Main cast: Courtney Gains (Sheriff Sam Bramford), Pancho Moler (Dr Death), Nate Chaney (Jacob Atkins), PJ Soles (Marcy Taylor), Jimothy Beckholt (Mike Bramford), Madison Russ (Carol), Cy Creamer (Steve), Caleb Thomas (Bobby), Sky Elobar (Gus), and Tony Todd (Bishop Gate)
Director: Josh Hasty
I’m really weary of B-grade horror flicks, for which the B must stand for “badly baddeningly bad”, when I come across Candy Corn on the streaming service. Okay, the poster looks intriguing, and it does have Courtney Gains, Tony Todd, and PJ Soles, so that means it must have some budget to make my viewing experience worthwhile, surely.
So my return to mainstream cape crap and box-office offerings will have to wait a bit, as surely, Candyman in a movie called Candy Corn can’t be that bad. Right?
Well, not really.
Let’s start with the story first. We have poor Jacob Atkins, a silent and socially awkward fellow with a habit of eating candy corns like he is immune to type 2 diabetes. He works at the neighborhood carnival Dr Death’s Sideshow Spookhouse Spectacular, which is relevant because Tony Todd has a minor role as one of the carnies and Pancho Moler’s Dr Death is fiercely protective of his people.
On the day before Halloween, a bunch of “teenagers”, played by actors that have never passed for a teenager for at least 10 years now, along with a creepy guy that looks like he’d fit right in as a Reddit admin, embark on their yearly ritual of “pranking” Jacob. Of course, they call it “prank”, but to everyone else, it’s just vicious cruelty. This time, Jacob fights back, and as a result, he gets beaten to death by these charming specimens of human being.
They then leave his body lying on the ground, to be discovered by other carnies. Dr Death, coldly furious, performs an occult ceremony on the corpse and lo, Jacob comes back to life the complete opposite of what he was before. He is still silent, but now he’s an unstoppable homicidal maniac wearing a mask that makes him look like a walking jack-o-lantern. On Halloween’s day, some “teenagers” are going to die…
Okay, the movie does have some budget, and it shows in some lovely gore effect and the presence of the three genre legends and Pancho Moler. PJ Soles plays her character in a discordantly exaggerated and comedic way that makes it seem like Marcy Taylor is a character from a comedy whose scenes are spliced into this movie, but the rest are pretty solid in their roles.
Mr Todd, of course, has a blink and you’ll miss him kind of role, but given that this is just one of the hilariously numerous movies he’s make some quick money out of in the last and next few years, I suppose that can’t be helped. He has so many movies to be in, and hence, he can’t spend too much time on each film, you know! I wonder whether he even remembers the title of this movie…
Meanwhile, Courtney Gains plays the sheriff whose son is actually the ringleader of the bullies, and his character isn’t much, but at least it’s one of the better-acted ones. Pancho Moler’s Dr Death is actually the most memorable character here, so it’s a shame that he isn’t in this movie that much.
The bulk of the screen time is hogged by the characters that will eventually become Jacob’s victims, and good heavens, I think the casting people must have blown their budget on the more well-known cast and the gore effects, and then get the rest of the cast by running a casting call at the local watering hole or something. The actors playing these characters are barely adequate, let’s just say, and none of these characters are even remotely likable. Plus, Jacob only rises up to take his revenge late in the movie.
As a result, way too much of this movie is dedicated to bad actors lurching through their scenes, playing terrible characters that deserve to be killed more than once. In fact, when they do bite the big one, it feels anticlimactic because these horrible people deserve to die in far longer and more excruciating ways!
In the end, Candy Corn gets to become a semblance of a decent gore flick way too late, and by that point, it is hard to muster much enthusiasm for the fun stuff. This is one movie that has some good things going for it, but it spends far more time shoving terrible to mediocre moments on screen instead. The bad far outweighs the good in this one, so the aftertaste of the whole viewing experience is an unpleasant one.
