Five Fun Facts About Candyman (1992)
Writer/director Bernard Rose’s modern reimagining of Clive Barker’s short story “The Forbidden,” Candyman, broke new ground with its high interest in social issues and remains a grim and poignant body horror masterpiece. Atmospheric, thought-provoking, and deeply chilling, the film makes a powerful statement about the historical pain Black Americans have had to endure since they were forced upon this land, and it cemented Tony Todd’s titular Candyman as one of horror’s most iconic villains. Since Nia DaCosta’s Candyman has us buzzing, we thought we’d serve up some fun facts about the film that started it all.
Eddie Murphy was considered for Candyman.
That’s right, Candyman was almost a very different film. Eddie Murphy was the original choice for the role of Candyman, but was deemed too short at 5'9". They chose Tony Todd for his height at 6'5". The Candyman team also just couldn’t afford Murphy, who was one of the biggest movie stars in the world at the time. This ultimately worked out for the best because it’s hard to imagine Candyman being portrayed by anyone other than the baritone-voiced Tony Todd.
Todd had an immediate attraction to the script. He commented, “I knew when I read it, and I saw the bees and that stuff, I knew things like that haven't been filmed before, so that was interesting. And I've always wanted to find my own personal Phantom of the Opera.”
The actual Cabrini-Green housing project was used in the film.
Clive Barker’s original short story, “The Forbidden,” takes place in a fictional British housing project called Bob's Corner in the late 70's, but Bernard Rose updated the setting to 90's Chicago and the real life slum of Cabrini Green, which was actually location used in the production.
Originally opened in 1942, the property garnered a notorious reputation over the years for being a haven for violence, drugs, gangs, and other criminal activities. The history of the housing project would find it’s way into the film’s narrative, and it made sense for Rose to film at the location to capture the right atmosphere.
“I went to Chicago on a research trip to see where it could be done and I was shown around by some people from the Illinois Film Commission and they took me to Cabrini-Green,” Rose said. “And I spent some time there and I realized that this was an incredible arena for a horror movie because it was a place of such palpable fear. And rule number one when you're making a horror movie is set it somewhere frightening. And the fear of the urban housing project, it seemed to me, was actually totally irrational because you couldn't really be in that much danger. Yes, there was crime there, but people were actually afraid of driving past it. And there was such an aura of fear around the place and I thought that was really something interesting to look into because it's sort of a kind of fear that's at the heart of modern cities. And obviously, it's racially motivated, but more than that—it's poverty motivated.”
The Cabrini-Green project was used for many exterior and interior (stairways and hallways) scenes, but in order to do so, the producers had to agree to use some of the project’s residents, including the ruling gang members, as extras.
All them bees were real — and they earned Tony Todd a fat bonus!
There’s no special effects here; all these bees that appear in the film are 100% real. There were reportedly over 200,000 bees used during the production, and they were breed specifically to appear on screen. They had to be exactly 12 hours old so they looked fully grown but didn’t have as powerful a stinger. Crew members were decked out in protective suits, but by the end of shooting, nearly all of them had gotten stung. Although, no one received more bee stings on set than Candyman actor Tony Todd.
"I negotiated a bonus of $1,000 for every sting during the bee scene," he told the Guardian. "And I got stung 23 times. Everything that's worth making has to involve some sort of pain."
Todd definitely earned that bonus. One infamous scene in the film required him to have a mouthful of bees, which, of course, is all real, too. He told TMZ that he wore a dental dam to keep the bees from sliding into his throat. It allegedly took half an hour for all of the bees to get into his mouth, and he recalled being "tranced out" when he let all of them out of his mouth.
Virgina Madsen, who plays Helen in the film, also had a fair amount of exposure to the bees, and she recounted that “They had this tiny ‘bee vacuum,’ which wouldn’t harm the bees. After the scene where the bees were all over my face and my head, it took both Tony and I 45 minutes just to get the bees off. That’s when it became difficult to sit still. It was cool though, I felt like a total badass doing it.”
Philip Glass did not dig the film.
Part of what makes the film so hypnotic and haunting is Philip Glass’ phenomenal score. Unfortunately, Glass didn’t dig the finished product. In fact, when he was composing the score, he envisioned a totally different film. According to Rolling Stone, “What he'd presumed would be an artful version of Clive Barker's short story ‘The Forbidden’ had ended up, in his view, a low-budget slasher.”
Although Glass initially felt disappointed and manipulated, his views have somewhat softened with the passing of time. He told Variety in 2014: “It has become a classic, so I still make money from that score, get checks every year.”
The film’s producers were worried it would be viewed as racist.
The producers of the film were so worried that the film would be criticized as racist because its villain was black and the film was set in an infamous urban housing project. They actually pushed Rose to sit down with the NAACP to ensure the waters were calm and ripple-free.
“I had to go and have a whole set of meetings with the NAACP, because the producers were so worried,” Rose told The Independent. “And what they said to me when they'd read the script was 'Why are we even having this meeting? You know, this is just good fun.' Their argument was 'Why shouldn't a black actor be a ghost? Why shouldn't a black actor play Freddy Krueger or Hannibal Lecter? If you're saying that they can't be, it's really perverse. This is a horror movie…”
Even then, some worries prevailed. At the time of the film’s release, Virginia Madsen said, "I was and am now worried about how people will respond. I don't think Spike Lee will like this film."
Despite the producer’s efforts, the film was still met with criticism from Black filmmakers, including Carl Franklin (Out of Time, Devil in a Blue Dress) and Reginald Hudlin (House Party, Boomerang, Marshall).
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