“Candyman. Candyman… ”Say his name five times in front of a mirror, and he will appear to give you a taste of his hook. It’s still eight times less than “Bloody Mary”, the urban legend from which Clive Barker’s short story and its 1992 film adaptation are inspired.
crochet man. Bernard Rose’s film also staged a student whose thesis focused on urban legends and popular beliefs. The remake of Nia DaCosta, in theaters since Wednesday, tells how a painter is inspired by Candyman for his works.
From the madman escaped from prison to the Machiavellian killer through the White Lady, the cinema has often been inspired by urban legends, yesterday stories to be scared by the fireside, today creepy pastas on the Internet. On the occasion of the new Candyman and as Halloween approaches, 20 minutes offers a far from exhaustive list of horror films and just as many urban legends.
“Terror on the Line” and the legend of the babysitter
“Did you go to see the children?” »Directed by Fred Walton in 1979, Terror on the line stages, almost literally, the legend of
the babysitter and the man upstairs, which dates back to the 1960s and could have originated in the murder of a young babysitter in the 1950s. Jill is babysitting a couple’s children when she receives a phone call from a man who asks her if they are children are fine. A bad joke? The calls become more insistent and creepy, so Jill calls the police who eventually locate the call. It comes from inside the house.
With Terror on the line, Fred Walton remakes his 1977 short film almost identically, The Sitter, but inflates him and continues the story with his madman escaping from the mental hospital. The long opening scene of Scream owes everything to Terror on the line.
“Remember last summer” and the legend of the crochet killer
After the success of his meta slasher Scream, screenwriter Kevin WIlliamson is approached to adapt the novel Remember last summer written by Loi Duncan in 1977. The opportunity for him to return to a pure slasher, in the spirit of the classics of the genre of the 1980s. He also revisits, with the director Jim Gillespie, the legend of the “Hook”, a killer raincoat and pirate hook that attacks couples in cars. From the movie Campfire Tales to the series supernatural, the genre often appeals to him, but his presentation in Remember last summer in 1997 is perhaps the most famous. He will be back in an eponymous series available on October 15 on Prime Video.
“Urban Legend” and the best of urban legends
In the midst of a new golden age of the slasher, Hollywood wants the masked killer and whodunit. One year later Remember last summer, land like this Urban legend and his serial killer who is inspired by the most famous urban legends for his murders. With for example the man in the back seat, the kidney theft or Bloody Mary, which the third film of the franchise, and first 100% fantastic, explores in its own way. Like the heroes of Scream on horror films, those ofUrban legend talk about urban legends on college benches and play it meta.
The following, Urban Legend 2: Coup de Grâce, will push the vice even further, since it is about film students making a horror film on urban legends and dying one after the other according to urban legends. Okay?
Sweeney Todd and the legend of human meat
Human meat at the butcher? This is the pitch for Fabrice Eboué’s next comedy, on October 27 at the cinema, but also Green butchers with Mads Mikkelsen or the episode What are you up to? from Tales from the Crypt. This legend has its origins in English folklore and the character of Sweeney Todd, an agglomeration of facts and fictions about a barber on Fleet Street in London. He slit the throats of his clients and got rid of the bodies in the meat pies that his accomplice Mrs Lovett sold.
If we remember his most recent incarnation by Johnny Depp in the 2007 Tim Burton film, we should not forget the interpretations of Ben Kinsley and Ray Winstone on British television, and especially the musical by Stephen Sondheim.
“Ring” and the legend of the cursed videotape
If you watch this mysterious and strange video tape, you receive a phone call announcing your death in seven days. Although it is not inspired by an existing urban legend, but is adapted from the eponymous novel by Kōji Suzuki, the curse at the heart of the film Ring has established itself as one of the most famous and terrifying. She plays with the fear of new technologies (cassette, television, telephone), which have become part of everyday life, such as Kairo by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, perhaps the creepiest movie of all time, will do so with the debut of the internet. Moreover, it is not impossible to see Sadako, and his long black hair, in the “Momo Challenge”.