Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic“Candyman,” the 1992 slasher movie starring Tony Todd as a vengeful specter in a floor-length fur-lined coat, with a hook for a left hand and a devoted swarm of killer bees, was an urban-legend horror film that was ahead of its time but also, just maybe, a little too much of its time.
Todd’s scowling ripper started off as an enslaved person’s son, Daniel Robitaille, who in the late 1800s was a successful artist.
But then he had a relationship (and fathered a child) with a wealthy white ingenue whose portrait he’d been commissioned to paint.
Her father hired a lynch mob to go after him. The mob tore off his hand and covered him in honey, and a swarm of bees stung him to death.
Read more on variety.com