Book Five (In the Flesh), Chapter Two
“The Forbidden”
This story is the basis for the 1992 film Candyman, written and directed by Bernard Rose and easily one of the finest Barker adaptations to see the light of film. What’s kind of amazing is how much of the movie is new: the American setting, the race-hate angle, the ethnicity of both the slum residents and the Candyman himself, the wrong-man plotline, even the “we dare you to say his name five times!” thing–none of these elements appeared in the original short story. Granted, analogues for many of the film’s novel points can be found in the story itself: class for race, pure urban-legend perpetuation for the name-in-the-mirror bit (I actually think I prefer the book’s strategy; it’s purer, if less catch-phrase memorable)–but it’s still a rare delight to see an adaptation that changes so much work so well.
I find the story to be another of Barker’s best, in no small part because there’s almost no way to figure out where you’re going to end up from where you begin. When the villain appears it’s out of left field and extremely abrupt, and with only a handful of pages to go till the end of the story. It’s a great way to mimic how the protagonist, university graffiti researcher Helen, must feel–suddenly swept away by the irrational, helplessly hurtling toward an unexpected and unimaginable fate.
Much of the story’s strength comes by way of contrast: the seedy, falling-apart-at-the-seams ghetto versus Helen and her boyfriend Trevor’s posh post-grad dinner parties, Helen’s guileless inquisitiveness versus the residents’ nearly pathological reticence, the laughing rationality of faculty b.s. sessions versus the lyrical madness of the Candyman’s lethal seducer’s speech. Another source of strength is the structure, which has an awful lot in common with the one to follow, “The Madonna”: a dedicated professional hungry for success and trapped in a comfortably dysfunctional relationship stumbles across an exemplar of urban decay that houses a secret beast which transcends the squalor of its surroundings even as it destroy those who come in contact with it. Once again, it’s worth noting how relatable Barker’s main characters are becoming: the desire to do something worthwhile coupled with the sinking feeling that you’re shit out of luck is something we’ve all experienced, right? Barker uses that desire as a key for his characters to unlock doors that under normal circumstances they would never dare open. (He’s described his use of sexual desire in this way as well.) And once again, if death’s behind that door, Barker insists that it’s worth it. Are you convinced that he’s right?