 It's been almost 30 years since the original Candy Man came out, and now we have a sequel, which is also called Candy Man because stupid titling. There was already sequels to the original, but we're kind of doing a Halloween thing here, we're just moving past it. So today I want to talk about the popular one, the original, and this new one. Compare them, see what works, what doesn't, and eventually crown a winner. It's 1992's Candy Man versus 2021's Candy Man on Movie Feuds. First thing I want to point out is 2021's foolish omission of Christina Aguilera's Candy Man. Why that song wasn't included, I'll never know, but shame on them. With that out of the way, let's dive right into these characters. 1992's Candy Man follows Helen Lyle under shitty unfaithful husband Trevor, who's banging a college chick behind her back. I mean, that college student can rock a mean Brawler's t-shirt look, but she can't act worth a shit. Stick with Helen, she was a good woman, she was trying to get to the bottom of a mystery taking place featuring the Candy Man, and this Candy Man is really an everlasting gobstopper because he will do the same thing again to Anthony. Helen and his best friend Bernadette are really trying to find their meal ticket, their claim to fame as journalists, and Cabrini Green is their answer. Or I guess, at least they thought it was. There's an urban myth surrounding the neighborhood of a Candy Man who comes out when you say his name five times in a mirror, with the lights off preferably, and then you die. I just rewatched this movie and I'm pretty sure no one ever says Candy Man five times. It's like four times, sometimes other people do it with you. There's a lot of stuff here that doesn't really quite add up, but I think at the end of the day, the amount of times don't really matter. It's just if you believe in this Candy Man, this gentleman of sweets, that he will arrive and give you your prize, which is a razor blade hidden in a wrapper. It's actually not. It's a hook. It's a hook hand that he uses to cut you and kill you with. The whole Candy Man shtick is just bizarre to me. It really doesn't play out in any meaningful way. He doesn't like target the children at all. There's like one mention of Candy in the original film, which is some wrappers with the razor blades in it, but that's not even the thing. It has nothing to do with the character. It's just how this myth is taking place over time. My girl Helen has a bit of a scully thing going on from X-Files. She's got the look. She's got the determination. She's got that strong will that says, logically, there's no way there's a dude busting through a wall killing you as he's conjured. That's ludicrous. That's silly nonsense. These people are just coming up with excuses for why they aren't getting ahead in life, why they aren't succeeding. And that's what makes Candy Man such a like a smart piece. This isn't your typical slasher. It may not be as popular, but it's also got a little bit more going on under the hood. This thing's telling us a tale of a man who was brutally tortured by townsfolk years and years ago just for being black. Obviously, this is a tale that continues to be told in today in modern cinema more so than ever before as people are waking up if it were. They cut off his hand. They throw a honeycomb on him and he's stung to death by bees and then for good measure they burn him alive. So this man comes back from the dead and haunts and torments and kills his fellow neighborhood people? No, that's just what some basic folks would have you believe. The man's dead. The myth, the legend lives on. It's manifested, it's conjured. What makes us such an interesting concept is we've learned over time that our ancestors' baggage, their pain, their anguish, their suffering actually does get passed on. And so that's really what the Candy Man is. It's the oppression of black people, it's the oppression of poor, impoverished people manifesting through this evil, manifesting through memory, because if you remember all the injustice, that injustice comes back and haunts you, that's brilliant. And that's exactly what happens to Anthony. He's drawn to this stuff because he draws literally this stuff, actually paints it to be fair, but still he's all about showing the oppression, all about showing the systemic racism that's alive and well today. But he's a starving artist and he needs his next big showcase piece. That's where Cabrini Green comes in. The now gentrified Chicago neighborhood is calling to him and when he arrives, jump in a fence, taking some photos, a friend shows up in the form of a bee stinging his hand and that's the Candy Man saying, I'm back bitch, spread the word. I am gonna get into spoilers here, so if you care about Candy Man spoilers, you know, walk away from this, but these two films are very much tied. You have to really see the first to appreciate the second because it plays off of it so much. Now the film does spend a fair amount of time, arguably too much time, explaining the first movie over via these Harry Potter deathly hollow retellings of sorts, using marionette paper characters. It looks beautiful, a little bit of haunting imagery there, but it plays out too much. It's like, okay, if you're really that interested in what happened in the first one, watch the first movie. Why Anthony though? There's already people living in the neighborhood still, why choose him? Well, that's where a twist comes into play that I didn't see coming and I was actually very impressed with. You see in the first film, a little child is saved by a Helen who was kidnapped by the Candy Man and he chose this child to grow up one day, paint pictures and spread his word and that man is Anthony. His mother Ann Marie McCoy is in both films and she has aged beautifully. My god, she's a good looking woman. The actress's name is Vanessa Williams, which threw me off because I was looking for the other Vanessa Williams, the singer slash actress dynamite combo. No, this is a different actress. What made the first film so interesting for first time watchers is you didn't actually know if the Candy Man was an urban myth, a folk tale of sorts, or if it was just a dude going around killing people because we find out as Helen's doing her investigative journaling. Is that right investigative journaling? It doesn't sound right. She's doing her investigation. I could have just said that. As Helen's doing her investigation, we're leaving all this in, you need to see my cuts and scrapes and bruises and flubs and fails. She finds out that the building she's in and the one that's over at Cabrini Green have these false walls. You can, you can just pull off the mirror in the bathroom and just poke your hand right through to the other side to an empty room. And even as she starts to pull at the threads, she's becoming undone herself. Anthony's girlfriend Brianna, who runs the art gallery, isn't too keen on his new piece. And his art is suffering a bit. It's a little on the nose. There's no subtlety there. In the new film, we know basically everything going in, although the Anthony twist was awesome. I appreciated that. But there really isn't anything else bubbling under the surface in the sequel. Although I will say I really did like the idea that there was multiple generations of candy men, individuals that were wrongfully accused or just accused for no other reason other than, you know, people are dicks and will be mean to others that are different than them. Brianna's character I felt had too much screen time as well. Actress did a fine job, but they kind of go into her history with her dad and it goes nowhere at all. Almost like they cut out half of her storyline, but left the other half in for reasons I can't possibly imagine. Had they pulled back on her stuff, the runtime would have been a little more digestible for me. As it stands, I think it's about 15, 20 minutes too long. Whereas the original I was never checking my watch that I don't wear, but pretending to for the sake of the sentence. Visually speaking, 2021's film is beautiful. I have no issues with it at all. How it's filmed is very well done. There's these reverse bird's eye cams where you're looking at the bottom up at the sky, at the buildings as they're kind of ominously going by. There's a creepiness to it. Where the original did the opposite, they had the, you know, the pre drone shots down at the city scapes. And unbeknownst to the common folk, there's a suffering at large, waiting to be recognized in the form of Candyman. Of course, because 2021 has that nice beautiful sheen and polish on it, I would be foolish to say the original looks better. It's definitely aged. Hasn't aged poorly, but there's a little bit of a cheapness to it when you look at what's coming out now. I mean, the new film really is beautiful to look at. That said, some of the kills in the original blew me away. I had not seen the movie until just recently, so I kind of went in expecting a kind of campy retreat, but no, pleasantly surprised. There's a jump scare they do that's absolutely pathetic. There's maybe two of them. The first is where the shitty husband jumps onto the bed. It's like, it's like the loudest noise possible. All he did is jump on the bed. Otherwise, though, when they showed the mutilated dog, the decapitated dog, I thought, holy shit, we are all in it now. Blood everywhere, helens freak, you know, rightfully so. We got a crib soaked in blood. I mean, it's nightmarish stuff. It's good stuff. Plus the hook dangling off that stubby meat flesh arm just grows to look at, but awesome at the same time. Tony Todd plays the Candyman. That voice is phenomenal. He just, just the bass in it, that deep bass and he just stands there so, you know, sinisterly, so creepily, usually from afar with that hook hanging down, ready for business, ready to open up shop on your face. And they bring it back in the new movie too. He's still doing it all these years later. No Helen though, which is, I mean, I guess they just kind of ignored the fact that she also transcended and became her own nightmare, although it's not quite as cool to say Helen five times in the mirror doesn't have quite the same mystique to it. The kills in 2021 are the highlight for me. Really creative stuff going on. They use some fun camera angles. They use great perspectives. The scene in the bathroom or the four or five girls get taken out. Awesome stuff. The art gallery did some really cool new things I haven't seen before with, where Candyman's like hovering around. There's bees on the opposite side of the mirror. As for the scare factor, I don't think either movie scary at all. I've found the first to be a little bit more, I guess, chilling and unsettling than the new one. I think because we're in 2021 and even though there are a lot of practical effects in this, there is a fair amount of CG trickery going on too. And that does pull me out a little bit, so it's hard to get scared when that's going on. That awesome score from the original does return in 21. They don't overuse it. It's a really well produced film. Both of them are. I don't have any real negatives to say. Looking at the pros and cons of each that I pointed out, I have to go with the original. The story is just more interesting. It's more layered. It's more nuanced. I liked Helen. I liked her storyline. I like the struggles she went through. She basically went insane and then came back from it. And for that reason, the original wins. I think I've talked enough. I've said my piece. Now I'd love to hear from you. Leave a comment telling me which one you liked better and why. Like the video if you had some fun. Subscribe as I put out a lot of movie feuds and regular movie conversation videos every single week. Oh, yes. And remember, this is more than just reviews. This is movie feuds. 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