This is a very campy movie, yet I somehow can’t stop watching it. It’s oddly entertaining.

Review by Quora user Jason Bell.
“D-FENS is 1950s America, its values and beliefs roaming through savage, post-recession 1990s gangland LA, getting beaten down and erased from society. The glasses, shirt, pen holder and briefcase (note the apple) are the character. He’s the film’s “bad guy” only to that LA environment. The ‘50s cues and eradication of run throughout the movie.

The movie is packed with so much imagery that easy to miss.

D-FENS isn’t a person. He’s an era: post-WWII/Korea boom times of the American dream of financially comfortable, gainfully employed, patriotic, altruistic, stable family, white middle class USA. The film showcases the eradication of D-FENS’ era with the war zone and widespread unemployment of then modern LA because of disastrous government policy, banking industry greed, lethargic citizen decadence and selfish apathy. Tom Wolfe beat the screenwriters to the selfishness problem by two decades with “The Me Decade.”

Not being a person but a concept, and note every violent outburst is comical, because the socioeconomic situation is one big terrible joke, D-FENS doesn’t have a psychiatric disorder. While modern viewers would assume he’s some banal white racist, the army surplus scene shows that he isn’t. He’s a walking, talking, explosively bitter and angry anachronistic value system, exceptionally performed by Douglas.

Through the film the glasses get damaged. More imagery that D-FENS’ window to the world is cracked and distorted. The “home” he wants to get back to, ‘50s pleasantville, doesn’t exist. Many references to “not economically viable,” tenacious park beggars, cold-blooded gangbangers shooting innocent bystanders in daylight, presenting urban USA as a nightmare of a failed society.

The film is that apple pie is dead; gone are stable careers, edenic family life, replaced by something in the direction of Escape From New York with endemic greed and apathy, obsession with cheap useless consumer products; refused breakfast by a dyspeptic Whammy Burger manager dweeb in the silly suit.

Duvall’s character, the loving faithful husband, deceased daughter, mournful hurting household, is a whole other movie within the movie of how US society treats each other with contempt. The two meet up in the end for the first time. Duvall’s character, not unlike a calm, rational, wise fraternal American dream twin cousin, prevails because the values and beliefs of the ’50s era don’t need to die. By personal choice, anyone can uphold them, even if everyone or most around are contemptuous pricks or losing their mind. Prendergast is the cool, calm decision maker. His character makes altruistic decisions for what is best for everyone, putting his own life on the line if necessary, with only Det. Torres as ally and somewhat so Det. Brian. The Korean storeowner and Japanese cop characters are no coincidence. All imagery and dialogue and almost overcooked to drive the point further and further along.

D-FENS, spending the whole story defending values, can’t be psychotic since would mean ‘50s USA was psychotic. He’s the embodiment of assumed silent majority bitterness at the state of modern society, who expresses his discontent with violence with broken bat and gym bag of guns, which never works. By riddling the public telephone with bullets, another ‘50s nod, he’s become the ‘90s post-recession LA he detests. Like the character’s line, D-FENS orbits the far side of the moon in his LA ghetto travels, emerging back into radio contact to ex-wife, daughter and Prendergast, that his approach and methods to defending values, like his car and shoe, are broken beyond repair. The ’50s are gone but going berserk won’t solve the problems of the present.”

Review by Quora user Jason Bell.
“D-FENS is 1950s America, its values and beliefs roaming through savage, post-recession 1990s gangland LA, getting beaten down and erased from society. The glasses, shirt, pen holder and briefcase (note the apple) are the character. He’s the film’s “bad guy” only to that LA environment. The ‘50s cues and eradication of run throughout the movie.

The movie is packed with so much imagery that easy to miss.

D-FENS isn’t a person. He’s an era: post-WWII/Korea boom times of the American dream of financially comfortable, gainfully employed, patriotic, altruistic, stable family, white middle class USA. The film showcases the eradication of D-FENS’ era with the war zone and widespread unemployment of then modern LA because of disastrous government policy, banking industry greed, lethargic citizen decadence and selfish apathy. Tom Wolfe beat the screenwriters to the selfishness problem by two decades with “The Me Decade.”

Not being a person but a concept, and note every violent outburst is comical, because the socioeconomic situation is one big terrible joke, D-FENS doesn’t have a psychiatric disorder. While modern viewers would assume he’s some banal white racist, the army surplus scene shows that he isn’t. He’s a walking, talking, explosively bitter and angry anachronistic value system, exceptionally performed by Douglas.

Through the film the glasses get damaged. More imagery that D-FENS’ window to the world is cracked and distorted. The “home” he wants to get back to, ‘50s pleasantville, doesn’t exist. Many references to “not economically viable,” tenacious park beggars, cold-blooded gangbangers shooting innocent bystanders in daylight, presenting urban USA as a nightmare of a failed society.

The film is that apple pie is dead; gone are stable careers, edenic family life, replaced by something in the direction of Escape From New York with endemic greed and apathy, obsession with cheap useless consumer products; refused breakfast by a dyspeptic Whammy Burger manager dweeb in the silly suit.

Duvall’s character, the loving faithful husband, deceased daughter, mournful hurting household, is a whole other movie within the movie of how US society treats each other with contempt. The two meet up in the end for the first time. Duvall’s character, not unlike a calm, rational, wise fraternal American dream twin cousin, prevails because the values and beliefs of the ’50s era don’t need to die. By personal choice, anyone can uphold them, even if everyone or most around are contemptuous pricks or losing their mind. Prendergast is the cool, calm decision maker. His character makes altruistic decisions for what is best for everyone, putting his own life on the line if necessary, with only Det. Torres as ally and somewhat so Det. Brian. The Korean storeowner and Japanese cop characters are no coincidence. All imagery and dialogue and almost overcooked to drive the point further and further along.

D-FENS, spending the whole story defending values, can’t be psychotic since would mean ‘50s USA was psychotic. He’s the embodiment of assumed silent majority bitterness at the state of modern society, who expresses his discontent with violence with broken bat and gym bag of guns, which never works. By riddling the public telephone with bullets, another ‘50s nod, he’s become the ‘90s post-recession LA he detests. Like the character’s line, D-FENS orbits the far side of the moon in his LA ghetto travels, emerging back into radio contact to ex-wife, daughter and Prendergast, that his approach and methods to defending values, like his car and shoe, are broken beyond repair. The ’50s are gone but going berserk won’t solve the problems of the present.”

Review by Janet Maslin of the New York Times dated October 16 1992

Too many tales of the supernatural allow occult goings-on to take a garden-variety turn. But the imagination of Clive Barker is authentically strange. In “Candyman,” adapted by Bernard Rose from the Barker novel “The Forbidden,” the horror unfolds inside a housing project and plays out provocatively against a backdrop of racial injustice. For those who find this approach too unconventional, the Candyman of the title also has a reassuringly familiar hook where his hand ought to be. Using this, he slashes victims with suitable abandon.

After a perfunctory prologue involving careless, sexy teen-agers (any horror-film stalker’s favorite prey), “Candyman” settles upon a Chicago academic named Helen Lyle (Virgina Madsen) as its heroine of choice. A doctoral candidate whose studies lead her to the Candyman legend, Helen begins her own hands-on research into the story of this mysterious killer. She learns that Candyman (Tony Todd), a black man in a fashionably long coat who can be summoned by repeating his name five times into a mirror, was once the victim of a terrible crime and has been seeking his own form of justice ever since. His ashes are scattered at Cabrini Green, the Chicago housing project where much of the action takes place.

Mr. Rose, very partial to secret gateways into the netherworld, also gives Candyman a surprisingly soft touch. His gambits run toward “sweets to the sweet” and “be my victim,” and his taste runs toward Helen once she begins stirring up the memory of his past, through a series of suspensefully staged investigative episodes. That Helen goes from the halls of academe to a lunatic asylum during the course of the story says nothing to disparage her sleuthing talents.

“Candyman” is set up as an elaborate campfire story. More than once, it is said that what someone witnessed turned his or her hair white from shock. The film also has its share of novel touches, from the cute young student who dotes too much on Helen’s husband (Xander Berkeley) to the fellow academics who view Candyman’s crimes as a form of urban folklore. There is also an offbeat resolution to the tale, one that suggests there will soon be a new Candyperson in town.

The story’s unusually high interest in social issues is furthered by the contrast between Helen’s genteel condominium (which turns out to have a secret history as public housing) and the rougher atmosphere of Cabrini Green. At the latter, Vanessa Williams appears effectively as a young mother fighting to raise her baby against impossible obstacles, some of which emanate from the great beyond. The film’s spooky atmosphere is accentuated by Anthony B. Richmond’s cinematography and Philip Glass’s score.

Ms. Madsen’s performance is a lot more enterprising than what the material requires; the same can be said for Mr. Rose’s direction. Mr. Todd sounds suitably ominous when oozing lines like “the pain, I can assure you, will be exquisite.” Late in the story, both stars are required to play a kiss scene involving mouthfuls of bees. (Bees loom large in Candyman’s troubled history.) Whatever these actors were paid, it wasn’t enough.

Great movie. Michael Keaton’s Captain Gene (It’s just “Captain.” Just “Captain.” It’s not “Captain Gene.” I don’t have a kiddie show. That sounds creepy, “Captain Gene.”) Mauch and his inexplicably unaware TLC quotes were hilarious. Mark Wahlberg’s and Will Ferrel’s detectives Hoitz & Gamble go together like butter and sugar. You wouldn’t think it would be great, but it sure as shit is. The best scene was the ride along with the kid sliding to and fro across the seat while laughing hysterically. I think a lot of us would have wanted to be that kid.