CANDYMAN 2 AND 3

Ever experienced déjà vu? Me neither. No matter what The Matrix tells you, déjà vu is pretty much BS. That said, the moment I stuck Candyman 3 into my VCR, I had the distinct feeling of déjà vu. I'd never seen this film before, and yet I knew exactly what was going to happen beforehand. Was I in a time loop? Nope. I'd just seen Candyman 2.

CANDYMAN

After recently watching Final Destination 5 (or 5nal Destination, as it was originally going to be called by really stupid movie producers), I realized how much I love Tony Todd. I love him in Hatchet and Hatchet 2. I love him in season one of Chuck. And I particularly love him in Candyman, a Clive Barker horror film from the early 90s.

If you are a gay horror fan, you naturally gravitate toward Clive Barker and his works. It’s a natural mesh. He makes movies with a queer sensibility. And even if his films are butchered by interference (Nightbreed), they’re still interesting. This is perhaps the most perfect film that Mr. Barker can make. Sure, Hellraiser is probably more important. It probably has a bigger following, but from start to finish, Candyman is a more consistent, better constructed film.

Plus, it stars the incomparable Virginia Madsen. And even though Jennifer Laurence is a scream queen of the highest order, Virginia is an old-school movie star. She is classy.

Here she is, crawling through the hole in a bathroom wall.

Candyman might not have inspired the franchise that he deserved (which, considering the later Hellraiser films, might be a godsend), but he will still go down in history as the number one reason mirrors are creepy as hell. Also, if I could hire anyone to narrate my life story, it would be Tony Todd.

Any guesses what FLUCH means?

RANDOM BOX SETS

Two of my favorites.

More than any other genre, horror movies are often clumped together in wildly unrelated box sets. Why, for example, would Predator fans be interested in Dead Silence? Just go to Walmart and you’ll see the ape-shit insanity from which DVD people must suffer. They see that a film is in the horror section, but they don’t bother reading the synopses before clumping things together like they were Dr. Moreau. I mean, Schindler's List and Raging Bull are both black and white dramas, but they have virtually nothing in common. No one would package those into a single box set. So why are horror movies so easily sorted? Probably because horror fans will buy anything.