Cutting Deep Into Horror | Candyman (1992): Urban Legend, Race and Gothic Tragedy

0:00 Rachel, Rachel, who is that? I'm going to cut you from your croy to your gulet. That doesn't that's not that's not nice. Why why would you do that? Oh no, no, it's it's the motto of my bee far. That's a very different motto for a bee farm. Well do you have to differentiate? Differentiate yourself? I just learned that word. So why are you why? A bunch of them are. No, no, no, they're all over me. Don't get them off.

0:43 It's okay. Just let them into your mouth. That's all they want in mouth. You just want into your mouth. No, you don't want them to want into anywhere else, trust me. Oh god, don't just try to breathe, but don't breathe wrong. Yes, that's breathing wrong. Yeah, that's not good. This podcast is about why horror scares us, what deep, dark, secret scary cinema shines a light on. The discussions are frank and involve conversations about abuse, trauma, and mental health.

1:29 There are also spoilers, so keep that in mind too. Now, sharpen your machetes and straight raisers, because this is cutting deep into horror. Hello, my spookies, and welcome back to Cutting Deep into Horror. I am, of course, your host Enrique Kuto here with my co host on Cutting Deep, Rachel. We'redulphy Rachel. How are you? I am doing pretty all right? Yeah? Yeah? Are you sure? Now I'm questioning everything?

2:09 Very good, very good. Well, no, it's you know, you doubt everything. It's important. It is especially you know, and especially in this line work. Eh, what line is that? I don't know. I was just trying to make conversation. Oh wow, wow, okay, wow, okay, well that's a little hurtful, but okay, okay, Well before we jump in, you know, we're knee deep into spooky season now. Yeah, we're over halfway through October, and we'll be talking about the nineteen ninety two two or three, a nineteen ninety two film, candy Man, which is one of my favorite supernatural horror movie deals. It's not quite a slash room. It's kind of a slasher movie, you know, it's slasher adjacent. Yeah, there's a lot of debate. There's a lot of debate about candy Man in general. I can see that candy Man was kind of of the lower string of horror franchises, you know, in the first string you had night ren Elm Street Fright of the thirteenth Halloween, and then on the second string you had like Child's Play and Gremlin not Gremlin's Critters and hell Raiser. Yeah, you know, they were kind of and I don't mean to say that there's anything wrong with him, it's just that their later entries went direct to video, as opposed to Night ren

3:40 Elm Street Fright of the Thirteenth Halloween, where they always managed to stay theatrical. Even though there was a lot of debate about Halloween going the way of home video direct to video, especially in the late nineties, there was a lot of money to be made in direct to video back then, so I could see why. Yeah, but Candy Man is one of those where it has two technically three sequels if you count the twenty twenty one. I think it was how a Candy Candyman movie, Yeah, which was a fine kind of sequel. I like the movie. It was not bad, but I don't remember that much about it, to be honest. But we're gonna be talking about Candyman as we talk about all the films here, which is mostly from the standpoint of it being standalone.

4:23 If I throw in some nerdy stuff about the sequels. That's just food for thought. It's not really you know, exactly Yeah, it's not exactly that. But before we get to that, I do want to say we actually have a sponsor here, one of our first partnerships that Weekly Spooky has had in a while, and I just wanted to bring it up. Since this is a more conversational show. It is literally a conversational show, it's a little easier to bring it up and not just like go into commercial mode. But we've partnered with a coffee company called savor Resta Coffee, which you can find it resta dot com sa v r I s t A. And the reason I really dig this place is because, well, number one, they're supporting the show. If you go to save Aresta dot com and choose some coffee and buy it with promo code Spooky at checkout, you get twenty five percent off, which is five percent more than their new customers normally get, and you can know that that purchase is going towards supporting Weekly Spooky. But one of the reasons I thought this was a really great partnership was not only do they have a bunch of different flavors, but they're caffeine conscious, and I am somebody who has to be very caffeine conscious because I am super sensitive to caffeine. We talked about it last last week when we were talking about Nightmarre on Elm Street all the caffeine I was consuming.

5:53 And they specialize in half calf and decalf, gourmet drinks, coffee, grounds and beans. So if you guys, get a chance, if you're already a coffee lover, and if you love coffee at night when you really should be watching your caffeine so you can get a full night's sleep, head to Savoriesta dot com. Use the promo code Spooky at checkout, get twenty five percent off and it helps the show. So I really do appreciate it. So I just wanted to bring that up. I know, Rachel, you're you're thinking about getting some savory stuff I am. I was looking at the flavors and they really do look good. Yeah, Colombian inspiration, barely buzzed, half calf, dark roast, They've got a bunch. They've got medium roasts and light roast as well. I like when I do drink coffee, I like fancy coffee because I drink like two cups a year, So why not spend twenty dollars on the bag of beans that's barely going to get used anyway. But yeah, so it seems pretty cool. So the link will also be in the show notes all the information you could need.

6:57 But uh yeah, thank you to Savory Sta for helping us bring you the Spooky. Yeah. So, who knows, maybe we'll be drinking it sometime soon. I don't know. I mean, right now, it's been all tea, trying to keep my throat alive through thirty one days of shows here at Weekly Spooky. We did a novella this week, and next week we have two novella length shows on Monday and Wednesday. But wait, there's more. In fact, this will be the first time I mention it so that you know, people can know. On Monday, I'll be releasing a show I'm very excited about, which is a over two hour deep dive into the paranormal investigating couple the Warrens, whom the Conjuring movie series is based on. I'm going to dive super deep into what they claim happened, which is like the first half of the show, which is all ghost storytelling, and then how there's no evidence for most of what they claim and how they might have been at at worst they were a little crazy and or at best they were a little crazy and at worst they were like legitimately bad people.

8:09 So it's a really interesting show that'll be dropping Monday as the final terrifying and true episode for October. And I've been looking, I've had I've been sitting on that one for almost a month and a half, excitedly wanting to release it and then realizing that it is two and a half hours almost of talking. So pretty exhausting show. But but yeah, otherwise, spooky season's going all right, haven't had a chance to go to a haunt yet because all my friends are lame and don't want to do anything. Ever, that's the going to haunts by yourself is not recommended. No, not for safety, it's just bad for the haunt because they have trouble dealing with small groups. Yeah, because they have to reset everything because the haunts, if you haven't been to a haunt in a while, they ain't like they used to be. They're they're big and impressive and full of props and costumes and sound effects and cue things. Yeah, so yeah, ideally groups of four really keep it moving, but groups of two are all right, just depends on how busy it is. But I'm hoping to get to one this weekend and drag you along.

9:15 That's the plan anyway. Well it better be or else. But we're going to take a quick break and then we'll talk a little bit more about Candy Man. We'll get into Candy Man maybe or maybe just candy right after this. So I feel like candy Man is a pretty solid Halloween choice. I think it brings the scary very aggressively. It's a haunting movie. I of course, I saw Candy Man probably when I was eleven or twelve years old. It was on USA and stuff like that. When was the first time you saw Candy Man?

10:03 It was, I mean relatively recently. It was probably only about like six or seven years ago, right, because you and I had gotten through the big tent pole horror movies and trying we were trying to figure out like what kind of horror movies to watch, and it was around Halloween time and had I had mentioned to someone like, oh, you know, I'm trying to think of something to watch, and he he said, well, what about Candy Man? And I'd never even like I somehow had missed it. So when I mentioned to you, like I was thinking about watching Candy Man, like, you really lit up and I really enjoyed the first experience with it.

10:51 What stood out to you the most? Well, I think that, like anyone, the first thing, the biggest thing that stood out to me was definitely Tony Todd himself and his performance and just the gravitas that he brings. But the other thing that really stood out to me and continued to kind of impress me with the second viewing, was how gothic the story feels, and the way, like especially the architecture of Chicago and like all of the different scenery is portrayed. There's kind of like this classic Gothic feel to it. But also just the way that the way that they're trying to tell the story of folklore and how folklore is made and built and maintained, I think is very interesting because it is similar in a way to Nightmare on Elm Street, where belief is what gives power to you know, either Freddy Krueger or Candy Man, depending, but they're both, you know, they both are very different on how they go about praying on that belief because Candy Man he draws you into his reality, whereas Freddy Krueger enters your subconscious. So there's kind of that big difference.

12:15 Well, there are some other weird things about candy Man as well. One of the big ones. Well, first of all, it's worth mentioning a couple of things. This film stars Tony Todd, as we mentioned, who has become horror royalty from being not only candy Man, but then two years prior performing as Ben in The Nightmare or Nightmare the Night of the Living Dead nineteen ninety remake directed by Tom Savini, which he was also very very good in. But Virginia Madsen plays Helen. And this film is very loosely based on a Clive Barker short story called The Forbidden, which was a part of one of his gosh what were they called? They were called the Books of Blood collections, and the original story was very different in a lot of ways. Because some of the things that I find most interesting about Candy Man are the way it digs into inner city life, the way it digs into the two worlds. The academics, who are generally speaking very well off, very affluent, a bit dismissive, but also with a bit of a savior complex about the lesser people in Cabrini Green, which is a real neighborhood and one of the most legendarily crime ridden and abused communities in America. And those

13:52 are the things that I think make Candy Man the most interesting and the most memorable. Is that whole thing, because literally we open with Helen played by Virginia Mads and recounting this Candy Man legend and then talking about the mirror and how Candy Man's legend involves a mirror, and how Cabrini Green housing was basically built like her fancy ass rich people apartment is literally the same apartment. Yeah, it's literally built identical to Cabrini Green, except this one is full of rich people and it's on the other side. They use the L train. They reference like using the L train and stuff to kind of stop people from getting out of the projects. Basically, and I grew up.

14:36 I didn't grow up in anything like Cabrini Green, but I didn't grow up in housing projects. But I did grow up in basically like a tenement building, which is a similar concept. Yeah, it's where you pack people who are very poor. And my point is that that's a wonderful point about mirroring. Basically, like it's at their mirror of each other, but they're completely different worlds. You know, her FA building and Cabrini Green, and you could see Cabrini Green from her building, yeah, just barely, and vice versa. I'm sure. So the reason I bring all that up is that in the story The Forbidden, it takes place in London, and Candy Man is a white guy. All of that stuff is because of Bernard Rose, the writer and director. Bernard Rose brought all of those elements. In fact, in The Forbidden, Candy Man doesn't have a backstory. Really, it's not really about that. It's about the concept of folklore more so. And also Helen in the story is not investigating urban legends. She's investigating graffiti, which which leads you to a similar place though, of what do all these graffiti referencing Candy Man mean? Yeah, so that part I think is very similar, But none of the racial stuff is in the original story at all. Candy Man's described as having thin blue lips, yellowy skin, patchwork coat matching his patchwork pants. It's very different. Yeah, it's very different,

16:07 and I'm not saying that it's not good. I don't have an opinion about The Forbidden. I've only read rundowns of the differences between the movie and The Forbidden. I'm sure it's a perfectly good novella or short story. But the things that really make Candy Man compelling to me are not in it. Huh. And I find that really bizarre and fascinating. Yeah, and Candy Man, especially because of all of its references to racial inequality and the inequality of the legal system in America. All those things make people have tons of theories and opinions about what candy Man is about and what happens in Candy Man. None of that is in the original concept.

16:54 It just isn't. So in a way, it was all Bernard Bernard Rose, right, it's pronounced Bernard. Close. You're close. Still offensive and racist. Somehow, I think he's a whit. I appreciate it, okay, but but no. So that's a lot of the stuff that I find most poignant about candy Man. And I'll tell you some more, but only after this. So, the basic story of Candy Man, as we mentioned, is a woman named Helen who is a graduate student at the University of Illinois in Chicago.

17:41 Is researching urban legends and becomes aware of Candy Man, a spirit who kills anyone that speaks his name five times in front of a mirror, which probably reminds a lot of people of Bloody Mary, very similar concept. When I was growing up, I thought Candy Man was an actual legend because of the movie. I thought that that was an actual thing. Like my sister and I would dare each other to say Candy Man five times in the mirror, and it's not even real. It was made up by the Forbidden and then used in this in this film. So she learns that there was a murder at the Cabrini Green Cabrini Green housing project and that it was attributed by locals to Candy Man. So she decides to go down there and investigate. And that's that's and and she finds it. That's the I mean, that's like the the long of the short of it is she she definitely finds him. So uh yeah. And one thing I want to mention is there's a lot of like questioning sanity and stuff like that, but I want to point out that Candy Man himself is never seen by anyone other than Helen, Yeah, in the entire film, including and she's the one recounting all of the stories where we see him as well, which leans into a lot of people, including to some degree myself, wondering if there is no candy Man at all, and if it's

19:13 the delusions of a woman driven insane or something along those lines. Oh but we can get into that later. But yeah, so Candy Man super super fun, scary, creepy horror movie. A lot more. It does bring the gore a few times. In fact, when the gore happens, it's very very shocking. Yeah, but overall, I want to say it's it's psychological, but those gore scenes are really they're pretty, they're really startling, and they hit hard when they do. Yeah. So, but it is available to watch on Amazon Prime.

19:53 You can rent it. It's available on AMC Plus with a subscription, and maybe on to B I'm checking. Nope, no longer available on to B thanks Google. So it's not super available. But if you haven't seen it, that's your own fault. It's been out for a really long time. So but with that all being said, you wanna you wanna get us started on this journey. Yeah. Well, it's like you said, the introduction is great because not only does it give us the backstory or kind of like the mythology of Candy Man, it's also a really good introduction to Helen. Like you said, she's a student of mythology. And after she you know, after she recounts the story of Candy Man, she's kind of there.

20:46 When you say story of candy Man, what do you mean? Uh. The the opening scene is the is her talking about if you say the name five times into a mirror, then can Candy Man will come and like, you know, he's he's responsible for you know, violence and murdering people. And then it goes into her interviewing different people who live at Kabrini Green. Which are the cleaning staff at her college. That's oh, that's right, yeah, and they're you know, they're kind of expounding upon the effect that Candy Man has actually had on their community. Like he's not just a story to them, he's a reality. And this really picks Helen's interest, and so she and her friend is it Bernadette, you know, that's when they hatch their plan to go to Kabrini Green. And investigate. But first Helen wants to talk to her husband, Lyle, who is a professor or a lecturer at the professor and we what's interesting about thee His.

22:09 Name is Trevor, Trevor, his last name is Lyle. Both of their last names are Lyle. That's where I got Lyle. So their their relationship was interesting because as you and I were watching this again the other night, we both commented how even though they're married, they don't interact like they're married. They don't like really feel like they're married. Yeah, he seems to just kind of come and go. It made me think they were more like kind of casually dating. Yeah, and I have to agree. And this this first introduction with him, we get the sense that not everything maybe right, because first off, he's giving this lecture about you know, urban legends, and she's a roll upset at the end of the lecture because he had promised that he was going to wait until she was there, like fully there to give the lecture and he had just you know, kind of gone ahead without her. And then she was also noticing that he's getting a lot of attention from one of its students and he's just you know, kind of writing it off as like, Oh, she's just a kid, you know, she's just infatuated with me. But Helen, she already seems kind of suspicious of that.

23:23 Well, and it's worth mentioning, I don't. I think the reason she was mad that he was diving into urban legends from an academic standpoint is she was worried about him priming the students against her presentation. Mm hmm, because that's kind of a I mean, that's a thing. You know, if you follow somebody respect saying this is all kind of bull crap, then it kind of destroys the ability to get people to care about what you're writing about. And her interest in the Candyman legend is a little deeper in that her and Bernadette believe that their thesis is is Cabrini Green residents are using the Candyman legend to cope with racial inequality. Basically, yeah, that they're using it to cope with the fact that they live in hell.

24:13 By many people's standards, they live in an awful place full of scary people, and people get killed all the time, which is very like the is very perfectly academic lensed that it's like we're gonna look at this urban legend through the veil of racial inequality. In fact, when they tell the candy Man legend, the legend itself, there's a really odd detail I don't know if you picked up on when they describe the jock guy and the girl like kind of making out on the bed, you know, when the whole thing happens. And I'll explain that right after this. So when she is telling a version of the Candyman myth, not his real quote unquote backstory, which we get to in a little bit, it doesn't even take place in Chicago. It's in a small suburban house in Indiana.

25:19 Oh, you're right. I didn't notice that. I mean, do you remember that, though. I mean they're they're they're nowhere near Cabrini Green. Yeah, I think they're outside of Gary or something. They're in Indiana. Yeah, and they're and they're literally it's like a like a stereotypical urban legend. The guy is wearing a letterman jacket and the girl has a ponytail, and maybe tonight's the night she's gonna give it up. You know, It's it's so urban legend. Codd, It's just completely urban legendy that has nothing to do with Cabrini Green, that has nothing to do with any of the elements of candy Man that we come to know later on. Yeah, which I find really really interesting and kind of strange. Yeah, I just thought that was kind of worth mentioning that it doesn't really Yeah, it doesn't really seem like he like it's to me, it's much more generic than what we find out later, much more generic. So, and it's it's the classic you know, they're hanging out together and then as a goof they say candy Man in the mirror five times and they get slaughtered. Basically, well, she gets slaughtered, and that he discovers her dead body after blood is dripping through the ceiling. Yeah, which is really shoddy workmanship.

26:35 But maybe that's the real horror of the story. I would say so. But I just wanted to mention that too. I mean, that's a very interesting side note that makes me wonder about candy Man in the context of the first film, because when we start, I mean, in the movie does open with a few elements of candy Man that aren't necessarily directly related to Hell And I mean, we get a little opening monologue thing from Tony Todd and the Bees flying kind of over Chicago. But after that, like, she's talking about candy Man, and at first he's just a hook, and as time goes on he keeps kind of morphing mm hm. We see more and more and more. Now, of course that's a normal trope that you don't see all of the killer right away. You get more and more of him as you go. But it does seem strange to me that Helen knows so little about him, so we see so little, and then as she learns more, we see more.

27:34 That is a very interesting point. It makes me wonder if candy Man is in her head. Yeah, and maybe that's it or something. I don't know, because obviously if you follow the sequels, candy Man is definitely a real thing because he lives beyond Helen. Yeah, but in. The context of only the film, it really does make me wonder, So, yeah, I think that's worth mentioning. So they truck on down to Cabrini Green to figure out what's going on. And this is another thing I mentioned when we were watching it that I think is worth pointing out too. While they don't Heman hall like crazy about going to Cabrini Green. There is trepidation about going, especially because they're two women, two tiny women. I mean they're like, you know, very petite women, Helen and Bernadette.

28:24 Bernadette is a black woman, but obviously it's very clear she's from a very different socioeconomic background than the residents of Cabrini Green. If anyone in her family came from that background, it was a very long time ago. Yes, she has no sense of awareness of those spaces. So they go there, and they're in the bill. They well, first of all, the moment they get out of the car, they're accosted by gang bangers, guys wearing gang clothes, asking what you do and what you hear for? What you do and what you hear for, over and over to them, clearly trying to intimidate them. They look like cops. Yeah, And Bernadette even says like, oh, I told you we shouldn't have dressed like this, And Helen's like, I just told you to dress professional.

29:11 Yeah, I know, she said, casual, Oh, casual, because they're where I mean they are. They're like corporate casual. They're not like well it's also not it's like. Cold out, Yeah, so they wear their jackets. So they're wearing like jackets and a nice blouse and pants, you know, like a pants suit kind of thing. They do they look like I mean, they don't. I mean, they look like cops that are not in any way even vaguely undercovered. They don't look like they're trying to fool anybody. Yeah, but of course that's gonna make people nervous, Yeah, that they're walking around because as it becomes very clear the further we get into Cabrini Green, the police don't help them. White people don't help them, you know whatever. They even say a few times, like whenever white people start stomping around here, whenever police are stomping around here, it never helps. It always makes things worse. And when you consider that, depending on your worldview, Cabrini Green in all housing projects again depending on your worldview, were built to help people m M. But very few people feel that way about housing projects now that they help anybody. Yeah, you know, and there are some people who believe they were built from the beginning to harm, and then there's some people who believe that they were good intended they just didn't turn out. So if you take housing projects at face value, then yeah, this was yet another thing done thinking it would help and it did not. Yeah. Yes, But as they're walking through the hallway taking pictures of very creepy graffiti that's refreferencing the candy man saying things like sweets to the sweet all of that, they encounter

30:43 a young woman who lives in the housing project, and I find her really fascinating. Her name's Anne Marie, and she is very clearly a waitress, I believe. Yeah, it's pretty clear because she's got the small yeah, the smock. Yeah, and the name tag that says Anne Marie. And she's a single mother raising an infant son named Anthony or Anthony. I'm not trying to be funny. I don't know if she was supposed to be in the script, if she was supposed to just like have that affectation, or if she literally because some people do name their kids literally. Yeah, the sound like Anthony instead of Anthony and stuff. So I don't know if that was intentional or not, or how that was planned. But one thing, what did you notice when she she eventually reluctantly invites them into her apartment.

31:36 The thing that I noticed is the juxta position of the outside, like the hallways and you know, stairwells and everything of Cabrini Green and how they're you know, the walls are covered in graffiti and there's trash everywhere, and you know, it's broken down and run down. And then the inside of Anne Marie's apartment is like Homie's nice, beautiful and like well kept and it's very obviously like a little safe haven inside the mess of the you know, the projects, which I thought was you know, it's it's great storytelling, and it's also just great character development for Annerie because you learn so much about who she is and what she values as a person just from that introduction of going into her apartment and her you know, holding her baby and talking about life well.

32:34 And she makes it very clear that her whole world is Anthony. Oh yeah. I mean she literally says it that he's everything to her. And that's I mean, when we lived in a tenement building, our house was nice, or our space was nice, mm hmm, it was everywhere else that wasn't so nice, you know, And that's the way it works. I Mean, you kind of have to take some pride in your home and make it nice, and she's very clearly one of those people who's trying to live her life in the circumstances that she's in. And we find out that she is literally the next door neighbor of the supposed candy man's most recent victim. And we'll talk about that more right after this. So Anne Marie is talking about what she heard, things like that, and she doesn't really have much. She's also been reassured over and over that Helen and Bernadette are not police and that no one's going to get in trouble, that they're from the university. Yeah, So they're trying to figure out what's going on, and they end up going into that apartment which is just kind of sitting there and taking pictures.

33:55 And this is where you get some of the wildest stuff because they go into the apartment where the murder happened and they pull the mirror off the wall. Yeah, and it reveals like a Narnia of Hell just on the other side. Uh. Because when they when they reveal the big you know, the big hole in the wall, it they they they already have an idea of the layout because again Helen's apartment, the layout of her apartment complex is exactly the same as this one here is Cabrini Green. So she's even like, as they're walking through this rundown apartment, she's like, I know, like if we go here and we remove this, then we'll just be on the mirror side of the other apartment.

34:47 And she she crawls through, and the camera like zooms out and we realize she she's crawling out of a wall, and the wall behind her is a graffiti mural of Candy Man's face with his mouth open, and she's crawling out of his mouth, which is creepy enough as it is. But then as she's walking around in this darylic space, she looks and she sees a bunch of candy and she realizes that the residents have like basically left an offering for Candy Man there. So she's you know, like taking pictures, and Bernadette's kind of panicking.

35:32 Well, and I want to mention, by the way, that that's the first time that she I mean, like we see her see that Candy Man portrait or what we believe is a Candyman portrait, and then Candy Man looks like that portrait. Yeah, I just want to put that out there because I've been thinking a lot about the idea that maybe this is her perception and we like she did not see Tony Todd as Candy Man before she saw that. I'm almost certain of it. So I just wanted to throw that out there. That's very, very But yeah, they're getting freaked out because like she's literally walking through this like haunted house basically yeah and yeah please. So that's that's when Anne Marie like stops them. She because she comes with her dogs and she's like, basically like what are you guys doing here? Like why no one wants to come here? Like why are you here, especially you know, a white lady, And she invites them into their apartment, and that's, you know, when she starts talking about the murder. She really explains how helpless she felt as the neighbor because she had called nine one one and tried to get the police out there and they just basically ignored her. And what's really interesting is as I was as I was looking it up, uh, that's that's all actually inspired by a real murder.

36:56 Oh yeah, I've heard that before the details though. So her name was Ruth May McCoy and she lived in in Chicago in the ABLA Homes, which stood for it was a housing project that was basically like four different housing projects all mushed together, and very similarly, the mirrors of the bathrooms on like the far ends of the buildings had like two feet of space between them, and so in eighty seven, there was a lot of gang violence that was going on, and gangs were using that space to like break into people's homes. So one night, some people broke into Ruth's home and she called the police as it was happening, as they were like breaking down the mirror, and she told them that people were coming through her bathroom and she was in danger, and they never responded. And her neighbors actually called later that night because they heard all the commotion and they heard her being murdered, and they all reported it and the police still don't didn't come out, and it wasn't until the next day a neighbor called again and said, I still I haven't seen her in twenty four hours, like you need to get out here, and then the police

38:27 finally came out. So it was very similar circumstances that a lot of people think had inspired Bernard Rose for some of the details of this part of the movie. Sure, well, And it's important to keep in mind bathrooms are i mean apartments, They do do that. Bathrooms are built next to each other in order to save money and complication on running pipes, because the further you run pipes from a central place, the more risk of freezing there is and and other things. But also it's more complicated, more risk of leaks and things like that. So bathrooms are almost always put back to back. Apartments are usually done that way. And I've seen video of people who have revealed that their medicine cabinets do connect to the neighboring apartment. Yeah, if you remove the medicine cabinet, which.

39:17 You're not supposed to do, but it's still there. Well sure, sure, it's very creepy though the idea. So yeah, no, that's really interesting. I had heard a little bit about that years ago, but I had not followed up on it. Yeah. Well, and this all, you know, this all reminds me. You'll remember the incident that happened, like, you know, five years ago, when I was living in that apartment and the guy and the apartment next to me was like insane and was like tearing down the walls, and I had even told you. One night, I was like, man, he's like really going at it, like he's banging really loud, and it was the wall right like in my bed bedroom.

40:01 And the next day the guy got arrested and I was looking like he'd torn the whole front wall of his apartment down at the at like the ac unit, and I was looking and it was like, yeah, he was literally like taking a hammer and breaking down the adjoining wall. To me, he was like there was just a little bit of plywood there. Yeah, so uh, yeah, shit happens. Yeah. I do not miss apartment living in the least in the least, and as an adult, I only lived in one apartment and my neighbors were like shitty, but they weren't like scary. Yeah yeah, they weren't breaking down the walls.

40:41 Yeah. Well, actually it's funny because my next door neighbor was everybody was afraid of him, but me, I don't. I've ever told you that story. Like he was a hard as nails black man, and he wore all leather, like I mean you wore I mean you wear like a leather jacket, leather hat. I was just like, hey, man, I I grew up around people like that. I did. I just did. I never find them intimidating. I mean, I mean unless they're really intimidating. And we ended up becoming really good friends. He was from Cleveland. Of all, this was in Jersey because he noticed my Ohio plate and that was one of our icebreakers because then I said, oh, I'm from Dayton and he was like, my brother worked at the right pat Air Force Base. And I was like really, no way. Yeah, So it was like very yeah.

41:27 We got along great. His family would come and visit and I would like play with his nieces and nephews and stuff. It was but he you know, but like he got mad at one of our neighbors for like making noise and he would like yell through the walls he was going to kill them and stuff. I mean when he was mad, he was mad, but I never heard, you know, he was always nice to me. So the end on that. But now, after this experience where they're at Cabrini Green and they get out of there mostly unscathed, they end up going well, no, they all do. Helen and Bernadette go to dinner with Helen's husband and Bernadette's boyfriend or some guy. It seemed like it was her boyfriend. Yeah.

42:08 But they go to dinner with Professor Philip Percell, a Englishman who happens to be an expert on the Candyman myth because he wrote a dissertation on candy Man and this is where we find out the story behind candy Man right after this. So as they're having dinner with Professor Philip Purcell, it's a really interesting exchange because Helen is a little bit moderately like combative with him, because he's like, I want to know what you're you know, what you're working on, and she's like, it's not ready.

42:58 He's like, that's precisely when you should tell me about it, because that's when I could be of the most help, when it's not done. And he's very amused when he finds out that they're talking about candy Man at Cabrini Green and he asks her if she read his paper on him, which she hasn't, which is also kind of interesting because it sounds like the way he was talking that it's like the only record, you know, like academic record of the Candyman myth. But he goes into this whole myth that candy Man was the son of a slave in the eighteen hundreds who ended up being wealthy because his father had made a fortune on patents for shoes.

43:43 And then I'm sorry, do you want to take over? You're looking at me like, oh, you were looking at me just totally blank. I was like, am I making this up? No? No, no, you're doing good. Oh. So he then he became a painter, and he fell in love with a woman he was painting, who was a white woman. Yeah, impregnated her, and then her father basically sent a lynch mob after him, who sawed off his right hand in order to make him, you know, unable to be an artist anymore, and then smeared him with honeycomb stolen from a nearby apiary, which attracted bees, which then stung him to death. His corpse was then burned in a pyre, which was on the site of what inevitably became the Cabrini Green Homes. So that's the story.

44:33 Yeah, and it's a it's a very powerful story just from from a narrative standpoint, because of because of the racial tension, just because of the way that the way that Chicago is in the real world and because of the way that they're setting up the story of the residents of Cabrini Green and how they've all been kind of relegated to living in this hell hole because of their racial history. And then he talks about you know him talking about Candy Man's origins as someone who could have you know, he he if he would have fallen in love with this woman and gotten her pregnant, pregnant, but he was a white guy, Like it really wouldn't have mattered as much a little bit, Yeah, but I don't think it would have been like Lynch Mob mattered.

45:37 Yeah, probably not. I mean I think it was supposed to be eighteen seventy Yeah, yeah, I mean, getting any wealthy person's daughter pregnant unexpectedly would probably be. A bad move, Yeah, but not recommended. And this begins this odd connection between Helen and Candy Man where it seems like he's seducing her. And again that doesn't start until after she hears the story. That's also when she starts to see him with bees. This is all after this guy had told her. And I've heard people theories. Some people have said that they think Philip Purcell, the Professor's character made all that up like for his article, because that does happen to some extent that Yeah, fill in blanks. Who knows because he's the only source. Yeah, he's the only source for the backstory, but to a myth that's clearly spread further than Cabrini Green by the fact that one of the first tellings of it is not anywhere near Cabrini Green. Yeah, I mean it's a state over so I guess it's vaguely close, but not extremely close though. No. So after that, Helen returns to Cabrini Green and meets this young boy named Jake, and Jake is very like street wise. I mean, he's a little kid, but he's pretty smart.

47:02 Yeah. But of course, the way she gets him to talk is she basically says, like, you know, you don't have to be afraid. He's like, I'm not afraid of anything. So then he starts helping her out, which could literally get him killed. Yeah, But he tells her a story about a developmentally disabled boy who was castrated in this local bathroom near Cabrini Green a long time ago, supposedly by candy Man. Yeah, and that picks her interest, so she goes to investigate that site, and she gets a little bit more than she bargained for, because then she does run into some people there as she's in the bathroom.

47:46 Well, she runs into Candy Man. I mean, he introduces himself as Candyman. Yeah. So, and he does indeed have a hook and he doesn't pear to be afraid to use it. And what happens next you'll find out after this. So in the bathroom, Helen gets confronted by this guy who calls himself Candy Man, and he you know, attacks her, but she manages to get away, and then, you know, the very next scene is her at the police office looking at a lineup of guys trying to identify him, and she does. And so the police are able to connect this guy who's calling himself Candy Man, and he's like a leader of the gang, you know, one of the gangs there. They're able to connect him to one of the actual crimes, to the development developmentally disabled kid who was castrated and some other I think, I think, like one or two other murders.

49:00 Right, they didn't connect him to the kid who was castrated that was in the nineteen seventies. Oh, I thought, didn't they connect him. To they connected him to the two murders. The murders, yeah, yeah, yeah, the kid was castrated. I remember, like the guy who ran out was wearing a friggin' beret, like it was like the sixties or seventies. Oh yeah when that happened. And the guy who was saying he's Candy Man was like twenty three years old, Yeah he was. Yeah. Yeah, So it's very clear that he's been using the Moniker and to an extent, the mo of Candy Man to enforce his street control and now he's busted. Now. Another point worth mentioning too, is it took this one white woman getting the shit beat out of her in near Cabrini Green to get this guy taken down, although they claimed that the reason they could never take the guy down because they knew who he was, was that nobody would would testify against him. Yeah, and she agrees to testify against him, as long as that means that the young boy, oh gosh, what's this oh Jake doesn't have to yeah, because it would potentially ruin Jake's life.

50:05 Yeah. So yeah, they've now they've got the candy Man. But also I think that's a really interesting turn of events, because that tells you that the fact that they were like, oh, yeah, Candy Man is who did it? They weren't saying it was literally a ghost. They were saying, there's a guy freagain named Candy Man who will kill you if you don't pay your drug debt or if you, you know, get in the way of their business or whatever. Nobody ever said he was a mystical being. They said he came through the mirror and killed somebody with a hook, which literally this guy could do yeah and had done. So I think that's worth pointing out as well. You know that that really it seems like he was just a garden variety inner city psychopath who happened to have a flourish for the dramatic. I guess, yeah, you know who liked folklore. I suppose.

51:01 So. I don't know. That was something that always stuck with me, was the whole fake out Candyman thing. Yeah. No, I think it's a really good fake out because it not only not only does it as the audience kind of deepen the mystique behind Candy Man when we do finally see him, because it's it's coming up soon, but it also it kind of makes Helen even more determined to like figure this out because even though it feels like, even though she realizes like, okay, the community is literally talk about this guy, why has the story stuck around for so long? Like how did he? You know, how did he keep this going? So she's still like very interested in how this Candy Man myth has evolved to the point that somebody is willing to take up that moniker.

51:56 But there's a but there's an element to that that's really strange though, which is it's nineteen ninety two and basically there have been no mention of Candy Man for like twenty years until recently in Cabrini Green, because other than that boy being mutilated, there's been no reference to Candyman. No people have been killed by Candy Man, nothing, So that's worth mentioning too. Like his his his legend in Cabrini Green was not much of anything. He was more a you know, a whispered story for campfires and sleepovers and things like that. So and I mean, I think she is not as curious until she sees Candy Man, until he reveals himself to her, because she had been convinced that that Candy Man is actually this you know, horrible reality of the inner city life. And that's you know, what she's going to turn her report to. And that's when Candy Man reveals her, reveals himself to her in a parking garage. Yeah, and he's just standing there in broad daily and that's something Candy Man does that most horror villains do. He's always, not always, but he's often in the broad daylight. He's just right there to you. Yeah, which in part is because apparently only Helen can see him.

53:10 Which I'm not saying that I one hundred percent believe that this is all in her head, but I think they laid a ton of hints and clues, including the fact that everybody around her believes it's in her head. Yeah, and that nobody gets killed by Candy Man unless she's around. Yeah, the real Candy Man, not the not the fake gun. Yeah. So, but he explains that the reason he's showing himself to her is because she's discredited his legend and that because of that, he has to shed innocent blood in order to maintain that that legend and that presence, which is really interesting because that's very grandiose and very egotistical Yeah, he doesn't come off the way I feel like and you know, when we're talking in the world of Candy Man, we're talking in the world of you know, slasher movie legends and stuff. I'm not saying anything is possible or impossible, but he doesn't come across as a star crossed lover who was wronged and needs vengeance. He comes across as like a narcissistic being who wants his standing.

54:21 Yeah, yeah, you see what I'm saying. It's it's as much as he wants Helen to, you know, be his new lover, it is way more about maintaining the hold that he has in mythology and kind of like keeping his like you said, keeping his standing in everyone's minds well. And I want to mention whenever he basically hypnotizes her, it's romantic and I mean, but not subtly like I don't know if you noticed, But they don't just give her like the soft filter lens treatment. They do her makeup nicer. Yeah, when they cut to the close ups of her face looking at him. Every time they do that, her makeup is like perfectly done, even if the scene before she was wearing almost no makeup. But I mean that makes sense because it paints a picture. It gives you a scene, a literal scene, and a figurative scene.

55:23 The scene is a beautiful woman and this man. But this is why I really wonder about the feasibility of there being a candy Man. Helen didn't have any of these moments with candy Man like that until she heard the story, yeah, about the original guy and the fact that they called him candy man because he was covered in honey as he was stung to death by bees, which is so cruel and brilliant, I mean, like brilliant storytelling. Yeah, not a brilliant insult. It's honestly kind of lazy. But like the moment is, it's so weird though. It's like, she hears about the hook, she sees a hook, she sees, she sees the image in the in the abandoned apartment.

56:05 Now she's you know, seeing silhouettes of a black man that looks like that, and now she hears the story about a love affair with a you know, a beautiful white woman, and now she's a part of a love affair with him. Yeah. Yeah, And that's what makes me like really wonder if her psyche is breaking or something m hm. Because and also the fact that as we get further in, everybody thinks her psyche is breaking. And as much as you know, you could say, like, well, that's the point. The point is to make her, you know, doubt reality so that she's you know, it's the scary thing. It's like, yeah, but if everybody was right and she was just crazy, that's a really scary ending.

56:45 Yeah, no, it is. Really scary ending. So but I mean, but again, like I don't know in the movie, that's one of the best parts is it doesn't tell you, yeah, in any way, you know, straight up what happened, you know, what really happened, which I like, yeah. So but remember he said like he has to spill innocent blood every time Candy Man appears to her. This is the other questionable thing. She blacks out, and when she wakes up, horrible things have happened, and we'll talk about those right after this.

57:32 So Helen comes to and she is covered in blood and in her hand she's holding a knife, and there's blood all over the walls. When she looks down at the floor, she sees something on the floor and then she realizes it's the head of a dog in the hallway. It's in the hallway, and she hears screaming and whaling and crying, and she's very obviously, very confused and disoriented because she doesn't quite recognize where she is. And from the audience's perspective, that's clearly Anne Marie's dog because he pops up early on when she meets Anne Marie.

58:16 It's a very big rottweiler. So it's, yeah, it's very obvious that that's Anne Marie's Rottweiler, and that the screaming, whaling must be Anne Marie h and it's it's a real horror scene, without a doubt. So she's carrying this knife and the dog has clearly been slaughtered. And rottweiler's, you know, especially in the inner city, especially in that period of time, they were very common protection dogs. I feel like, you know, in the modern era, they've been replaced a lot by just pitbulls. Yeah, just everybody has a pitbull. But back then, rottweiler's were like what you got if you didn't want anybody to mess with your stuff. Yeah, So as she goes to find Anne Marie, Anne Marie is in Anthony's bedroom, screaming and wailing and the crib is just drenched in blood.

59:10 Yeah, and Helen kind of like approaches her, and Anne Marie whips around and just starts screaming like you you killed him, you hurt my baby, wears my baby? What did you do with him? And an Anne Marie kind of like goes to attack Helen, and Helen, you know, still has the knife, so she defends herself and and cuts Anne Marie and then you know, the police come and they arrest Helen and then her husband, you know, kind of he manages to bail her out of jail. But you left out one of I think one of the most horrific scenes in the film when when she's being she's standing in front of the police covered in blood and they're making a remover her bloody clothes and hand them over for evidence, and she just keeps saying like, can I please take a shower? And they're just like not take off your bra your brazier, you know, and they're making your hands it over. I just think that scene is like really raw. It is and and and rough, and I mean, like, as a woman, I feel like it would hit harder no.

1:00:17 That that scene is very tough I think that it was kind of a kindness that they had. The officer who was instructing her to like get undressed was a female officer. And it's kind of funny because we saw that actor in something else recently. The actress was in a final episode of Better Call Saul. But no, it's and and Helen. The whole time is she's asking, you know, she's kind of like begging, like can I take a shower? She's also saying like is That's when she even then starts saying like it wasn't like it wasn't me And of course no one's no one's listening to her.

1:01:01 Well, she's saying she doesn't know what happened, Yeah. Which is true. She what I mean, you know, she was not clearly conscious. So yeah, that that was a pretty powerful scene and it really makes Helen way more vulnerable throughout the rest of the movie. So that's after after that, after you know, she's been interrogated in everything is when her husband Bailts are out of jail, right who. And he did not answer the phone when she called him with her one phone call, it went went to the answering machine, which would suggest he wasn't home. So when he shows up, she's like, where were you when?

1:01:47 He was like, I was at home, fast asleep. I didn't the call didn't wake me up. I mean, that could be true. He clearly drinks a lot. Yeah, I mean, I mean, because there's a there's a scene where we have one of her early like fake out scares earlier in the movie. Is he like jumps into bed and scares the hell out of her, and literally he's just like I am wrecked or something. You know, he just like falls asleep. So he's clearly he'll he'll go out and tie one off. So I mean that could be believable. Yeah, that, you know, maybe possibly it seems sus though. And yeah, yeah, especially you know, along with that female student give him and given him all that attention. But then when Helen's back home, she's looking at the pictures and photographs and everything that she took while she was at Cabrini Green.

1:02:42 The ones she thought had been destroyed. Yeah, and she realizes that in the background of some of the pictures she can see a figure that looks like candy Man. Yes, and she wants to or no because uh, candy Man attacks her again. Then yeah, he shows up after she recognizes him and the images, and again recognizes him in images after she's already become aware of what he looks like and stuff. Yeah, which I think is just worth pointing out that there is a lot because I mean, she's the main you know, it's tricky because she's the main character, so you're already everything is from her perspective for the most part. But I do think there's a lot of sussness with the whole fact that she observes everything, and the the the order of a lot of stuff is kind of strange.

1:03:35 Yeah. Yeah, you know, she hears these stories about him, and then the next thing is that, yeah, you know, is what she just heard. And that's the way folklore works, you know, is the more details you get there you have it. I Mean, one other thought I had about Candy Man was that if it isn't just her being insane, then it could be that Candy Man is literally just whatever you think he is, because that's how folklore works. So it's just oh, if you know, if you have it in your head that I'm, you know, a black man who was you know, the son of a freed slave who got murdered, then I'll be and then I'm that now, because it's whatever haunts your dreams, whatever makes you scared, and I don't hate that idea. In the Candyman remake sequel from twenty twenty one, they kind of leaned into this idea that that society creates Candy Man, like every thirty or forty years, there's just another one.

1:04:34 Oh okay, and it just kind of happens again and again and again. Because there are so many things about the human experience and about human suffering that are cyclical, they just happen again, like Pete wrongful, people get killed, Okay, it just happens. Yeah, and especially and because again it's a very I mean, it's a it was directed written maybe written as well, but it was directed by Naiada Costa, and she's a pretty good director by and large, and I think, you know, especially say that about the Inner City is very fair. Oh yeah, absolutely so. Yeah. So now he attacks her, he cuts her neck, she bleeds and passes out, and at that point Bernadette arrives at Helen's apartment, and we don't see anything other than Helen awakening and Bernadette has been friggin' murdered. And that's one thing I will say, you know, because I do find this movie to be very cerebral, but it really does not shy away from the like really shocking, bloody deaths. Yeah, and we'll talk about those more right after this.

1:05:51 So one thing that I really like about the art direction of Candy Man and you know, the visual and special effects is oddly enough, the murder scenes, because they they frame it in such a way and they have everything set up where it really feels like crime scene photography. And it's especially effective because Helen, you know, Helen's kind of the character that we're seeing everything through her eyes. She's the main narrator and she's the person stumbling on these crime scenes or causing the crime scenes. But she's you know, she's not conscious, she's not aware while the crimes are happening, So we don't see the physical violence.

1:06:44 We just see the aftermath. Yeah, they're that viral. Only a couple of deaths where we actually see violence as it happens, and a lot of that was cut out of the R rated version we did watch when we rewatched it the other night, we watched the uncut yeah, which only I mean, it's like it's like eight or nine seconds more stuff, Yeah, mostly involving the soon to come psychiatrist. But yeah, the every time she comes out of her blackouts, my first thought is like, this is so much blood. Yeah, Like it is just an unbelievable amount of blood. And I think that I don't know if if it's that there would be that much blood in real life, or if it's that that amount of blood will make you think what the actual person would be thinking, because which would be like, I cannot believe how much blood there is, because I feel like that would be the reality if you were sitting in a room and somebody had been murdered and cut up. No, you would be you would be shocked by all the blood. Yes, So so part of me thinks that that's like an artistic way to get the same guttural response out of us as if you were actually in the room, because you would be shocked by the blood. So they're just amping the blood way up, so you go, oh my god, there's so much blood. Yeah. But at this point the police come and they take Helen away, and now she is uh being committed to a psychiatric hospital, which honestly kind of checks out. Yeah, And there's a really awesome scene where she's tied to her bed and Candy Man starts like

1:08:16 almost hovering, like hovering above her bed, yeah, and talking to her, you know, doing his usual like weird seductive talk that Tony Todd does so well because his voice is just incredible, and she's thrashing and yelling he's under the bed, he's you know, he's here right now and all the stuff. And then she blacks out again and when she comes to, she's she's talking to she's talking to a doctor and she finds out that it's been a month. Yeah, which that is such a scary reveal when time is completely moving along and you have no idea. That's so scary. That's really like just so unsettling. I mean talk about feeling feeling all killed her and confused.

1:09:02 It also is like there's a sense of violation, like your time was taken from you. Yeah, you know that was a month of your life. You didn't get somebody took it from you. It's it's insane, and it's because they've been trying to find the right drug cocktail to stabilize her, because she's been, as far as they can tell, just killing everybody. And this scene is another one that's really interesting because when she sits with the psychiatrist, the psychiatrist is very direct with her. He tells her, you know. She's like, so, you're trying to prove, you know, I killed these people, and he goes, I'm on your side. I'm trying to prove that you're not sane enough to stand trial. Like he's basically saying, like I'm trying to.

1:09:46 My point is that you don't deserve to be tried for these murders because you don't understand what you did or that you did it, which is funny because you know that's fair, but it also like doesn't click. You know, yeah, just like all I'm hearing is you think I'm crazy. He's like, yeah, but I'm saying you're not. You don't deserve the death penalty, is what I'm trying to say. And it's like, yeah, yeah, but that doesn't necessarily make me feel just. Like, women, I'm trying to keep you from being killed. You think I'm crazy, I'll show you crazy just like I want. Man no, uh but but no. Uh So he shows her a video of that moment when he was hovering over the bed and it's only her yeah, there's no one else there. But the doctor even says like was he there when that was happening, Like did you see him? And she is just completely confused. She's like, I don't understand because.

1:10:38 Yeah, because he was there, he was there, I saw him. Yeah, and he wasn't standing on the other side of the room or something. He was so close she could probably spell him. Yeah. And again though, this is where I start to wonder if he really is in her mind, because. Yeah, because she they got video evidence of. Her just thrashing by herself. Now, of course you'd be like, well, candy Man only you know, showing himself to her. Sure, absolutely, but that doesn't bode well for the idea that she might just be insane that only she can see him, because that's also an insanity thing. You know, is that that's not the slam dunk I think you think it is. No, no, no, So she tries to prove her innocence by saying Candy Man's name into a mirror in the room. Nothing, you know, seems to happen, and then all of a sudden, the doctor starts spitting up blood and Candy Man has shoved a hook through him and ripped his guts out basically.

1:11:36 Yeah. He then and this is one of my favorite, just like totally terrifying scenes. And then he just calmly walks over her and just undoes her her restraints and does her restraints. That's it, you know, He's just like, yeah, you can go, basically, and she ends up deciding like okay, And now yet again someone has died killed by candy Man. Only she saw candy Man. Only she was in the room with the person who died. Now, of course, you could make the argument while she was restrained, where did she get the hook or whatever? For all we know, that's just her perception, and in reality, he had undone her restraints for some reason that made sense, and then she freaking murdered the shit out of the guy.

1:12:20 Yeah fair. I mean, I'm just saying, like that would be the argument I would make for it to just be in her mind, is that it's just the order of incidence is inaccurate. I mean, if you're imagining an entire other human being doing things, I think you could misremember or misobserve how you got unrestrained. Yeah, you know, and the fact that he unrestrains her suggests that that was a part of if it was a delusion, that would be part of the delusion would be how she got unhooked. So I don't know, like some part of me really kind of thinks that that makes a lot of sense, that he's just in her mind. But that is also what they're trying to push to us as the audience. Yeah, well, and that's that's the thing, is the you know, the institution, the you know, the doctor, the police, the everything, they all assume just what you're saying, that Helen's just absolutely insane, that she's hallucinating a killer, and she's actually the one that's been committing these murders. So and that that also the very end kind of throws a wrench in that theory. And we'll get to that. We'll get to that, like yeah, for sure, Well yeah, but it's still a very interesting theory.

1:13:33 Well, and there's also I mean, the white savior element, which is like, how am I hurting? I only came here to help, Like I don't know, I don't know how I hurt these people. Yeah, yeah, you know that that's a little bit of odd subtext too. But now she's escaped the hospital and she's heading home, but home isn't exactly what she remembered right after this. So Helen, having just broken out of the hospital, returns back home and the walls are different. They're a different color.

1:14:16 Which is a sign of insanity. I mean it could be I'm just I'm just now, I'm just into gas lamping. Hey, hey you. So she walks into uh, she walks into their home. The walls are a different color, there's new furniture everywhere, and she is livid, rightfully so and because uh, well her suspiion, I did I did bury the lead a little too much. So her husband has moved in, uh the student that was given him the guy eyes and is dating her now. And Helen, she's got a good point, Like she was only gone for a month, so that moved pretty fast.

1:15:13 Yeah, in his defense, it appeared there was incontrovertible proof that she'd committed murder. So what was he expecting her to come home soon? I don't know about all that, man. I do love how Stacy, his new squeeze, is like terrified. Like the moment she sees her, like standing there, she just starts almost crying and saving and screaming for Trevor. Once she you know. She confronts about that, he basically says, like, you know, I didn't expect you to ever get out. It didn't look good. No, I mean her best friend was slaughtered in her apartment. Yeah, and we don't even know all the details there because she came to all ready like tied up, like was she covered in her blood entirely? Who knows. So she ditches out of there and heads to Cabrini Green to rescue Anthony, because that's something we kind of glossed over. Anthony was not found, his corpse wasn't found, and they did at one point point out that the blood was just from the dog.

1:16:22 All of that blood was from the dog. Yeah. At the first at Anne Marie's place, so and uh, and Candy Man had hinted that he had Anthony the baby. So she finds Candy Man in his little layer in Cabrini Green and he tells her that if she surrenders to him, he will ensure that Anthony can stay alive. Basically yeah and uh. But then to try to sweeten the deal ha ha ha ha this candy Man, because bees he tells Helen like, not like if she stays with him. He's offering her immortality because she would get to be with him forever. But then he does one of the big moments of the movie, which is he opens his coat and reveals a rib cage covered in bees.

1:17:11 Bees coming out from his insides. They start pouring out of his mouth, which I don't know if you're aware of this, but that was real. Tony Todd put the bees in his mouth and got stung a ton. Wasn't it his agent who told him, like, you need to negotiate a per sting pay. Well, an agent's job would be to negotiate. Okay, yeah, I'm curious because I didn't see it in the Wikipedia candy man Stung by bees. Tony Todd was paid one thousand dollars for each of the twenty seven bee stings he got during a scene. So the article then says, I was recently stung twenty four times and got paid nothing.

1:18:01 So he was stung twenty seven times, so he got twenty thousand dollars and he was wearing a dental dam to prevent the bees from going down his throat. That's probably good. Now. I have to say that is an incredible bit of dedication. The bees coming out of his mouth for real, very startling. I've known a lot of weird people over the years, and I've known people who have done bee beards. Oh yeah, yeah, I. Am not one of them because I am allergic to bees, very allergic. But that's the thing to keep in mind too, is people who do b beards and stuff, they have zero allergy. That's the whole point. Yeah, because when when I asked them, like, how do you not get stung? The oh, you get, you get stung. That's kind of the point is you get, but you only get stung like ten, fifteen, twenty times. You don't get stunge that bad.

1:18:46 You just go home and go ah. And then he takes them might be broken and you go to bed, yeah, you know, And I'm like, oh, that's cool. I would not live so but yeah, so he has bees, you know, in his mouth. It's a very effective sequence, very memorable. Probably one of the most iconic moments of the whole film is the rib cage and the bees in his mouth. Yeah, yeah, and yeah, it's just a nasty one. So then he kisses her with the bees and the beast. But then he vanishes and takes Anthony with him, and this is we're pretty much at the end of the film. Now. Yeah, he disappears with the baby, which enrages her because like they had a deal. But then as she blacks out again, she forgetting she blocks out so much. But she awakens to discover a mural of the candy Man with his lover on the wall, and the lover bears a striking resemblance to Helen. But this is another point I have to make toward the idea that maybe this is all in her head, that Muraal could have been there before.

1:19:51 We don't know, she'd not been in that specific room looking in that direction, and it doesn't look that much like her. Yeah, it's just kind of a generic Yeah. So I'm just saying like she could just see what she wants to see, Yeah, which is kind of what I feel like this whole. If we make that argument that it's all in her head, that's kind of the point is you just see what you want in folklore, and you see what you want in these old stories, and you see what you want in these old characters. Yeah. But again, like I want to make it clear, the reason I'm litigating it so hard is not because I think it is entirely true. But because it's a new concept that I've never I'd never thought of or heard about from Candy Man that I'm working through thinking about a ton, So I hope it's fun and not just people going God, he's really selling the idea. It's all in her head. That's not my point, but I will say that once I started thinking that way, a lot of things made a lot of sense. So he says that, remember, he'll release Anthony if Helen helps him strike fear into Cabrini Green's residence, you know, keep his is whatever, in order to feed his legend. Candy Man, he goes back on his agreement and gets Helen to go into the pire where he has Anthony, you know, to save him.

1:21:08 And this is a really important part too. So when Helen was in his layer, she sees a little something that could be useful, a little something sharp and curved and pointy. And we'll tell you what that is right after this. How's that for a hook? Ah? So Helen grabs a hook because there's like a little collection of hooks, because what else would there be in candy Dan's layer, And she heads to the pire. This giant pile of things, which was pointed out early on when she's walking through Cabrini Green, there's just this giant pile of like old furniture, shipping pilots and stuff. And apparently that's what they do. They have a pire every so often, like you.

1:22:00 Know, for they burn You're junk. I mean, yeah, I suppose so. So she crawls into the pire, which is not let yet obviously, because she hears the baby crying and knows that Candy Man has him. And that is when I cannot. I'm struggling with his name. The little boy, Jake, thank you. Uh. Jake sees what's going on, but he doesn't see Helen. All he sees is as she's disappearing into the pire. She sees he sees the hook that she had taken to bring with her, and when he sees the hook disappearing into the pire, he whispers. Candy Man. Because Jake is a little boy, he really does believe in Candy Man. He is a child. Yeah, they believe in Boogeyman and stuff, you know. So he goes and gets everybody basically trying to encourage the to push the idea like burn the pire. Candy Man's in there kind of thing, and Candy Man is an affront to this, these people and one or another. So candy Man, now inside of the Pire, has decided he's not going to go along with it. He wants him, he wants Anthony to die. He wants all of both of them to be immolated to help feed his legend. Yes, Helen don't like that. At this point, the Pire is being set on fire. She grabs a piece of flaming wood and just stabs him in his weird bee chest and the

1:23:30 flames apparently hurt him quite a bit. Yeah, at least when you used that way. But here's another thing. Why why would he put himself in the pire if fire is like the one thing that'll hurt him, unless you know the reason it actually hurt him is because she wanted it to hurt him, because. He believed it would. And this is where we get to the really fascinating conclusion. So as Candy Man falls back and basically he dies, we see all these people standing around the Pire, including Anne Marie with Jake. Jake has said, and I don't know if it was true, by the way, but Jake said that he's Anne Marie's nephew.

1:24:14 Yeah, something like that. But when he sees Candy Man, he's like sleeping in like he looked. I think he's homeless. I think he's just a homeless kid. He doesn't have anybody, or his parents are a nightmare or something, because when he says I'm Anne Marie's nephew or she's my aunt, like he's sitting in front of her place, she's not there. There's no confirmation. He just kind of says that. So I don't know if he's like literally related to her or if she just kind of looks out for him or yeh. But I got the vibe when he noticed the hook that he was just like that his room was that cubby hole because he was homeless. That was something I picked up on this last viewing. No, because he's always wandering around in the halls or outside the building. Yeah, he's never shown with an adult, and that could.

1:25:03 Be because he had he has a horrible home life too, because that's what a lot of those kids, why they end up just kind of wandering mm hmm. So yeah, but yeah, I just thought that was really strange. He's not in his home, he's not in a bedroom. He's just in this little like cubby. Yeah. So as the flames are growing and we see Anne Marie, who is just she looks insane. You know, her hair is completely crazy. Well, she's wrecked with Yeah, she's wrecked with grief. And she's watching as the fire is burning. And the look on her face, that actress really sells it because it made me like uncomfortable, how incredibly like just destroyed. She looked as all this is happening. Helen starts grabs the baby and starts pushing her way through the flames, her hair catching on fire, and as she pushes out of the pire, this is one of the most fascinating parts of the movie and there's no candy man in it at all. She gets out of there holding the baby. People run to her aid and put her out, but she's already burned very badly, and her hair was on fire, which is a fascinating element because that is a very old folklore concept, the idea that hair is literally flames. They put her out and she just holds the baby out and Anne Marie comes and grabs the kid, and you know, has this moment as this woman is dying and I'm not trying to make it that way, but like such a white savior moment though, like the she finally did the things she wanted to do, which was, yeah, in some way or another, save these

1:26:36 people from themselves. I meant to mention earlier, but I got sidetracked. When they're first talking about going to Cabrini Green, it felt like one of those older movies about like going to the Amazon. Oh yeah, you know. It just felt like they were talking about going to another world and how dangerous it could be, and like, oh, but what information we could gain stuff, which I just think is worth mentioning too, Like such a strange combination. One of those Mondo movies. He likes. I love me some Mondo movies. But so, now she's died, and as as she's died, we reveal a new mural on the wall, and it's of her with the flaming hair and the baby being saved. Yeah, which suggests that she has in some way become a legend in and of herself, but as a martyr rather than a tragic death I guess, or wrong, you know, wrong being righted or something. She's she's a tragic death. And we then go to her funeral and the funeral is you know, all of her academics and her ex husband, well I guess I mean X now because she's dead, they're all you know, they're paying their respects. But then a very like picturesque but extremely unexpected thing happens, which we'll talk about right after this. So as the funeral appeared to

1:28:13 be wrapping up, all of the people of Cabrini Green come in in like a gigantic procession. Yeah, I beautiful, it's incredible, And and there's basically it's like basically all white people at the initial funeral and then this procession of people that clearly don't fit in there, you know, like I mean, but I think that's juxtaposition is important because it makes a point that like these folks left there where they're air quotes supposed to be to pay their respects to somebody who made a difference in their community, you know. And it's led of course by Anne Marie holding Anthony, and it's and it's awesome, and it's also you see her walking with Jake and it's awesome. They all just walk in this giant line to one by one pay their respects to Helen who saved Anthony and possibly, as they understand it, killed candy Actually, no, it's not. Possibly, she killed candy Man, the candy man they were actually afraid of.

1:29:16 She got rid of him, Yeah, because she got rid of the gang leader. And by saving Anthony, that to them cleared her of the wrongdoing of killing the baby. Yes, so to them, all she did was help. Yeah, and gave her life to save Anthony. Is no, No, that totally makes sense. And I hadn't I you know, it's pretty easy to pick up on them paying their respects because she saved Anthony, but I hadn't quite drawn the connection of that. She really did get rid of the real candy Man, which is pretty pretty important for all of them, because again, he was responsible for some very real murders and people.

1:30:01 Were afraid of him. Yeah, clearly, because and this falls into my point that before Helen's around, candy Man technically kills nobody that we're aware of. Yeah, like the little mentally challenged boy in the past. We have no idea what happened there, and anything could have happened. It could have just not even happened. It was a little story Jake had heard from like the whispers of other latchkey kids, So you know, there's that. Then there's the element of the story with the guy and the girl who aren't even in Chicago. They're not even in Cabrini Green, They're nowhere near where this story is taking place. They're they're just out there in the world. Yeah. So yeah, Like because at first I was thinking, like, you know, she could have you know, killed Candy Man, but no, by their perspective, she got rid of Candy Man entirely. She freed them. And I can't even imagine what would have been going through Amory's head when she thought that, or when potentially Helen did kill her dog and her baby had disappeared. I mean, who knows what's going on there? Yeah, yeah, I really don't know. So yeah, it's it's really an incredible sequence, Like what were you thinking when you first watched it? And all of a sudden they just look over and then there's this, because I want to overstate, I need to state it properly.

1:31:17 The line is like two hundred feet long. It's an incredibly long procession of people two by two walking up in their black clothes to pay their respects. It's a really beautiful shot. It really is. When the first time I watched it, I I was incredibly moved, not just by you know, not just by like how many people were there, but like you said, how out of place they were and how far they would have had to come just to pay their respects. Yes, you know, because that's that's the whole other side of town. You know, like like they said, you got to take the L train, Like, so here's a here's a community of people that were so touched by her self sacrifice that they were willing to make that tremendous journey all together to say goodbye. That's pretty that's pretty powerful, and it it goes to show like it was. It was kind of to me. It was kind of showing those downtrodden communities how close knit they have to be in order to in order to survive.

1:32:39 You know, when all you have to depend on is each other, you really have to depend on each other. And they were kind of demonstrating that that in the way that Helen had sacrificed herself, they were willing to put themselves out there too. See. I think that was I think that was pretty pretty good. And yeah, and it was the the heartfelt gratitude that the people from Cabrini Green were expressing was just so totally different from kind of this sterile sort of grief that her husband and all the other academics were displaying, like they were just kind of giving like accolades of like she was just some some person, you know, it's too bad, brilliant, yeah, yeah, but to the people of Cabrini Green, like she was an actual hero. And there's a big difference there.

1:33:41 Absolutely. And now we go to the last scene of the film, which helps tie the movie up in a nice horror movie bow, but also could potentially say a lot about maybe my new burgeoning theory. As we are now back in the apartment that was originally Helen's and her husband's, you know, and he's there with Stacy. He's sitting on the toilet like hiding from his girlfriend, and he is so like monstrously grief stricken and guilt ridden. He's he's miserable, and she's like talking to him through the do are you okay? So like yeah, I'm fine. He just like wants to be alone, and she's like making dinner and getting a big knife out and he is just like distraught, trying to like control his misery and finally he looks in the mirror and he says Helen's name four times, then turns the light off and says her name a fifth time, and she appears at the mirror and then behind him, which, by the way, is always how those mirror legends work, because they appear in the mirror first and then they're behind you. Yeah, And she just cuts him from groin to gullet with a hook. She's holding candy Man's hook. He gets murdered, and then Stacy discovers his bloody body in the bathtub, and she's got the knife. We see that mural of the woman dressed in white with her hair ablaze in Candyman's layer. The music swells, and all I can think

1:35:14 as the film ends is maybe she replaced candy Man. Maybe that thing that because one of the ideas, so one of the ideas I'm playing with the idea of candy Man, is that what if candy Man is kind of like what Freddy Krueger was like in a New Nightmare, there is no Freddy Krueger. There's an ancient in the case of Nightmare elm Street, a New Nightmare, there's an ancient evil that just simply exists, and it takes the forms of things people are afraid of. Yeah, but yeah in Knight. Bmroren elm Street in The New Nightmare, the whole concept is that that gets captured in books and movies and things like that, and that the reason he's killing people for real is because they are no more Freddy movies and there's no outlet for that evil. Well what if it was kind of like that, But it's about the folklore, the power of folklore, so there really is no candy Man.

1:36:12 Candy Man is just this force of the fear and the whispers and the legend and you know, the the hearing something that goes bumping the night and feeling this eerie sense that you just you know what it was because it was the Boogeyman, it was Candid, it was Bobby Yaga, it was all these things, because you know Ombre del Saco Lanna, there are a million of them. So my thought is that in reality, all the folklore wants is to exist. Yes, the identity doesn't matter at all. And there's another thing that I want to mention that I skipped over when he toward the end that I think is very weird and interesting to interpret, and we'll get to that right after this. So at the end, right before the pyre, he starts saying, it was always you, Helen, it was always you. How do you take that, because that's what he says. He says, it was always you.

1:37:27 Do it was always you. What do you feel like he meant by that? I don't know, because for such a simple statement, there's so many ways that you could take it. If we were to run with your theory that Helen's just totally insane and Candy Man's always, you know, all in her head that. Or possessed by this folkloric concept that I literally just made up. But yeah, in that case, it could mean that it's always her because it's just been inside her. If we were to take Candy Man as being like an actual real entity, then that could mean that, you know, maybe the spirit of the woman that he fell in love with in the eighteen hundreds has come back as Helen, or they're in some way connected.

1:38:23 Yeah. I feel like that's what most people go with because it's a little bit more obvious. I'm not. That doesn't mean it's bad, yeah, yeah, because it's more in a romantic context, which there is a ton of romantic context and subtext to Helen and Candy Man. So I don't I don't want to make it sound like just because it's like, well, that would be the easiest interpretation. That doesn't mean it's wrong. No, it just makes yeah, one of many. So that's and I think that's what they were. If there is meant to be multiple layers to this, then they definitely wanted your first thought to be that he's referring to them romantically, Yes, because it's very clear that that there's a romantic pull of some sort. So yeah, yeah.

1:39:04 That's something. Also, Yeah, I just think about it's always you, Helen. I mean, could it literally be literal as in, it was always you doing these things? You were you were the one killing yeah. Yeah, or that you know, this whole concept of the folklore staying alive was always with you, Helen. Because I do wonder if she had if she hadn't discovered the Candy Man murderer guy and had just written her paper, would Candy Man have ever shown himself to her, because she would have helped to establish the legend lore. Yeah, but instead she was going to potentially demystify the legend and Candy Man can't have that. I don't know. I don't know, or is there you know, or is it predetermined?

1:39:50 Is it predestination or something that I don't know. I mean, that's where we're digging really to try and find something. But that's kind of my thought. Yeah, yeah, is that maybe there is some kind of of a folklore being and all it wants to do is keep existing. I tend to go toward that theory just because that seems to be especially when she initially meets Candy Man, that seems to be his whole m o. His whole goal is just he wants to use her to strike fear back into the hearts of the residents of Cabrini Green so that he can continue existing through their subconscious.

1:40:39 Well, and that's only after she ends the tyranny of the guy who was pretending to be him, Right, So, I mean, I'm just saying so like he's he's a there's a catalyst to why he's doing it too. It's not like he just picked her because she's like chilling doing stuff. No, he picked her because she's the one who ended the legacy initially, Yeah, ended the fear exactly. Yeah, Candy Man likes the guy going around killing you know, people with the hook, because it kept it kept the idea of Candy Man alive. Yeah, and and again, like even if, even if the legend of Candy Man like had been under the surface at Cabrini Green, it is very clearly something that is woven deep into the tapestry of their subconscious because again there's a lot of the a lot of the graffiti and stuff that we see all across Cabrini Green, it references candy Man, it references sweets, It references you know, sweets.

1:41:36 For the sweet So even which is a romantic gesture statement, but it is. Yeah, there and and again when they were first investigating, when Helen and Bernadette were first investigating Cobrina Green, and they she crawls through the mural of Candy Man, and she finds the offerings to Candy Man. Like again, the residents have kept Candy Man alive through these stories and through these gestures, through the different things that they do.

1:42:16 Yeah, no, I would have to agree. And so here's where I get really deep in the in the woods. So when I was a boy watching this movie, and I don't know, I might have even been eight or nine years old when I first saw it on TV. It might have been on HBO or something. I remember watching it with my older sister one time, and when Helen came out of the mirror at the end, my childhood interpretation was that she became bloody Mary. That was my childhood interpretation was she became bloody Mary. Now, obviously when I watched it all, I'm like, well, she didn't, I mean, because you had to say Helen, yeah, you know, but she became bloody Mary. But that's where it gets really interesting because I love the bloody Mary mythos because no one can agree where it came from, and there are so many options. Yeah, I mean, you know, there's Elizabeth Bathory, which wasn't even named Mary. There there was Mary Queen, I think it was Mary, Queen of Scott's might have been one of them because she oh yeah yeah, because she she ordered tons of death, tons of killings with her armies and stuff. Also had like never been in Scotland for real. That's a whole all other thing.

1:43:29 But and then Mary Worth, which is what a lot of people like because Mary Worth was like a burned as a witch. There's a lot of elements there. But what's what's most interesting and something that made me curious when I think about Candy Man as a piece of folklore, is there are versions of the bloody Mary myth where you summon her and she kills you or whatever. There are versions where it's just saying bloody Mary, bloody Mary, bloody Mary, and you you're dead meat, you know. But there are also versions where the only way that anything bad happens is if you antagonize Mary. Okay. So this is something that I mean, I know this stuff, not even just from reading books, but from growing up and loving these stupid sleepover stories and stuff like that.

1:44:22 So that's what makes me wonder because with Candy Man, it's like he was murdered wrongfully over love, and now when you say his name, he comes to mirror and kills you. And they do expand in the sequels on like why it's a mirror and stuff, but that's not really important to this specific conversation. Mirrors have always been considered like a spiritual portal. Yeah, yeah, and almost all Anglo Saxon conjuring involved mirrors, yeah, tons of it. In fact, that's something people have mentioned about this is that in African American cultures, mirrors aren't a conjuring tool. Generally, they have other things that come from their tip to Africa and Catholicism. And depending on where how they got to America in the first place, if they came through the Caribbean verses, if they came through wherever. Okay, So that's one to consider. So when you look at bloody Mary, there is a there supposedly a more devious way to call upon her that guarantees you a truly horrific death.

1:45:25 And I'll tell you about it right after this. So when it comes to Bloody Mary number one, the name bloody Mary is pejorative, so you are to an extent insulting her by calling her bloody Mary. So I guess in that way that could be what's pissing Candy Man off as you're calling him the name that the people who killed him called him. But when you dig deeper into the Bloody Mary myth, one of the most chilling ways to do it was to be alone in a room with a mirror and instead of saying bloody Mary, you say marry Worth, I killed your baby five times.

1:46:22 That was one of the versions that was going around you'd say, Meryworth, I killed your baby, because the whole thing is that Maryworth is angry because her baby was taken from her. Oh and supposedly that would guarantee horrible death. Because it should also be mentioned there are all kinds of party games from the early nineteen hundreds where it's like you look in a mirror and you'll see the face of the man you're going to marry, and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, all kinds of things, all those divination games. That's the exact term, Yeah, divination games. And meanwhile, we have candy Man, which I kind of answered my own questions. I realized, like, I guess candy Man's a pejorative, so that's why he comes. When you say candy Man, he cut you're pissing him off. But the bloody Mary thing, Like I just remember when I first heard like Maryworth, I killed your baby, I was like, holy shit, that sounds like that sounds like how you get got, yeah, by by a demon. So anyway, those are my my basic thoughts about candy Man and stuff like that. And yeah, and Helen could be you know, it could all be real, or she could be truly insane in kind of doing the bidding for whatever it is that is candy Man.

1:47:30 That could be as well. The story about the couple in Indiana may have never happened. It was clearly a my cousin knew a guy at the Burger king whose you know, ex wife was best friends with the guy. Yeah, that kind of thing. So that I don't know, and I just know that I love the picture they painted very efficiently in Candy Man. Because it's not a super long movie. It's thick with mythos and atmosphere, and I just think it's a really great addition to your Halloween lineup, especially if you haven't watched it in a while, because the visuals are stunning. The performances are truly excellent. Mmmmmm yeah, what do you have to say, Well.

1:48:13 It's a beautiful movie. Again. I love how gothic the shots are of the architecture, even when they're in you know, this rundown tenement building and everything's crumbling around them. The mural like the wall with the mural of Candy Man with his mouth open and this you know, big empty room. They filmed it in such a way that it feels like the inside of a cathedral. Yeah, like it it feels like there's a reverence to it despite being run down and decrepit. And the soundtrack is also very gothic. It's got, you know, a lot of organs and stuff going on in it.

1:48:57 It's not at all what you would generally expect from slasher film, which is very refreshing and very nice. It makes Candy Man himself feel more classy as a movie villain. Yeah, I could see that he's just got a lot of class to him, which I really like, you know, whereas you know, Freddy Krueger's kind of crass and gold and you know, but it's it's a very fun dichotomy as far as you know, movie villains go, especially considering because Freddy Krueger and Candy Man both deal with the realm of the subconscious. It's very interesting how they're both so different but so similar. And I really do like the the train of thought behind the fact that Candy Man exists in our subconscious and that he gains his power from us just believing in him, and again, very similar to Freddy Krueger. But whereas you know, in Nightmare on Elm Street, they're kind of able to stop believing him.

1:50:09 In believing in him and take away the power in Candy Man. She just completely falls head over heels into believing him and gives him all of the power, which I think is very very interesting. And Candy Man being a seducer is is a relatively unusual mentality for a for a slasher villain or a horror movie villain, aside from like Pinhead. Yeah, and even Pinhead, he's he's a seducer in a very unusual way because he is saying like you're going to suffer forever and all this shit. Yeah yeah, And Candy Man is seductive, I mean without a doubt. I mean like when he starts talking and she's like looking at him all hypnotized.

1:50:53 You know, it could very easily turn into an early nineties Calvin Klein at Obsession by Calvin Klein. So you know, I think it's uh, it's really carved its own niche. I want to revisit the Candyman sequel remake from a few years back, because I liked it fine when it came out. I feel like it was missing a lot of that artfulness that that really kind of made candy the first candy Man click because it was a success of the box I was called eight million dollars, made twenty six million at the house. I was very successful. People were crazy about it. It was it was huge on home video, and Candyman was being spoken of with Freddy and Jason almost immediately. So yeah, he was very well taken to by horror movie audiences.

1:51:39 That's good. That's good. So with all that being said, we're going to be wrapping up October next week with one more film for cutting Deep, and then we'll be back a couple times in November, a couple times in December. But we're we're going a little extra hard for October because why not everything else I've gone extra hard on. But do you want to do you want to tell everybody what next week's movie is? Yeah, because you and I we had we had a plan about how October was going to pan out, and then as we were watching Candy Man, I think it was right before we put it on, you turned and you looked to me and you basically said, Hey, the plan we had, let's change it. So I think now we're going to be doing the Blair Witch Project.

1:52:28 Yes, a movie that I think it's funny that it's polarizing because I just find that movie scary. It is scary, and I'm really excited because I bought God I'm a nerd, I bought the import Australian Blu Ray I believe was Australian that has the fully remastered and director approved version and a fully remastered director approved original cut which was a little bit longer the one they showed at film festivals. Oo, so we'll have to decide which one we're going to watch for it. But yeah, so make sure to check out the Blair Witch Project before we come back next Friday to help make sure your spooky season stays spooky.

1:53:08 But now, I guess all that's left to say is thank you guys so much for joining us on another episode of cutting Deep into Horror. I hope you enjoyed talking or hearing us talk about Candyman as much as we enjoyed watching it and recounting it to you. If you enjoyed what you heard here, headweklyspooky dot com for all your spooky needs all October long. We're doing a show every day, so there's something to scare you at Weekly Spooky. Just find it on your favorite podcasting app and if you love what we're doing, head to Weeklyspooky dot com slash join, where you can support us for as little as one dollar a month, or head to savorista dot com and buy yourself some coffee with a promo code Weekly or Spooky geez I am tired at checkout, Rachel.

1:53:53 Anything you want to say before we get out of. Here, Ah, be careful of the bees. Okay, empty man H