Friend of the Gutter Ashlee Blackwell has a lovely and powerful meditation on Candyman (1992) and hopes for Nia DaCosta and Jordan Peele’s upcoming Candyman (2021) at Graveyard Shift Sisters. “Candyman has been a delicate enigma, a tale, a very tepid preoccupation of mine since I was ten. It began with the gold glare of the sun through my mother’s bedroom window. Her often condensed space, accentuated by the imposing almost Beetlejuice-inspired black furniture, stationary yet bustling clutter; both new acquisitions and relics from a time before me. And her ‘bulbous’ television as she would call the appliance, positioned central in her reliance on its distractions from her ever 40+ hour work weeks and (even with the father of her two youngest in the apartment), raising three children on her own. It faced her queen-size, perched on a dresser-storage hybrid. Likely, the time was Fall, possibly a video store rental. Sure, no one’s around, I’ll watch Candyman, why not. I had been watching films like Hellraiser since I was about six.”