Everyone knows how much I love Ti West’s 2009 film House Of The Devil. Ever since I first saw it I have been showing it to as many people as possible. One of my favorite instances of this was bringing it to my brothers house and watching it with him without telling him it was actually a modern film. When it was finished he remarked how he enjoyed it but didn’t remember it from the 80’s and thats when I shocked him by telling him it had only come out that year. Since that day he has been fully aware about my obsession with the movie and so on a perfectly gloomy, cold and rainy October day that also happened to be my birthday, we along with my niece and her boyfriend finally made the trek to check out the shooting locations from the film.
In 1992 director Bernard Rose adapted a short novella by Clive Barker entitled “The Forbidden” into a big screen horror film: Candyman.
It starred Virginia Madsen as Helen Lyle, a Chicago Grad Student doing a thesis on urban legends, and Tony Todd in a career defining role as the titular boogeyman. The following year it hit home video and my friends and I (probably in our final year of Junior High at the time) finally got around to seeing it. I still remember going over to my buddy Joey’s apartment on a Saturday night, his dad, Bruce, had rented it for us to watch (Thanks Bruce!). I still remember the “ooooh shit” moment we both had as soon as the opening credits started playing and Philip Glass’ brilliantly haunting score began to blare out of the surround sound. We knew were in for something frightening and different. Turns out, it was one of the scariest movies we had seen in a long time.