Candyman 3: Day of the Dead (1999)

By JM and Billy

Once again, the brothers of Tower Farm have decided to tele-conference a review. This, of course means, it is 2pm on a Saturday and JM has yet to get out of his pajamas and Billy is drinking a beer and eating from several bags of chips. From our respective homes in Florida and Virginia, we are using state of the art technology like cellular phones and a laptop computer to bring you the very best in slashers and sleazy reviews.

The movie selection process was equally cutting edge. With our own version of football brackets, we slowly narrowed down dozens of DVD classics. Movies like Catwoman and Night of the Demons 2 were put head to head. After many rounds of elimination, one movie remained. Ladies and Gentlemen, we present the victor: Candyman 3: Day of the Dead.

Right off the bat, it is important to note that Candyman 3 is the best movie in the series. We are fully aware that many of you will disagree with this. But, you are wrong. That may be harsh. But, it is just the way that it is.

The first Candyman was a fairly disturbing big-budget critical success starring an Oscar nominated actress, created by one of the most respected horror writers in the business. Part 3 comes to us via Turi Meyer (Wrong Turn 2: Dead End), stars a Baywatch babe, and went straight to DVD. There is just no contest here people.

The treasures start before you even have to select play on the menu. The viewers are treated to what we call “The Candyman Rap”. It is a roughly 15 second repeating drumbeat with Tony Todd saying things like “One destiny. One family” to the music. Why Def Jam Records has ignored this talent, we don’t know.

Okay...There is a giant white elephant in the room. Before we can go any further with our review, we feel it needs to be addressed. Turi Meyer expects us to believe that Donna D’Errico is related to Tony Todd. It doesn’t matter what Tony Todd was breeding with, there is just no way to convince us that Donna D’Errico is part of his bloodline.

In case you are not familiar with Donna D’Errico and her groundbreaking work as a lifeguard on Baywatch, she also married the bass player for Motley Crue. Yep, that and this movie pretty much sums up her career. Unless, of course, like us at Tower Farm, you are convinced that she and Tiffany Amber Thiessen are one and the same person. Then, her resume is extensive.

In this movie, she plays the great-great granddaughter of the Candyman, who we’ve learned from the previous two installments, was a slave who was murdered for sleeping with a white woman. Part three, though, really opens up the plot for us, as we learn, for the first time, that he was an accomplished artist, and, apparently, he impregnated the lady he was humping. As it turns out, Donna D'Errico's character, Caroline McKeever, is also something of an artist. But, don't worry... after one scene in which she frantically draws the Candyman from her dreams, while in her panties, her artistic skills are never mentioned again.What is amazing about his paintings is that they look an awful lot like oversized printouts from Photoshop. Even Vincent Van Gogh could not get his subjects to look this lifelike.

As the great great granddaughter of the artist, Donna’s character is the sole owner of the entire collection of his paintings. That makes sense, right? She also chooses to have the world premier of the paintings in some sort of rundown art gallery that one might expect to find in a college town.

Of particular note at the gallery is the crowd. The patrons on display are the greatest group of extras we can remember ever collected for a movie. Clearly these men and women are in the crew or relatives of the crew.

The a-hole owner of the gallery bullies Donna into repeating the name “Candyman” five times while looking in a mirror. The crowd watches with wonder and amusement as she repeats the word five times. At this point, we are introduced to a completely useless character played by Nick Corri.

Wait a minute, you don’t remember Nick Corri? He the guy who played Rod on the original A Nightmare of Elm Street. It seems that he is now acting under the name Jesu Garcia. Not important, but weird.

Anyway, as David de la Paz, Nick Corri screams about how the Candyman is coming for “yo” (which is how he says “you”). Later, it turns out he is an actor being paid by the a-hole gallery owner to spaz out and make the patrons “…shit their pants”. Good long-term business strategy!

By the way, during this exchange Donna tries to look angry, but comes off looking constipated.

After the event, Caroline McKeever enters what can only be described as the most dangerous place on the planet. This terminal… I guess… looks like it was constructed in hell. Then, it fills up with bees. Rather than run screaming, as we would have done, she explores the origin of the million or so bees and finds the Candyman floating in like Glinda the Good Witch, telling Caroline that he came for her. The viewing audience can tell that all of this scares Donna because, again, she looks constipated.

Then she wakes up on a park bench. I’ll bet during her marriage to Nikki Sixx waking up on park benches was pretty normal.

Finally we get our first kill, and let us tell you, it is spectacular. The gallery owner has hooked up with a blonde bimbo, and chases her topless through his apartment. She seduces him by eating honey, which seems a little morbid given that an hour earlier the gallery owner was telling the crowd about how the Candyman was killed with honey. Regardless, before you know it bees has swarmed the room and are stinging the girl to death. But, don’t worry, she remains topless through the whole thing. Then, the Candyman stabs the owner with his hook hand.

This is when the movie really kicks into high gear and all of D’Errico’s acting talents are put on display.

Inexplicably showing up at the gallery owner’s home, Donna finds the bodies. She starts chain smoking and telling the police that there is no such thing as the Candyman (who the police almost seem to be suggesting is a suspect).

In short order, Donna is crying in the shower. If this movie had been nominated for an Oscar, no doubt it would be due to this clip. As it stands, though, it has only been nominated for a Farmy. Which it won.

In the next bit of realism, Nick Corri and Donna D’Errico decide to team up to investigate the murders. Ignoring the gallery and the apartment where the murders took place, Nick takes Donna to a bar, then to see his grandmother.

During this seen, the director spends more of the movie’s budget on bees. This time, hatching them from an egg. I think I saw that on an episode of Mindfreak, once. What this has to do with the rest of the move, you’ll still be trying to figure out years later. It does, however, give Donna the opportunity to twitch and puff on more cigarettes in an attempt to further flush out her character.

By the way, has a single photograph ever better captured the spirit of Daytona Beach?

Next, the duo is accosted by a cop (who in one of Billy’s favorite scenes had been bringing roses to Donna earlier in an old-fashioned attempt to swoon her). Since we know Donna and Nick are innocent, the cop is shown to be a total dick. But, given that, from the cop’s perspective, he knows that Nick had been seen with the murder weapon, Donna stuck up for him for no reason, and after the murders, the two have been inseparable, it actually kind of seems to us that he is really just doing his job. I mean, who the hell else should he be investigating? They are acting more guilty than O.J. Simpson after publishing his book about how he would have murdered his wife if he had actually done it.

Anyway, with her roommate out for the night, Donna does the reasonable thing, and invites Nick in to do shots with her. Not just any shots, but full on tequila shots with slices of lime. One almost expects her parents to come in and disrupt the slumber party. Do adults really act like this?! By the way, they are doing shots by candlelight. How romantic.

Next, in a creepily incestuous (as opposed to uncreepy incest) dream sequence, D’Errico makes love to her great great grandpa. When she wakes up screaming, her roommate gets killed. This is inevitable, as the roommate has had no purpose in the movie, anyway. Her facial expressions, though, during her murder are wonderfully overacted. Only Felissa Rose even comes close to matching this level of ham.

A bunch of other stuff happens until Donna D’Errico is finally abducted by the congregation that Candyman keeps bragging about.

When we were in middle school, our parents had the two of us spend one memorable summer in some sort of theater daycamp. We spent a lot of time doing acting “exercises”, like walking around in circles pretending we were walking through molasses.

Well, the congregation seems to be comprised of Hot Topic employees that attended one such camp.

When one woman in the congregation calls the Candyman by looking in a mirror and saying his name five times, he appears and, to their surprise and horror, kills all of them. Now, what were they expecting to happen?

When they are all dead, the Candyman, once again, attempts to seduce his great great granddaughter with such come on lines as “be my victim”, “surrender to me” and repeating “Caroline” over and over. In fact, these seem to be his only lines in the movie.

More bees.

Finally, Caroline defeats the Candyman by ripping up his paintings. That’s all it took?! That’s even lamer than the revelation at the end of Witchboard when we find out all you have to do is shoot the Ouija board! Anyway, somehow in doing this, Caroline destroys the good and the evil of Candyman (by the way, the only evidence that we have that there was any good is that he was boffing someone before he was killed… Can’t bad people do that too?).

Then, Caroline remembers that she has to also destroy the myth of Candyman. She does this by pinning his murders on a cop… who was a jerk, but probably didn’t deserve this.

And, really, that is it. Candyman gone. No shocking surprise ending, or anything. Caroline and the very filthy-looking Nick Corri are happy and hanging out at her mother’s grave. Roll credits.

Even though, for reasons I cannot begin to imagine, former Playboy playmate Donna D’Errico is just about the only female in this film to not get topless, we still think she has earned a spot in our Hall of Fame (still under construction). She has shown herself to be more than up to the task of starring in a sleazy slasher movie.

Three and a half fingers.