HELLBOY & CANDYMAN

Twenty-minutes into 2019’s reboot of HELLBOY, I suddenly realized I’m one month away from my birthday. When I was 15-years old, I could sit and watch ANYTHING. Good, bad, ugly, I’d wade through it trying to figure out why it worked and why it didn’t. When you’re that age, time means nothing. A person could even spend whole afternoons watching drivel like SHE’S THE SHERIFF and SMALL WONDER without feeling guilty.

Now I’m staring down some serious digits with too much work on my plate, books I’m half-way through, kids’ homework to go over, dinners to be made and epic sonnets to write about my wife. Bluntly put, NOTHING in HELLBOY 2019’s twenty-minutes convinced me the next hour-and-forty minutes would enrich the final minutes, hours, days and months of the downward spiral between now and the grave. In fact, I envisioned myself on my death bed not telling my wife and children I loved them, but to question why I even attempted to watch something this bland, lifeless and trite from a director who hasn’t done anything really decent since THE DESCENT. 

Who knows. It could’ve really shaped up in minute 21. If anyone out there made it past my goal-line, let me know.

Instead, I put on CANDYMAN, a movie no one I know actually likes, but I adore with the same passion as THE SHINING and A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. I purchased the 4K Blu Ray a few months ago and have been waiting for the Halloween season to put it on. I’ve seen this thing well over a dozen times, and I still get hypnotized watching it. The Philip Glass score, the cinematography of Anthony B. Richmond, the deft acting of Virginia Madison. 

CANDYMAN is a horror film for adults. It explores race and class in America. It philosophically questions what happens when a god loses his power from lost faith. I honestly believe it’s the best horror film of the 1990s. Its power is evident in its reputation: ELM STREET, HALLOWEEN, and SAW have had 9 films in their franchises, FRIDAY THE 13TH has 12. Chucky comes in at 8, and even Norman Bates had five PSYCHO titles to his name. But CANDYMAN had two sequels (both I’ve never even seen) — and he’s still on the scorecard for the best-known movie maniacs. It’s not the size of the wave; it’s the motion of the ocean.

The interwebs tell me Jordan Peele is writing a follow-up/reboot/whatever to be released next year. I like Peele better as a director than a writer, so I’m not exactly tripping the light fantastic over here, but I also read Tony Todd is set to return, so that eases the news somehow. 

I guess good, bad or ugly, it shouldn’t really matter to me. The original’s still on my shelf, ready to be played at a moment’s notice. Especially if I have to choose between it and cinematic slop.