Rating: ** (2 out of five)
Year: 1981

Plot: Campers try to pull a prank on a groundskeeper. Prank goes WHOOSH with flames. Burning and horribly painful permanent disfigurement follows. The dude is understandably pissed, so he returns to the camp a few years later and joyfully slaughters everyone in sight with garden shears. That should even things up.

Review: Get ready for a classic 80’s exploitation film! Yes that’s right kids, that means blood and guts, hammy acting, T & A (& P), and a complete lack of directorial imagination! What the death scenes lack in creativity they make up for with gratuity and often-ness. And then of course there’s all the camp sex – these kids make Alyson Hannigan’s Band Camp seem downright prudish… I’m still trying to figure out if “the burning” refers to the fires that take place at camp, or the sensation during urination that inevitably follows summers like those. When I was growing up, we came back from camp with a couple homemade candles and our throats and hymens in tact… come to think of it, their way might have been better.

Rating: *** ( 3 out of 5)
Year: 1992

Plot: From acclaimed horror Guru Clive Barker comes a modern twist on the urban legend genre. Set in Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing projects, he brings you the tale of a well-to-do bouncy blond whose thesis project takes her to the belly of the twetieth century beast. Perhaps she can escape the ghetto with a mere beating, but how will she fare against a supernatural, baritone negro with a hook for a hand and a belly full of bees?

Review: Candyman was released right on the heels of the Rodney King beating and the subsequent riots. The country’s racial tensions had never been higher, and this movie capitalizes on that anxiety without crossing the line into racism. One of the devices that works best in this movie is Candyman’s ability to make it appear as if his victims were actually killed by the woman whom he is stalking. Barker’s story writing succeeds in part because it’s just so damn weird. The movie goes in directions that the viewer really doesn’t expect. Perhaps it goes too far towards the end, but the flick’s flat-out weirdness increases the suspense. You think to yourself, “What’s this movie going to do to me next?”

Rating: * (generously, 1 out of 5)
Year: 2006

Review: To answer the titular question: no (unless you’re talking about the prospect of a forced second viewing). With each word that angrily dribbles out of my fingers, the portion of my life wasted on this movie painfully increases. As a derivative Saw clone with the production budget that street-sweepers would scoff at, this piece of rubbish manages to fail on every measurable facet of movie making. Piss-poor acting, laughable writing, and back-yard sets moor this junker to the dock permanently. If the B storyline of the cop were a football, then it got fumbled early on and was intercepted and returned for a touchdown in the closing minutes.