the Director's Cut eliminates 10 frames from the closing post-credits leader, so the timings line up. The inserts in the Unrated Director's Cut are designated as being culled "a rare print" and are listed as "HD", though I'm not sure that actually refers to the source, as there's definitely a momentary downgrade in clarity. (I tried to get a decent screenshot of one snippet, but it includes fast motion, and everything just looked blurry despite several tries.)

Candyman Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Candyman offers DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and 2.0 mixes on both cuts of the film, and you can't really go wrong either way, though the surround mix definitely opens up what is one of the film's more intriguing contributions, a rather interesting score by Philip Glass. I hadn't seen Candyman in ages when I revisited it for this review, and while there is certainly low end on the surround track, I was kind of surprised by the relative lack of jump cuts with startle LFE. That said, surround activity is often nicely pronounced in some of the urban environments, and some of the ambient presence in scenes like the first "real" meeting between Candyman and Helen are realistic and immersive. Dialogue is always rendered cleanly and clearly and there are no problems of any kind to report.

Candyman Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Disc One

• Theatrical Cut (1080p; 1:39:18)


• Sweets to the Sweet: The Candyman Mythos (1080i; 23:49) is a well down overview with some good interviews discussing things like urban legends.


• Clive Barker: Raising Hell (1080i; 10:46) features some award ceremony footage from 2003 along with an interview with Barker.


• The Heart of Candyman (1080p; 7:07) features Tony Todd discussing the love story angle of the film.


• Bernard Rose's Storyboards (1080i; 5:22)


• Theatrical Trailer (1080i; 2:05)


• TV Spots (1080i; 1:36)


• Stills Gallery (1080p; 5:19) starts with a brief screen offering instructions on how to Manually Advance (and/or Reverse), but this gallery is actually authored to auto advance, so do have your remotes handy one way or the other, since you'll need to press Pause if you want to linger on any given image.


• Original Script is available as a BD-ROM feature.


• Commentaries can be found under the Setup Menu (the use of a light gray font against a white background may make these a bit hard to make out for some):

  Commentary with Writer-Director Bernard Rose and Actor Tony Todd

  
  

  Commentary with Stephen Jones and Kim Newman

  
  

  Commentary with Director Bernard Rose, Author Clive Barker, Producer Alan Poul, and Actors Tony Todd, Virginia Madsen and Kasi Lemmons

  
  

  Commentary with Director Bernard Rose Moderated by The Movie Crypt's Adam Green and Joe Lynch

Disc Two

• Unrated Director's Cut (1080p; 1:39:18)


• Be My Victim (1080p; 9:47) is an interview with Tony Todd.


• It Was Always You: Helen (1080p; 13:11) is an interview with Virginia Madsen.


• The Writing on the Wall: The Production Design of Candyman (1080p; 6:22) is an interview with Jane Ann Stewart.


• Forbidden Flesh: The Makeup FX of Candyman (1080p; 8:02) features an interview with Special Makeup Effects Artists Bob Keen, Gary J. Tunnicliffe and Mark Coulier.


• A Story to Tell: Clive Barker's "The Forbidden" (1080p; 18:39) features critic Douglas E. Winter discussing Barker's impact on the horror genre.


• Urban Legend: Unwrapping Candyman (1080p; 20:41) features Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes getting into some of the folkore aspects of the story.


• Reflections in the Mirror with Kasi Lemmons (1080p; 9:48) is an interview with the actress.


• A Kid in Candyman with De Juan Guy (1080p; 13:36) is an interview with the now all grown up actor.

Candyman Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Candyman is perhaps not as downright scary as you may remember it as being (at least it wasn't for me this time around), but it's often viscerally upsetting from a number of standpoints, including Candyman's back story and what ends up happening to Helen. Shout! is offering a nicely put together set that offers two (almost identical) cuts of the film along with some very enjoyable supplements, with generally top flight technical merits. Recommended .