Virginia Madsen is a university researcher studying the Candyman legend: something about a big black man with a hook who's haunting Cabrini Green, the infamous Chicago housing project. His modus operandi is to go through apartments, slicing people open with his hook.

SEX/NUDITY 4 - A woman is seen in her bra. In another scene, we see her in her bra and then naked from the waist up from the side; she is covered in blood, which makes this a very unpleasant scene. A woman is strip-searched. We briefly see a nude woman in a bathtub.

VIOLENCE/GORE 9 - A girl is murdered. We don't actually see it but we see the blood pouring through the ceiling of the room below where the murder took place and we hear her screaming. We see a woman lying in a puddle of blood and then a bloody bedroom and a baby's crib. We see a dog's severed head. We see a man's bloody arm stump which has a hook nailed into it. A woman is found, very bloody, after having been "hooked" to death. A young boy is shown, while a voice over tells the story of how a man deprived him of his most private parts. A man is murdered by being split from bottom to top: we see him spitting blood and convulsing. A man and woman are shown covered with bees; he has bees crawling out of his mouth. A woman is burned in a fire and shown crawling away with a burned scull. We see the shape of someone who has supposedly been burned to death. Another man is hook-split, with blood sprouting everywhere.

LANGUAGE 4 - Harsh language which pales next to the amount of gore and violence.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Superstition, urban blight, death, murder, monsters, infidelity, racism.

MESSAGE - Whatever you do, don't say Candyman five times while looking in a mirror, and if you do, run for your life.