Editorials
The Scariest Scene in Bernard Rose’s ‘Candyman’ Shatters a Horror Taboo [Scene Screams]
Scene Screams is a recurring column that spotlights the scenes in horror that make us scream, whether through fear, laughter, or tears. It examines the most memorable, and often scariest, scenes in horror and what it is about them that makes them get under our skin.
It takes about forty minutes into Bernard Rose‘s Candyman before the eponymous boogeyman, played by Tony Todd, makes his first physical appearance. Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen) puts herself at risk in her determined pursuit of the Candyman legend to the point that it summons him, prompting him to take action to preserve his legacy of fear. The first confrontation between the pair takes place nearly halfway through the runtime, but Candyman’s looming presence from the very beginning ensures that wait is never felt.
In true urban legend style, the stories told about Candyman precede him in such a way that we’re terrified of this figure long before he arrives in the flesh. That includes the unnerving story told mere minutes before his arrival, culminating in the movie’s most unsettling scene.
Helen returns alone to Cabrini-Green to further interrogate Anne-Marie McCoy (Vanessa Estelle Williams) on the Candyman myth. Anne-Marie isn’t home, however. Instead, Helen finds young Jake (DeJuan Guy) sitting outside, who’s skeptical of the neighborhood outsider. After some gentle reassurances and promises, Helen convinces Jake to open up about prevalent Candyman fears. More specifically, he tells her a story about a grisly encounter that instilled his fears of Candyman.
Jake takes her to a public restroom and recounts a gruesome story that occurred there. He details a mother who sends her boy to that restroom while she shops in the store across the street. Shortly after, his piercing screams can be heard, and one brave man ventures inside to check on the boy. Seconds later, he runs back out; his hair instantly turned white from fear.
It’s here that the scene cuts from Jake’s solemn storytelling to the gruesome aftermath. The camera pans across a blood-splattered bathroom, a boy wailing on the floor for his mother while clutching his bloodied crotch, then to a toilet smeared and doused in more of his blood.
“They found ‘it’ floating in the toilet.”
The story prompts Helen to investigate the bathroom herself, its walls smeared in feces and that same toilet infested with bees. Rose gives no reprieve for her or the audience, and she’s punished for her curiosity first through a beating, then by summoning Candyman. But it’s Jake’s story that resonates the strongest.
It’s not Helen’s harrowing bathroom encounter that chills, but the implications of Jake’s story. Early in the film, at the beginning of Helen’s deep submersion in the origins of an urban legend, she explains Candyman’s believers to be “attributing the daily horror of their lives to a mythical figure.” Jake is a young boy living in a dangerous neighborhood. A neighborhood where Helen’s colleague Bernadette (Kasi Lemmons) is afraid to come near, citing gunshots that occur daily there. Yet Jake demonstrates deep-seated fear for Candyman, displayed with a maturity that implies his life experiences aged him at a more rapid rate than most children his age.
That’s exacerbated by the very adult story he tells- a child his age suffering most violently, his genitals severed by a hook. Not even the adults in this retelling could handle the sight.
This scene most effectively precedes Candyman’s arrival. More than the clueless and brazen babysitter from the opening sequence. Arguably more than the dinner scene in a restaurant where Candyman’s tragic backstory gets revealed.
It’s the scene that sees a child forced far too soon to confront death. The dread gets compounded in layers, first by Guy’s grave performance in this scene, then by the grotesque visuals of what transpired. Killing or maiming a child makes for one of horror’s biggest taboos, and Rose shatters it with a gut-wrenching scene.
It speaks volumes about the setting, and the power of Candyman’s legend.
Jake’s story hits home the message that no one can escape Candyman’s wrath, not even an innocent. This scene doesn’t just build Candyman’s terrifying presence, but it also foreshadows the kidnapping of baby Anthony while raising the stakes. If Candyman won’t hesitate to maim a child, what chance does a baby have?
Horror was thriving so well in the 1980s that movies like Pen Densham’s The Kiss (1988) would understandably get lost in the shuffle, only to then gain their fans later on in life. Even still, this one Canadian-American curio has had a more challenging time than others, as far as contemporary reevaluations go, which is very likely due to the movie’s limited availability—at least as of this write-up.
However, the scarceness of The Kiss, while a bit annoying, makes it like catnip for ‘80s horror completists everywhere. Hopefully, a lot of them will walk away satisfied after watching this hidden gem.
Even though The Kiss was intended as the first of several horror collaborations between Astral Pictures and TriStar, as well as the first feature produced by Densham, Richard B. Lewis and John Watson’s Trilogy Entertainment Group, it ended up being the only one produced from that former union. Once the movie was released, TriStar’s distribution jitters—they opted for a regional rollout—did the $6-million flick no favors. TriStar’s cold feet toward horror releases have been well noted, but The Kiss still did a tad better than Night of the Creeps (1986), another genre outing that flopped due to its regional opening.
Shot in Montreal, but set in Albany, New York, The Kiss—which was still called The Host just a few months before its October premiere—concerns an average middle-class family and their forthcoming situation. The uncanny problem in store for them was, in fact, set in motion some years earlier. As that hot and dusty flashback to the Belgian Congo shows, a familial curse was set upon the two Dunbar sisters well before Meredith Salenger’s teenage character was born.
Meredith Salenger, Nicholas Kilbertus and Mimi Kuzyk in The Kiss
The Kiss, which was based on a story by co-writer Stephen Volk (Ghostwatch) and penned by both Volk and Tom Ropelewski, has the outward appearance of The Stepfather (1987). This movie, though, is anything but a gender-flipped retread of that classic domestic disturber. For starters, The Kiss is far less grounded in reality—that much is clear from its unsettling opening scene. There, a trusting girl (Priscilla Mouzakiotis) is the victim of her own deceptive aunt (Céline Lomez); the movie’s titular act, and the story’s first shock, becomes the means of transferring an ancient evil from one host to another.
In the present day, Salenger’s role of Amy Halloran, a religious schoolgirl, is dealt a harsh blow in life once her mother, Hilary Halloran née Dunbar (Pamela Collyer), suddenly dies in a freak accident. But rather than a complete stranger sweeping the Halloran widower (Nicholas Kilbertus) off his feet some months later, Joanna Pacula’s character is that chosen temptress. Here, Pacula plays the grown-up version of the afflicted girl last seen in the movie’s opener. Since Amy’s mother is insistent about there being no reunion between estranged sisters, and she even contemplates buying a gun shortly before her tragic demise, it’s presumable that Aunt Felice poses a threat to her family.
The Kiss isn’t a movie ever too concerned about its own predictability. The audience is indeed often one step ahead of the story here, but also keep in mind how every one of those steps is loud. Take, for instance, the death of Amy’s mother; the Halloran matriarch goes out in garish, gruesome fashion, as a supernaturally commandeered truck sends Collyer’s character through a store window first, then leaves her one leg short. The directorial enthusiasm truly comes out in horrific moments such as these.
The Kiss is always sure to revel in its characters’ ills and misfortunes. So if the plot doesn’t impress, then its lurid parts should. Amy’s mother’s exit scene was proof of an eager, first-time horror director proving his worth. Then, bestie Heather (Sabrina Boudot) survives to tell the tale of a bizarre escalator mishap that, despite showing relatively less gore, spikes viewers’ empathy meter. The wilder bits of this movie, however, commence with that inevitable hookup between Felice and Amy’s bewitched father; their kitchen coitus is paralleled by Amy’s feverish classroom terror. The outcome there is a disquieting cross-cut of sex magic and a young woman’s menstrual onset plus hallucinations.
Sabrina Boudot in The Kiss
From foam appliances to bladders, that parade of special effects in The Kiss casts its own spell on the audience. Felice’s familiar, a visibly malevolent cat, was realized here with several models, some more articulate than others. Admittedly, the demon cat’s not as convincing as most of the effects here, but accepting that artifice, as opposed to fighting it, will make the whole experience way more enjoyable. As for the makeup used to manifest Felice’s inner villainy, it is more minimal and subtle than one might like; yet the work done to turn Pacula into an antithesis of herself is nonetheless compelling.
The otherworldly perils and dreadful goings-on wouldn’t work half as well as they do in The Kiss without the story’s contrast effect. Finding frights in picturesque, extremely ordinary settings was something that took off in the ‘80s, thanks to that sweeping shift to locales like the suburbs. And Amy’s home, a replica of a real Montreal suburban house, is the ideal battleground for any proper good-versus-evil story. It’s also prime real estate for this movie’s satanic panic-inspired horrors.
Because of their ostensibly similar plots, The Kiss has been compared to The Exorcist (1973). Except in Densham’s movie, the sinister, non-Christian entity targeting a teen girl lies within something less apparent and, perhaps, more devastating upon its exposure. To an outsider, Pacula’s Aunt Felice is too beautiful and unobjectionable to ever suspect of being a monster. More suspicious is how quickly she rips into the fabric of the Halloran home. Felice’s mere presence upsets the “texture of family life,” according to the director.
The demon cat in The Kiss
Taking out Amy’s mother and best friend, and distracting her father, would suggest The Kiss is playing by a different set of rules. It is initially leaving its adolescent target unsupported in a rather grim scenario. In contrast, though, this story offers up a surrogate parent who does her best to fill in the holes of Amy’s eroding home life. Mimi Kuzyk does good work as that family friend and doctor, Brenda, who guides the lost child without also steering her in any one direction; she is naturally skeptical of Amy’s accusations until it’s almost too late to do anything about them. So although The Kiss does an admirable job of undoing the main character’s support system, it never leaves her without a lifeline. This dark movie, in spite of everything that’s transpired, doesn’t deprive itself of light and hope.
The Kiss is a potent mélange of familiar ideas. If not for the director’s surprise flair for horror, though, the movie would have been less effective. What a shame that Pen Densham didn’t continue with the genre. As for Joanna Pacula, she is, too, owed credit as the wicked vixen opposite Meredith Salenger’s pitiable Amy; she never fails to be unsettling in her role. Pacula makes Aunt Felice a sexy yet intimidating character.
For horror that steadily doles out madness and menace, while also delivering a flashy and ghastly conclusion, The Kiss is certain to please. Yes, it’s cheesy all the way, but most favorably, everyone involved plays everything straight. That kind of commitment goes a long way with this movie.
The Kiss
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