Feature Category: Article

Thirty years ago, anime didn’t exist. Well, it did, but unless you were a hardcore otaku you didn’t know about it, even though you’d probably seen retooled anime shows like Battle of the Planets (Science Ninja Team Gatchaman in its original form) and were vaguely aware that they made cartoons in the Far East.

Akira changed everything. Thirty years since its UK release, the movie was a surprise hit for a small distribution company – Island Visual Arts (a subsidiary of the famous record label) – and led to the formation of one of the most important influences on the UK nascent anime scene. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves…

The mid-1980s was a boom time for home video. Previously, commercial releases were prohibitively expensive, and people mostly consumed them through video rental shops. The vast majority of releases were feature films. If you wanted to watch episodes of a TV show, you pretty much had to wait until it aired again in your region, or be lucky enough to have taped it off the telly (ssshhhh, don’t tell the police!) when it was last shown. And foreign stuff? Well, unless you were willing to defy the Daily Mail and watch Channel 4 late at night (rather than put your boot through the screen, as they advised), you were out of luck.

Then Chris Blackwell, head of Island Records, spotted a gap in the market and formed a division devoted solely to VHS releases, called Island Visual Arts. He appointed his go-getter marketing director Andy Frain to head up the company, and they put out mostly music-related releases from the likes of U2, Level 42, and Bob Marley, alongside some documentaries and educational films.

Looking to diversify, in 1991 they secured the distribution rights to Akira, and gave it a low-key release in art cinemas across the UK, expecting the usual arthouse reception, and were blown away by the reaction. They had a cult hit on their hands. This spurred Frain into action, and he created Manga Video (something of an oxymoron) to cash in on the sudden popularity of the Japanese art form.

The hits came thick and fast, with Urotsukidōji: Legend of the Overfiend and Fist of the North Star shifting units, although nothing quite reached the scale of Akira. Much of Manga Video’s early output was dubbed, as was the fashion of the time, and these engendered a love/hate reaction from fans. The first releases tended towards the racier, violent end of anime, and the voiceovers reflected this, often going an extra yard to ensure a 15 or 18 certificate, all important for that edgy, adult label that anime had developed.

A thriving subculture emerged, with magazines dedicated to the medium appearing in WHSmith and anime panels edging into the comic conventions of the day. BBC Two even commissioned a young turk called Jonathan Ross (whatever happened to him?) to produce a documentary. Anime was big.

Eager for another blockbuster hit, Frain caught wind of Ghost in the Shell early, hearing that Production IG was animating Mamoru Oishii’s manga, and figured it would be a massive hit. Inveigling his way onto the production as co-executive producer, he promised a simultaneous worldwide release for the movie and bought US anime label LA Hero, which he renamed Manga Video USA.

Manga Video USA made an immediate splash, issuing a full catalogue of VHS releases at a lower price than their competitors, and using Island’s distribution network to ensure they reached nationwide stores. As it turned out, Ghost in the Shell was critically acclaimed but did not set the box office on fire, and despite the wider success of Manga Video USA, Frain stepped down as head of the concern.

By the end of the twentieth century, the business hit some choppy waters. Decent licences were becoming hard to acquire – Japanese companies began expanding their operations worldwide and keeping their more prized possessions for themselves – and the original London office was closed. All future operations would be overseen from Chicago. Chris Blackwell had left Island in 1997, after earlier selling the label to Polygram, and with the company – and its subsidiaries – again about to be merged into the Universal Music Group, he stepped in and bought back Manga Entertainment (as it had become known). He intended to run it in partnership with Palm Pictures, his film distribution outfit, but the two never really gelled and he again sold Manga Entertainment, this time to Anchor Bay in 2004.

This lasted for two years, until Anchor Bay – under pressure from all sides, with two of their executives under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (which oversees financial services in the US) – collapsed, and Manga Entertainment was on the move again, this time to Starz Media when the cable channel bought all of Anchor Bay’s properties. Starz immediately laid off all of Manga’s staff in Chicago, and basically shut the label down.

While all this was happening, Manga Entertainment’s UK office had re-opened, and it survived the turmoil of the move to Starz and began releasing DVDs in conjunction with Funimation and Viz Media, amongst others. They also started a fortnightly magazine, which lasted for four years, mostly covering their own licenses but also the wider anime and manga industries, and began to re-establish themselves as the go-to anime distributor in the UK under Jerome Mazandarani and Andrew Hewson.

The rise of online streaming caused problems for Manga UK, as the Starz office in New York insisted on handling digital rights, separately from the DVD rights held by London. This led to those rights being sold to iTunes and Netflix in the UK, directly competing with the DVD releases from the London office. Eventually, Mazandarani and Hewson had enough and walked out to establish Animatsu, their own anime licensing company. Starz then sold Manga Entertainment UK (along with Anchor Bay UK), and absorbed into Platform Entertainment. Starz Media, who kept hold of Manga Entertainment USA, was bought by Lionsgate in 2016, who technically still own that brand.

Manga UK had all but joined its US sibling, with all DVD orders currently filled by MVM, but their Twitter account is still very active, and there is light at the end of the tunnel. In a recent interview, Mazandarani revealed that Animatsu were about to start using the Manga Entertainment brand to distribute licences they’ve acquired, while still keeping Animatsu as a separate brand for less straightforward deals. They even aim to produce their own original content, something which Netflix has had great success with and which Crunchyroll – the leading name in anime streaming – is dipping its toe into later this year.

There is a generation of anime fans that would not be anime fans if it were not for Manga UK. The splash made by their acquisition of Akira, and the subsequent releases that were the in-thing for a moment in the early nineties, changed the lives of thousands of young men and women. That the brand still has a future in this uncertain world is heartening, and STARBURST’s resident otakus eagerly await the return of the cross and rising sun logo. Who knows? Maybe there’ll be another Akira, and the whole thing will kick off all over again…

THE BEST OF MANGA UK RELEASES

Fist of the North Star (1992)

In a civilisation ruined by a worldwide nuclear war, scarred battler Kenshiro searches for his fiancée and the man who kidnapped her… As you’d expect from any movie with the word ‘fist’ in its title, this was an all-action blockbuster that has gone on to spawn a thousand remakes and sequels. Big bodies, small heads, a thirty-foot giant getting kicked through a mountain, and the voice talents of genre veteran John Vickery.

Dominion Tank Police (1992)

From the creator of Appleseed (who would later go on to produce Ghost in the Shell), Dominion Tank Police is the tale of Leona Ozaki, a young female officer in the Newport police. So far so normal, except Newport is a post-apocalyptic Japanese city and the police patrol in TANKS. Oh, and the antagonists are a masked gangster and two sexy, gun-toting catgirls. Very funny and with an expletive-ridden English dub, it’s a million miles away from Ghost in the Shell.

Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overf iend (1992)

The plot of this supernatural disaster movie – every 3000 years a supergod called the Overfiend awakes, and a man-beast called Amano must find him to reunite the human, demon, and man-beast worlds – was overshadowed by its content, and even mentioning its name will engender a reaction of “oh, the tentacle porn?” Still good, despite (because of?) all the writhing.

Project A-Ko (1992)

After an alien spaceship crashes into and destroys Graviton City, the city is rebuilt and this movie centres on students A-Ko, B-Ko, and C-Ko, and a mecha-flavoured love triangle against a background of another alien spaceship approaching the Earth, this time looking for a lost princess… This spoof of popular 1980s anime ticks all the boxes, and throws in some nudity and titillation for good measure. Funny and influential – toast, anyone?

3×3 Eyes (1993)

Pai – the last remaining sanjiyan unkara, or triclops – teams up with Yakumo, a Tokyo teenager working in a gay bar as a cross-dresser, to find an artefact capable of turning her human, along the way encountering giant monsters, the undead, and demon hordes. An adaptation of the first two chapters of a long-running manga, this was a taste of some fascinating world-building.

Doomed Megalopolis (1993)

Set in two distinct time periods in the early twentieth century, Tokyo (the greatest city on Earth) is under threat from Kato, an evil onmyoji (or shaman) descended from Japan’s indigenous tribes, who attempts to summon the onyro of Taira no Masakado, the city’s guardian spirit, to destroy the Japanese empire. Standing in his way is Hikari, a descendent of the 10th-century onmyoji who bound Masakado’s onyro a thousand years before. Darker than the novels it adapted (and also the live-action adaptation of a few years previous), this is overlong but very gory and violent, if you like that sort of thing.

[This article was originally published in STARBURST issue 455, December 2018.]

The debate continues to rage as to who is the GOAT of the NBA, Michael Jordan or LeBron James? And while there is a case to be made for the likes of Bill Russell and his 11 NBA world titles, Wilt Chamberlain and his 100-point game, the silky-smooth passing of Magic Johnson, or the sublime skills of Kobe Bryant, the two that are bandied about as the supreme ruler of the NBA’s Mount Olympus are Michael and LeBron. You don’t even need to use last names to know exactly who we’re talking about when it comes to hoops legends.

But off the court, Michael Jordan starred in the 1996 movie, Space Jam. Several of his contemporaries even made cameo appearances like Larry Bird, Charles Barkley, and Patrick Ewing to name a few. Fast forward 25 years later and we see LeBron taking MJ’s lead role and becoming the cornerstone of Space Jam: A New Legacy.

In 1996, the Looney Tunes characters recruited Michael Jordan to win a basketball game against a villainous group of aliens called the Monstars, otherwise, they would be enslaved and exhibited as carnival attractions in a brand-new theme park. The movie was somewhat revolutionary in that it seamlessly blended animation with real characters.

The new version is expected to be much the same although the Tune Squad now has LB on their side to take on a new evil entity referred to as the Goon Squad. Reports are that this new version relies primarily on animation using contemporary stars like Damian Lillard, Anthony Davis, Klay Thompson, and the WNBA’s Nneka Ogwumike in digital form. LeBron is one of the few who maintains his human form which is a stark difference from the first iteration if the reports are true.

And if you had any doubts that the landslide of mainstream sports betting hasn’t taken hold, then be advised that some of the best online sportsbooks, like SportsInteraction, have already set a line on this fictional game before the movie is released to theaters or any other mediums. Yes, the Tune Squad is listed as -1 ½ point favourites and the total, if you are so inclined, is 155. Who sets these numbers and how are they derived? Who knows but they are out there and if you’ve got a hunch then bet a bunch!

LeBron Carries the Torch

LeBron has stated that he was familiar with the Looney Tunes characters and became even more so because of the original Space Jam. In a free-wheeling interview with Entertainment Weekly, LeBron spoke about his initial reaction to the Space Jam of 1996.

“There were a lot of films for me, but Space Jam was definitely up there. Just growing up and loving the NBA, and obviously loving Michael Jordan, and loving the Looney Tunes, it was an automatic and a very organic blend between the two worlds. And it was fun to see what MJ and Bugs and Taz and all those great toons were able to go through in that first movie. It was pretty cool, man, as a kid, wanting to see inspiration from movies and from people that you look up to, and people that you watch on a day-to-day basis. So, it definitely had a big part of my childhood.”

In an interesting angle, EW asked LeBron about the characters chosen to comprise the Goon Squad and if he was getting besieged with calls from his NBA colleagues and celebrities who might want to share the silver screen with him.

[Laughs] “Absolutely. The phone would ring, the texts would come in, and then on social media a lot of people were tweeting at me saying, “Hey, I’m available for Space Jam if you need me. LOL. Asking for a friend.” A lot of people my age or even younger just remember the classic. They remember Space Jam the original, and people want to be a part of it, because it’s something that lasts forever, something that’s timeless, and something that you can tell your kids and grandkids about.”

LeBron insists this isn’t a sequel but a new twist on an old plot. Although many of the elements sound similar LB is adamant that it’s a whole new ballgame if you will pardon the pun.

“This is not a sequel. The movie stands on its own. But, more importantly, this movie is going to surprise a lot of people, because it brings up a lot about family and the dynamic between a father and son. There are parents who want to push their kids to do certain things because this is what they do, but sometimes you have to look into a kid and be able to have an open mind and ear to help them become the thing they’ve dreamed of. There’s a lot of father-son moments that people are going to relate to, and I’m looking forward to people just getting the raw emotion out of it, and understanding and seeing what it’s all about. It’s a huge family movie, and I can’t wait for people to get together and have their popcorn and everything that comes with it. It’s going to be exciting.”

Space Jam: A New Legacy will be in movie theatres on July 16th and will also be available on HBO Max.

The 2016 film Terrifier wasn’t our first introduction to Art the psychotic clown. Writer and director Damien Leone had already made a pair of shorts, The 9th Circle (2008) and Terrifier in 2011 that featured Art. These both formed the backbone of his first feature All Hallow’s Eve in 2013. Focusing on a babysitter whose wards find a VHS tape in their trick or treat stash, it cleverly weaved the shorts into the narrative before the antagonists break from the small screen to attack the hapless child minder. The sinister yet silent Art the Clown was a hit with horror fans, and Leone soon decided to bring the evil prankster back for his own feature. Leone said at the time of the film’s release, “Up until that point, I never felt like I fully showcased Art’s potential. I believe between the short films and All Hallows’ Eve, there was only about 20 minutes of Art the Clown screen time.” It seemed only natural to have this new horror icon come back, and his return would be as bloody and grisly as anything we’ve seen before.

Terrifier begins with a talk show host being horrifically mutilated by her guest, the survivor of a massacre that culminated in the death or Art the Clown and said survivor being left horrendously disfigured. However, watching the show on a portable set is an agitated Art who’s getting ready for a Halloween night on the town. He takes a shine to Tara (Jenna Kanell), out on the razz with her pal Dawn (Catherine Corcoran), creeping them out while they have a bite to eat to help them sober up. Things will go from bad to worse for the pair as their car’s tyre has been slashed and they have to wait for Tara’s sister Victoria (Samantha Scaffidi) to pick them up. Desperate to use the toilet, Tara talks her way into an abandoned building being tended to by rat exterminators. Unfortunately, Art has begun his evening’s entertainment by butchering the fast food staff and now has his sights set on the girls.

The film is eighty minutes of gore and mayhem. Among the more disturbing things we see are heads being used as pumpkin lanterns, bodies hung and split into two as if like slaughtered cattle, and various eye gouging and knife lacerations. There is no real build-up – particularly in respect to Art – and the plot is nothing more than a string of highly disturbing attacks and slaughter. It shouldn’t work, but it does. This is mainly because the character of Art the Clown is terrifyingly enigmatic. Moving like a mime, his long-nosed face bringing comparisons to a more homicidal version of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’s Child Catcher. It’s this lean approach to the narrative that director Leone had in mind all along for the feature. “The main objective was to keep it as close to the 20 minute short film as possible,” he said. “The short film was a no holds barred, relentless, seventies-style grindhouse flick that was made to feel like an intense rollercoaster ride.” Even the name of the film (and short) was intentional. The Terrifier isn’t a tag to be placed on Art, it’s the name it would have if it were a rollercoaster. “People responded so positively to the short film, so I figured the best plan of attack would be to just make an 80-minute version of the 20-minute short,” he explained. “This would mean taking the best parts of a slasher film and eliminating as much of the filler as possible.”

It’s no coincidence that all his films so far have been set at the horror fan’s favourite holiday, Samhain. It makes perfect sense when you have a villain as sinister-looking as Art. “It’s acceptable for a man to be walking the streets while dressed as a clown,” he explains. “This enables his victims to lower their guard around him when they first cross his path.”

The gore effects are practical, too, which adds greatly to the stomach-churning reaction one will certainly feel throughout the film. Damien Leone is a special effects artist as well as a writer and director and his talent certainly shows in the many gruesome images we’re presented with in the film. “I can do a lot on a very limited budget,” he clarified.  “There is so much content out there right now and I believe that if you want to stand out, it doesn’t hurt to show things that will really grab the audience’s attention and get them talking.” He continues to muse, “How many times can you show a knife cutting through the air followed by a shot of blood hitting the wall? Almost everything has been done to death so I feel I have a duty to the audience to present them with stuff that hasn’t quite been seen before or if it has, to do it in a way that feels fresh.” Leone got into special effects at an early age, after watching the Tom Savini documentary Scream Greats. He began experimenting with makeup at age 12 when his mother took him to a horror convention and he picked up some materials. “I tried out all of my new goodies on my friends and myself,” he said “Savini introduced me to blood tubes, mortician’s wax, things that were more accessible to someone starting out. Soon I started filming the effects with a camcorder.” He isn’t shy about giving credit for people that have spurred him on to create his twisted world: “Even though as a filmmaker I’m influenced by countless artists from all genres, I really have to thank Savini for being the first person to show me the magic of filmmaking.”

Clowns are big box office at the moment, and there’s no shortage of mileage to be had from Art, it seems. “We’ve only just scratched the surface,” Leone says. “Now we have to dig a little deeper into his backstory. He has a ton of potential and I can see needing at least a couple of films to tell his full story.” From the reaction to the film, it’s clear the audience has taken to him as a modern horror icon. And as the director himself has said, “It would be downright disrespectful to the character and to the fans to not produce more,” before adding, “just as long as we maintain some integrity and never jump the shark.” A further movie starring the silent Art the Clown is currently in production and is expected to be released in 2020.

You can let TERRIFIER haunt your dreams by watching on Horror Channel. Sky 317, Virgin 149, Freeview 149, Freesat 138.

With the much-loved horror icon set to return to screens soon, we take a closer look at the character and legacy of CANDYMAN…

“They saw off his right hand with a rusty blade. And no one came to his aid, for this was just the beginning of his ordeal. Nearby there was an apiary. Dozens of hives, filled with hungry bees. They smashed the hive and stole the honeycomb and smeared it over his prone, naked body. Candyman was stung to death by the bees. They burned his body on a giant pyre and scattered his ashes over Cabrini Green.”

– Dr Phillip Purcell, Candyman (1992)

So goes the tragic legend of Candyman, a famous, talented painter and the son of a slave, but a free man, dismembered, stung to death by bees and burned to a crisp. This treatment, at the hand of a lynch mob, for the perceived crime of falling in love with a rich white woman in 19th-century America. Reborn as a murderous urban legend, Candyman lives on in whispers and rumours, his name spoken in hushed tones – and don’t you dare say it five times. Not if there are any mirrors in the vicinity, anyway.

At least that’s how the legend goes in Bernard Rose’s 1992 horror classic. The original short story upon which Rose’s film is based – Clive Barker’s The Forbidden, included in Volume V of his Books of Blood – is skimpy on the details, even if the hook-handed killer, swarms of bees and rough plot outline remain the same.

Bernard Rose’s adaptation transplanted the story from Liverpool to Chicago, and onto the notorious estate of Cabrini Green. While most slasher films of the ‘80s and ‘90s were set on bright suburban streets and idyllic summer camps, Cabrini Green is a fascinating hive of crime, violence, breathtaking graffiti, and the most disgusting toilet this side of Trainspotting. As in Barker’s short story, Candyman follows graduate student Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen, although one Sandra Bullock was also in contention for the role) investigating urban legends in the inner city. Here, she hears the story of a hook-handed ghost who can be summoned by repeating his name five times while looking in a mirror. Naturally sceptical, Helen and best friend Bernadette (Kasi Lemmons) complete the ritual and are duly underwhelmed when nothing appears to happen. At first.

After being beaten up by a local gangster appropriating his name, Helen meets the real deal – the magnetic, hook-handed, fur-coat wearing Candyman himself (the inimitable Tony Todd) – in a parking garage. Here, she blacks out, waking up in the middle of a crime scene, next to a decapitated dog and accused of kidnapping a child. Candyman’s curious modus operandi of framing naïve white women is curiously low-rent for a slasher icon but is a through-line for both this film and its sequels. In the climax, Helen battles Candyman beneath a bonfire for kidnapped baby Anthony’s life, subsequently burning to death and transformed into a vengeful spirit herself. Bad news for sleazy, cheating husband Trevor (Xander Berkeley) who discovers Helen’s transformation the hard way during the film’s stinger – stabbed to death after saying her name five times in the mirror.

With Candyman, a horror icon for the ages was born. The film was praised for its brooding, oppressive atmosphere and Tony Todd’s commanding performance. A sequel was inevitable. In 1995, Bill Condon’s Farewell to the Flesh was released. It follows New Orleans schoolteacher Annie (Kelly Rowan), who attempts to debunk the legend of Candyman, by saying his name. This results in the killer running amok in New Orleans, stalking Annie, her husband and friends. Although Condon’s follow-up to Candyman is by no means the worst of the ‘90s slasher sequels that were all the rage at the time (it’s not even the worst Candyman film), it lacks the originality and wit of its predecessor. It did, however, delve deeper into Candyman’s past and give him his real name – Daniel Robitaille.

This sequel was less liked than its predecessor but still reasonably successful at the box office. And so, for franchisedom’s sake, a third entry in the series was made. In 1999, Turi Meyer’s Day of the Dead was released. It stars Donna D’Errico as art gallery owner Caroline, a direct descendant of Candyman himself. Stalked by the hook-handed killer as he kills off her friends and family, Caroline is framed for murder (you know how it goes) and even meets a Candyman cult, via the biggest ball gag this side of Pulp Fiction. The straight-to-video Day of the Dead is a workmanlike entry in the series, re-treading too much old ground without bringing all that much to the table. In place of the previous films’ mood and atmosphere, it ups the nudity quotient, hoping that audiences will be blinded to the film’s sins by the fact that… ooh, Donna D’Errico isn’t wearing a bra! There are far worse horror sequels out there, but a resounding lack of enthusiasm for the film stalled the franchise, despite audiences’ love for the character and Bernard Rose’s original movie.

It could have been so very different, though. Originally written as a gaudy, brightly dressed Caucasian man who smelled like candyfloss (with a waxy yellow flesh and pale blue lips to boot), Barker’s description of Candyman couldn’t be any more different from Rose’s depiction – only the hook and bees made the transition to film. Even the whole ‘say his name five times’ deal was absent from The Forbidden. Who’s to say whether or not Tony Todd smells like candyfloss, but we would guess not. It was Todd himself who came up with Candyman’s backstory, creating the tragic tale of one, uh, Granville T. Candyman, a famous black painter in 1870s Chicago. Falling in love with the daughter of a wealthy white landowner, he was chased down by a jeering lynch mob, who cut off his hand, smothered him in honey and set a swarm of bees upon him, stinging him to death.

Thankfully, the film did away with the ludicrous ‘Granville T. Candyman’ moniker, but the rest of Todd’s original vision made it through intact. Seeing Candyman as his take on the Phantom of the Opera or Count Dracula, there’s a nobility to the character that’s absent in most of his peers – say, the vile Freddy Krueger, or imbecilic Jason and Leatherface. There’s a respectability to Candyman that most horror icons lack, and a dignity in his looming presence. Many slasher villains are driven by vengeance, but in the Candyman’s case, it’s a righteous one. You’ll never find Candyman chasing sexed-up teenagers around the woods, or getting into a fistfight with Busta Rhymes. You’d certainly never see him in space. Maybe if they had stuck with their original choice of Eddie Murphy (too expensive), but Tony Todd is too classy for all that. To speak his name gives him strength, and with the legend, Candyman can live on forever. A timeless reminder of the sins of the past, and America’s ugliest crimes. As he put it himself: “I am the writing on the wall, the whisper in the classroom! Without these things, I am nothing!”

Thankfully, Candyman has nothing to worry about. Even today, he remains one of horror cinema’s most memorable antagonists thanks to his iconic design, tragic story, and Tony Todd’s masterful performance. If power comes from his legacy, drawn from whispers, dreams and nightmares, then Candyman is doing just fine – especially with Nia DaCosta and Jordan Peele’s franchise reboot on the way to terrify a new generation of movie-goers.

SWEETS TO THE SWEET

In Anticipation of Candyman 2020

Feel old yet? It’s been over twenty years since Candyman: Day of the Dead. Over two decades since the last Candyman movie, and even longer since Tony Todd’s horror icon made his debut. In that time, there have been no reboots, sequels, playable Mortal Kombat DLC or even comic book tie-ins for the character. In spite of Tony Todd repeatedly expressing interest in returning to the franchise, his Candyman has remained dormant, the legend well-known but inactive. “It’s a blessed condition, believe me,” the great man said once, “To live in people’s dreams; to be whispered at street corners, but not have to be.” In that respect, he could afford the time off.

But by now, most of his genre peers have managed to crossover, reboot, and come back again. Some of them have even done it multiple times. Leatherface has had more fresh starts than he’s had headcheese suppers. Michael Myers made a bunch of sequels, a remake, and another sequel, and then re-emerged in 2018 with Blumhouse’s Halloween. But Candyman’s legacy has in no way diminished in that time, and Candyman is considered by many to be a modern masterpiece; a classic, and the best Clive Barker adaptation (one’s mileage may vary, depending on how you want to rate Hellraiser).

Thankfully, the character is set to get his dues in this year’s hotly-anticipated Candyman, directed by Nia DaCosta and written by genre favourite Jordan Peele. Audiences will have to wait until the film’s release for all the gory details, but DaCosta’s reboot-slash-sequel is set to follow Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Anthony McCoy, a young artist using Candyman as inspiration for his work. Wait… Anthony?!

Yes, it would seem that Abdul-Mateen is set to play the very same Anthony who was kidnapped as an infant in 1992’s Candyman. Vanessa Estelle Williams also appears as Anthony’s mother – back from the first film – and Cassie Kramer is credited as playing Helen Lyle. But the question on everyone’s lips is of the titular man himself (just, you know, don’t say it in front of a mirror). Just who will be donning the fur cloak and bloody hook?

In the best news possible, Tony Todd is reported to be reprising his role as Candyman. To what extent, however, remains unclear. Evil Dead 2013-style cameo? Or could we have a Freddy’s Revenge situation on our hands, with Candyman using Anthony’s body as the instrument of his revenge? We wouldn’t put it past him. Abdul-Mateen certainly has precedent in being the unwitting host of super-powered beings – playing the secret Doctor Manhattan in last year’s Watchmen.

However or whoever he turns out to be, we fancy that Candyman is in good hands with Nia DaCosta and Jordan Peele. His story has also never been timelier, well… you know what’s going on out there right now. Writer Peele has shown his genre bona fides in Get Out and Us, and the huge buzz around director DaCosta suggests she’s one to watch. Big budget horror films don’t get much more high-profile than the Candyman reboot. It’s about time the big man made his return, and the talent involved have the potential to turn this into something great. Consider us hooked.

Say his name five times and CANDYMAN will be sure to return to cinema screens soon…

[This article was originally published in STARBURST issue 474, October 2020.]