CANDYMAN, with Virginia Madsen, Tony Todd and Xander Berkeley. Directed by Bernard Rose. Category III. At Mongkok Broadway, Tsuen Wan Broadway, and UA Whampoa.
A SUPERIOR slasher starring Virginia Madsen (and based on a story by Clive Barker), Candyman treads the interesting terrain of urban mythology - the kind of grisly horror stories passed orally around the world and down the generations via playground whispers and bar-room banter.
Still, it's also working in more mundane territory familiar to all of us from the Nightmare on Elm Street series through to Stephen King's It, and director Rose's main deviations from the norm lie in stripping his film of any hint of camp, tension-breaking humour and paring down the visual effects trickery to a minimum. His approach is to go straight for gut and twist, as does Candyman himself - never bothering to play silly games with his victims before ripping into them with a right hook well below the belt.
He could have handled the subject even more seriously and perhaps made a more seriously scary movie for it, but then it wouldn't have been the kind of popular Saturday night entertainment it is.
Rose, best known for his television and music video work, makes his US film debut here, posted to glamour-free Chicago for the job, where on a poor black housing project a bloody murder triggers whispers among the residents that Candyman is back.
Legend has it that if you speak his name five times before a mirror he is summoned, and cannot return to the dark side until he has claimed a trophy. Local journalist Helen Lyle (Madsen) is intrigued, but naturally sceptical, when she finds that the Candyman myth has been circulating for a century, and investigates.