Candyman 3: Day of the Dead (1999)

Dia de los rubia

By: JWBM

Direct to video, without Clive Barker involved, and a move to Latin fused neighborhoods of Los Angeles with the Day of the Dead around the corner, what can one expect of the third installment of the Candyman franchise? Well, don't hold your breath.

The daughter of Annie Tarrant—Caroline—finds herself living alone in the heart of Boyle Heights L.A. She's an artist who has an upcoming gallery with original paintings that her grandfather—the Candyman himself—painted before his public execution for loving a woman not of his own race in a time when the white man had an all-time high track record for hate and prejudice. According to some of the L.A. detectives in this story, not much has changed. You guessed it, all this attention and the fact that no one listens and has to test the waters by reciting Candyman's name five times in front of a mirror calls him back in full hook-through-the-back fury. Soon, the towering man in a trench coat and a knack for a stadium-deep voice goes around saying mean-spirited and potentially incestuous things such as, "Be my victim" and "There's no reason to live." Might as well be a Valentine's Day poet for the lonely and depressed.

Literally, the only excitement this movie has going for it is of the sexually tantalizing kind. Or at least it wants to hope so. If it's any indicator, the lead was on "Baywatch" a year earlier and walks around with bountiful blonde hair, and in panties every other chance she gets. There was a point where Caroline came in on a family member in the tub with a slashed neck, and the filmmakers even had to show the attractive relative on display topless. I mean, that's not even a fair shake of your senses. I guess if you know your movie has zero credibility going for it, then you might as well go for gold. Yeah, yeah, hot people die and have murderers come after them—the '70s Spanish/Italian horror features were king of this—though this just doesn't have anything else of worth to show for itself. It then tries to get the gears going mid-way through with a kind of race-against-the-clock feature with weak attempts at romance thrown in, and a failed attempt to include the Mexican culture, including the celebration of Dia de los Muertos. This is a festive and interesting event in real life, though it seems out of place here.

It's a pain to see what the series has been reduced to. One could smell trouble before even throwing this one on. After seeing part three though, it makes you want to put on the first film to show how the story was once brilliant, full of mystery, and included a kind of unshakable and unrivaled atmosphere for a horror film in the '90s. This is nothing of the mentioned, and is not worth the time or investment.

Rating: 3/10

Director: Turi Meyer (Sleepstalker)
Actors: Tony Todd, Donna D'Errico, Jsu Garcia
Info: IMDB link
Trailer: Youtube link