Horror Icons: Candyman

“They will say that I have shed innocent blood, but what’s blood for, if not for shedding?” - The Candyman.

I remember the first time I ever heard the voice behind that quote. I was traumatized for months after. The voice belonged to Daniel Robitaille aka the Candyman. He was created by famed horror master Clive Barker and elevated by filmmaker Bernard Rose. He is one of the greatest icons of horror and today is the 32 year anniversary of when he first hit the big screen.

Daniel Robitaille was born just after the civil war on the Esplanade plantation in New Orleans, Louisiana. He grew up living a very privileged childhood compared to most African Americans due to his father gaining wealth after creating a gadget that produced footwear in mass amounts during the Reconstruction Era. Robitaille gained his own sense of notoriety due to his talent as a painter. Eventually a confederate army colonel hired him paint pictures of his daughter, Caroline Sullivan.

Amidst the intimate setting of his painting, Daniel and Caroline became intimate. They fell in love, started having sex and Caroline became pregnant. When her father found out he hired a racist lynch mob to hunt Robitaille down. The mob chased him to the area that would later become the neighborhood of Cabrini-Green in Chicago, Illinois. When the mob caught up with him they sawed off his right hand and smeared honeycomb that they raided from an apiary all over his body. As bees swarmed his honey covered body the mob chanted the term “candyman” five times to Robitaille as the bees stung him to death.

Following his death, Robitaille was granted a spiritual medium in which he was given the power to appear to anyone who chanted his berated name of Candyman five times in a mirror. Immediately upon appearance he murders the person who summoned him.

When the Candyman was first introduced on the big screen on this day in 1992 we found him stalking a grad student named Helen Lyle who was working on a thesis with the purpose of dispelling him as a rumor of the inner city. Having hurt the credibility of his existence, Candyman seeks to claim Helen as his latest victim, as well as make her his soulmate in the afterlife, which becomes the reoccurring theme inflicted upon several other women with a link to Robitaille’s existence, in what becomes the Candyman series.

Candyman was first conceived in 1985 in Clive Barker’s “Books of Blood” series in the short story titled “The Forbidden”. When the original film was crafted in 1992 by filmmaker Bernard Rose and Clive Barker it was changed from Barker’s original Liverpool setting in the book to the African American inner city of Chicago.

What exactly is it that makes the Candyman so captivating? For starters, his origin story was unlike anything you had ever seen in the slasher genre before: a Black villain who was a victim of racism and became a reflection of the evil that killed him. Portrayed by the charismatic Tony Todd, Candyman wasn’t the typical slasher that horror fans were familiar with. He wasn’t quiet like Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees and he wasn’t a wisecracking jokester like Freddy Krueger or Chucky. Instead he was sophisticated and well spoken like another Clive Barker created icon, Pinhead from Hellraiser. Like Pinhead, Candyman also has to be summoned by his prey in order for him to kill.

“I am the writing on the wall. The whisper in the classroom. Without these things I am nothing, so now I must shed innocent blood” - Candyman.

Candyman’s motivation is also something that makes him stand out. Unlike most slashers who live to kill, Candyman kills to live. He’s not motivated by vengeance, he just wants to be loved and revered. This is all fed by his inflated sense of ego and self importance. He even refers to the people who believe in him as his congregation. Needing to kill to stay relevant is considerably understandable in his case considering that if he didn’t kill those who chant his name five times in a mirror then he would fade into oblivion.

Being a young Black male from the projects I think it’s safe to say Candyman struck the biggest chord with me more than any other slasher of horror. Candyman scared the crap out of me probably more than any other slasher because a young African American make from the inner city like myself knows this man. You even know the circumstances of the environment he was born from. I was traumatized and hooked (pun intended) on Candyman when I was first introduced to his story. To this day he is still one of my top favorite horror icons due to the complexity of his story and for how close to home it hits.

In the 32 years since he was first conceived Candyman has had three sequels with the latest in the series being a homage to his legacy of racial commentary. Tony Todd and Clive Barker are still horror royalty and the Candyman remains to be one of the greatest icons of horror.