CANDYMAN 3: DAY OF THE DEAD
The third one always seems to suck the most, doesn't it?

  Apologies in advance for my bitchy tone.  This past month has left me bitter, angry, depressed and fucking sunburned and dammit, I'd be drunk right now if I weren't worried about what Carla would think.

I'm a big fan of the original Candyman; the first sequel, I hardly remember at all, except it took place in New Orleans and had some red-haired guy who's the worst actor I've ever seen.  Still, it couldn't have sucked much harder than Candyman 3: Day Of The Dead.

If the best this movie can do to give us a heroine is Baywatch grad Donna D'Errico and her breasts Everest and K2, that's pretty sad, people.  But D'Errico's here, playing a tank-topped descendent of the Candyman (yes, she's white) who owns all his paintings and is trying to get them recognized in L.A. as legitimate art (while her art gallery owner friend wants to play up the slasher angle).  Then she says "Candyman" in the mirror five times and it's death, death, death for everybody.

The super-pedestrian script was written by Al Septien and director Turi Meyer, both of whom had a hand in that Carrot Top movie.  One of the things that was so enjoyable about the original film was its antihero's larger-than-life, so-far-past-pretentious-it-becomes-really-cool pronouncements.  Here, the Candyman is stuck with lines like "It is your destiny!", and if you're saying lines like that you'd better be swinging a lightsaber and breathing through a scary black mask.  The lines are bad enough, but the plot steals maybe every other development from the original film (right down to Candyman opening up his coat to reveal, well, you know), changing just enough to avoid accusations of plagiarism, I suppose.  The pre-credits sequence is cookie-cutter Freddy Krueger, and the credits sequence totally inappropriate, with slow pans past the Candyman's hook while a hip-hop beat plays to us over the credits.  What, is he gonna rap or something?  Use that hook of his to scratch on a turntable?

The acting's even worse, D'Errico known for her talent as a thespian about as much as anyone else from Baywatch and her co-stars (including A Nightmare On Elm Street's Nick Corri) all suck too.  Tony Todd as the Candyman looks like he'd rather be somewhere else, anywhere else, crushing rocks in a Siberian gulag, asking people if they want fries with that at a McDonalds' drive-thru, anywhere.

The ideas about racism and urban decay are watered down into TV-movie nothingness here (actually, this is straight to video, but it's as bad as made-for-TV), basically represented by a racist cop, resolved in stupid fashion with one of those "curveball" bullets we saw in Eyes Of Laura Mars.  Another dumb subplot (blessedly short-lived) involves a goth gang; who knew goths came in gangs?

At least I got to learn what the Mexican "day of the dead" is all about and can look at the liner notes to Concrete Blonde's Mexican Moon album in a whole new light.  But most of you don't have that album, so avoid this movie.

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