Urban legends, ladies and gentleman (or other). It doesn’t matter where you live, every region has at least one miraculous rumor connected to it. Something that a person says they heard happened to the friend of a friend’s distant cousin who’s twice removed, and this assumingly real person always lives somewhere far away. The whole thing must have happened because the person telling the tale swears with their hands on the Bible that it is, and they even give God an open invitation to strike them down if they are lying.
That’s legit, yo!
Unless the Almighty is oblivious to such a challenge, or He’s lazy, or maybe just an urban legend Himself then it’s true. Slender Man, Mothman, and even the extremely creepy Shadow People: All of these nightmares exist while you shriek bloody murder because a grasshopper landed on your shoe. Tonight, we pay tribute to these legends of folklore with two terrifying myths from a hairy wilderness, and a haunted concrete jungle. It’s getting late, and you are all welcome to gather round the campfire while I spin a couple of yarns.
Willow Creek (2013)
This 2013 found-footage horror film is from director Bobcat Goldthwait. Some of you are probably staring at your screen right now with a slack jawed-expression of bewilderment as a mountain of dust is blown off the memories that name evokes. Younger readers are wearing matching looks of confusion, but that’s because they don’t know who I’m talking about.
Bobcat is a stand-up comedian who reached considerable heights of fame in the mid-1980s, and faded out of the mainstream spotlight around the late-1990s. He was Zed in Police Academy 2-4, the whisperer to a talking horse (voiced by the forever missed John Candy) in Hot To Trot, a gun-toting ex-employee in the holiday comedy Scrooged with Bill Murray, and he’s done loads of voice roles in animation. Mr. Goldthwait has also directed a few movies throughout the years, which include the underrated dark comedies, Shakes The Clown and World’s Greatest Dad.
Oh…you’ve never heard of any of those movies. That’s depressing, but also irrelevant. What matters is that he decided to try his humorous hand at making a horror picture, and Willow Creek was the end result. It combines the outdated genres of “Found Footage” and “Lost in the Woods” for a fresh brew of slow-burning suspense. Forever proving that comedians have the darkest of minds, and that morbid people always have the best jokes.
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Young filmmaker Jim (Bryce Johnson) and his girlfriend Kelly (Alexie Gilmore) set out to find Bigfoot in Northern California’s Six Rivers National Forest where the famous Patterson-Gimlin video was filmed in 1967, and they’re recording the whole journey. Jim believes in the legend with obnoxious enthusiasm, while Kelly harbors a lot more skepticism.
He drags her to the town of Willow Creek to interview the locals about their most famous resident. None of them seem very pleased to see the tourists, and they get plenty of “this might not be a good idea” warnings (most of them by Kelly herself), but the moronic Jim will not be deterred. Instead of letting that dummy go play in the woods by himself, she chooses to accompany him, and the camera keeps rolling.
There’s a good chance that folks are going to be bored to death for the first 60 minutes of this 80 minute feature, and that’s completely understandable. Because nothing happens during that time, and I really mean nothing.
They walk around the forest while Jim endlessly talks, and it’s not hard to lose patience while waiting for something big to lumber of out the trees and permanently crunch his mouth shut. It’s enough to make the viewer feel pity for Kelly, but remember what a wise old Jedi once said about fools, and the fools that follow them.
The last 20 minutes of the movie creeps up like claws in the night, and it becomes clear that the boring buildup was deliberate. It lulls you into a false sense of security (and/or irritation) before paying off in a big way.
Even the climax has a mini buildup that keeps you on the edge of your seat. Bobcat Goldthwait has shown a talent for fear that isn’t the least bit funny, and a Sasquatch that’s not at all like the Henderson’s Harry.
The search for Bigfoot continues on TUBI.
Watch the trailer:
Candyman (1992)
This next urban legend is from 1992, and is based on the Clive Barker short story, The Forbidden. While that story itself is set in Liverpool, the film takes place in the infamous (and long since demolished) Cabrini Green housing projects on Chicago’s Near Northside. A section of land that was ruled by poverty, violence, vice, and death.
Any resident of the city who was alive in the 80s and 90s can recall seeing that place on the news every night, and the word “homicide” was almost always embedded in the story’s headline. It was a forsaken place that spawned cold-blooded killers and boogeymen of all varieties. This is their most famous one.
Candyman (an iconic performance by Tony Todd) is the spirit of Daniel Robitaille, a renowned black painter from the late 19th Century who incurred the wrath of a wealthy white man for falling in love with his daughter and impregnating her.
The old bigot hired a mob of hooligans to chase Daniel down and make an example out of him. His right hand was severed with a rusty saw blade, and a giant hook was jammed into the bloody stump, but that was only the beginning of his ordeal. There was an apiary nearby with dozens of hives filled with hungry bees. They smashed the hive and stole the honeycomb and smeared it over his prone, naked body. He was stung to death by the bees, and the hooligans cremated his body before scattering the ashes around the plot of land where Cabrini Green would eventually be built.
And so the legend goes that if you turn off the lights, and say “Candyman” five times in the mirror, he will appear behind you, breathing down your neck. They will say that he has shed innocent blood, but what is blood for if not for shedding? With his hook for a hand, he’ll split you from your groin to your gullet. He has come for you…
Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen) is a graduate student from UIC, and she’s part of a research project that touches on the more innocuous urban myths until she hears the legend about Candyman. Helen interviews residents from the neighborhood and is even more fascinated when their stories check out. The latest one being about a woman from the Green named Ruthie Jean who called the police to tell them that someone was trying to come through her wall. The cops didn’t believe her, and she was horribly murdered in her bathroom (inspired by real events in Chicago).
Helen decides to change her thesis to be about the Cabrini-Green residents who use the Candyman legend to cope with being abandoned by their city and its incompetent officials, but she’s mostly doing it to distract herself from her failing marriage to a cheating college professor (Xander Berkeley).
She drags her poor, soon to be dead friend/lab partner Bernadette (Kasi Lemmons) with her to the housing projects for further investigation, but at least it’s during the day, and they’re not going out there at night. Not that it’s much safer during the daytime, but an extra 1% chance of surviving beats 0.
They do make it out alive, but this begins a murderous chain of events that goes beyond any ghost story. Is Candyman real, or has Helen finally snapped? Sweets to the sweet!
A lot of good things came out of the 1990s, but a good horror movie was harder to find than a Super Nintendo console during Christmas. The genre hit a serious lull after such a magnificent decade of being on top. Things improved in the next century, but the genre never fully recovered. Luckily, there were a few good releases to keep fans from self-cannibalizing each other, and Candyman remains one of the best to come from that dry decade of hipster nihilism.
It might come off as a little campy to new viewers, but it’s still effective, and Tony Todd gave the world an awesome new monster that still has people giving their mirrors looks of distrust. This movie also had a certain, unnamed eight year old Chicagoan paranoid about using the bathroom at night for over a month after he watched it for the first time.
The sweets can be found on Peacock. Head over there, and be his victim…
In the meantime, watch the trailer:
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