Ted Raimi

A man is given one hour to choose between financial ruin or murder to protect his family.

Vivan designs dessous for prostitutes. With her partner Michel she sells her creations to the girls in the red-light districts in the Netherlands which seduce their costumers with the bikinis. Vivian's longtime relationship with the prostitutes allow filmmaker Catalina Florez an exceptionally intimate view into the minds of the girls behind the glass windows. Very personal Interviews show the human side of the girls, often judged as immoral and pitiful. The 60 minute Film tells about the search for easy money, freedom, fun and love. In a live between show window and relationship, between moral and necessity, between beauty and age.

The film opens as a well dressed, barrel chested man stalks the late-night passengers of a subway train. He assaults and kills several people with a meat hammer, and a butchers hook. He dispatches his prey wordlessly, and with an uncannily unnatural strength. He wears a ring on his finger, adorned with eight stars. We are then introduced to Leon, a vegan photographer who heads into the city's subway system at night to take photographs. He is criticized constantly by other photographers for fleeing danger before shooting a full reel. One night, in a decision to break this trend, he saves a woman from a gang that is abusing her. The next day, he discovers this girl has gone missing. Leon is intrigued by the mystery, and begins to investigate newsreels about similar disappearances. His investigation leads him to a butcher named Mahogany, who he suspects has been killing subway passengers for as long as a hundred years. Leon attempts to turn some of the photos he has taken of Mahogany in to the police, but they refuse to believe him, and instead cast suspicion on his own motives in photographing the victims. Leon's involvement quickly turns into a dark obsession, upsetting his waitress girlfriend Maya, who is as disbelieving of his story as the police chief. Leon takes matters into his own hands, entering the subway train at midnight, only to witness a shocking bloodbath, as the butcher kills several passengers, then hangs them on meat hooks. Passing out on the subway floor, he awakes the next morning in a slaughterhouse with strange markings carved into his chest. A concerned Maya and her friend Jurgis, a short-order cook, begin to examine the photos Leon has been taking of Mahogany, leading them to the killer's apartment. After breaking and entering the butcher's home, Jurgis is captured, and brutally killed. Maya goes to the police, But finds that they are as unwilling to consider her story, as they were of Leon's. It is at this point that we begin to discover that the police may be involved in the cover-up of Mahogany's crimes. A police official directs the misguided Maya to a trip on the midnight train. Leon, unaware of Maya's involvement, finally decides to put an end to the butcher's crimes, and heads to the hidden subway entrance in the slaughterhouse, arming himself with the a butcher's apron, and several slaughterhouse knives. Leon enters the train as Mahogany has completed his nightly massacre, and has cornered a helpless Maya. Leon attacks the murderer with a knife, beginning a climactic battle between the photographer and the superhuman butcher. They fight in between the swinging human meat, Leon's knives against Mahogany's meat hammer, and human body parts are ripped, thrown, and used as weapons in the shower of epic gore. Finally, Mahogany is thrown out of the train by Leon, but not long before it hits its final stop. The train has entered an underground cavern, filled with skulls and decomposing bodies. Mahogany, in a battered and bleeding state, returns, barely alive, from beneath the train, and engages in a death struggle with Leon, who finishes the job at last by impaling the psychotic butcher's skull on a blade. Mahogany grins in his dying throes, pronouncing the single word "Welcome!" With the butcher's death, the conductor of the train enters the car, advising Leon and Maya to "Please step away from the meat." With these words, the true purpose of the underground station is revealed, as horrible reptilian creatures enter the car, consuming the meat to which they have been delivered. The conductor explains to Leon that the creatures have always existed below the city, and that the butcher's job was to keep them satisfied by feeding them every night. The conductor then forces Leon to watch as he kills Maya with one of the butcher's knives. When he is done, he picks up Leon, and with the same supernatural strength as the deceased butcher, rips out Leon's tongue, throwing him to the ground. He tells Leon that, having killed the butcher, he must take his place. In the final scene, the police chief hands the train schedule to the new butcher, who wears a ring with eight stars. The killer walks onto the midnight train, and turns his head to reveal that he is Leon, ready to go on his nightly slaughter.

This is taken from Wikipedia - set in chronological order, but not the order of the film. The film begins with the suicide of Peter, and ends with Karen in the hospital. This is a synopsis of the director's cut, so some events may not be featured in the original PG-13 version. Kayako Saeki (Takako Fuji), a young Japanese woman, is unhappily married to Takeo Saeki (Takashi Matsuyama). She becomes obsessed with Peter Kirk (Bill Pullman), an American college professor working in Tokyo. She writes about her feelings for him in a diary. She follows him and sends him love letters. One night, Kayako returns home and enters her bedroom upstairs. She finds her husband reading her diary. In a rage, Takeo attacks Kayako, shoving her to the floor, banging the walls while yelling and screaming. Kayako breaks her ankle and crawls down the stairs, but before she can escape, Takeo catches her and snaps her neck. Takeo looks up to see their eight-year-old son, Toshio Saeki (Yuya Ozeki), at the top of the stairs; a witness to the murder. Takeo drags Toshio to the bathroom and drowns him in the bathtub. Takeo also slits Toshio's cat's throat and tosses the carcass on the floor of the bathroom. He wraps Kayako's body in plastic trash bags and places it far in the corner of the attic. He puts Toshio's body in his bedroom closet and tapes it shut with Duct tape, and then hangs himself. In order to find out why Kayako is sending him the letters, Peter Kirk comes to the Saeki residence the next day with one of Kayako's love letters in hand. He sees Toshio's hands hanging out of the bathroom window, bruised and scratched. Peter goes inside and decides to stay with the boy until the parents return. Peter looks through the rest of the house, entering Takeo and Kayako's bedroom in the back where he finds several family photos in a pile on the floor. Kayako's face has been torn out of every one of them. He finds Kayako's diary and thumbs through it, learning more about Kayako's obsession with him. The closet door catches his eye and, upon inspecting it, he finds the cut-outs of Kayako's face nailed all over the door and smeared with blood. Kayako's lifeless corpse falls out from the attic and lands on the closet shelf. Peter runs into the hall and hears thumping noises coming from Toshio's room and finds Takeo hanging from a noose of Kayako's hair. The next morning, in front of his wife, Maria (Rosa Blasi), Peter commits suicide by jumping off the balcony just outside his apartment bedroom. Matthew Williams (William Mapother), his wife, Jennifer (Clea DuVall), and ailing mother, Emma (Grace Zabriskie) move to Tokyo as a result of Matthew's promotion. His sister, Susan (KaDee Strickland), also lives in Tokyo and helps them find a home. Matthew and Jennifer decide on a suburban house despite Emma's strange reactions to the place. Emma's health and condition deteriorate rapidly following the move. Jennifer becomes disenchanted with life in Japan as she cannot sleep during (what she assumes to be) Emma's restless stirrings, unable to speak the language, and has gotten lost once on a walk. Matthew assures her things will improve and that if they don't, the family will return to the United States. Jennifer falls asleep on a couch in the living room, after having made and partially eaten a bowl of ramen, which she left on the table. The sound of the bowl hitting the floor wakes her. She scolds Emma for making the mess, but then sees a trail of wet child's footprints leading out to the hall. She sees a cat on the landing of the stairs and sees a pair of white arms gently pick it up. She continues upstairs and enters her bedroom (Toshio's former bedroom). The door closes behind her. Matthew returns from work and finds the house in complete disarray with trash strewn everywhere. He calls out to his wife, who doesn't answer. He finally finds her on their bed, unable to move or speak and struggling to breathe. Before he can call an ambulance, he is startled by the sudden appearance of a young boy making cat sounds. He backs up against the closet as Toshio appears suddenly over his head. Later, Susan is preparing to leave the office. After attempting to call, Susan increasingly becomes concerned from not being able to reach Matthew. She then attempts to visit the house, but she is stopped by the sound of moaning coming from the hallway. She quickly exits to the stairs but is frightened when the lights start to flicker and shatter. Susan looks over the railing to see Kayako's ghost crawling up the stairs. Susan flees to the security office, seeking help. There, the security guard promises to go check it out. Susan watches the monitor as the security guard investigates. Kayako's black ghost materializes in the hallway and walks toward the security camera, and Susan runs. Susan takes a taxi cab back to her apartment. She enters an elevator, and it ascends several floors. Susan does not notice, however, that Toshio is standing outside each set of elevator doors she passes. Susan makes it safely inside when her phone rings. It is Matthew claiming to have forgotten her apartment number and asking to be buzzed inside. She tells him where to find her and activates the buzzer with the phone. Before she can hang up, the doorbell rings immediately. Thinking Matthew couldn't possibly have had time to arrive, she checks the peephole of the door. Shocked to find it is Matthew, Susan believes he is pranking her. She angrily throws open the door, but no one is there. The death rattle sound emerges loudly through the phone in Susan's hand. She drops and breaks the phone, yet the death rattle can still be heard. Cowering in bed, Susan reaches beneath the covers and pulls out the rabbit's foot phone charm from her phone and drops it in fear. A lump billows from underneath the covers and moves toward Susan. She lifts the sheets and finds herself staring into the face of Kayako's ghost. It yanks her under the covers, and the sheets fall flat upon the now empty bed. Yoko (Yoko Maki) is a girl whose work is to take care of Emma and clean the house. When picking up trash on the floor and stairs, she hears someone walking around up in the attic. Following the noise, Yoko enters a closet in the bedroom and sees a small door in the ceiling, which leads to the attic. Using a lighter, Yoko sticks her head up through the door and slowly turns around, looking for the source of the sound. She eventually comes face to face with the ghost of Kayako Saeki, who attacks her, dragging her up into the closet. Karen Davis (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is then called in to work at the house and care for Emma after Yoko disappears. While working, Karen finds a room that's been taped shut with cat-like noises coming from it. When she rips off the tape and opens the door, she finds a little boy (Toshio). The boy refuses to come downstairs so she asks him for his name. "Toshio," he says, in a toneless, eerie voice. Emma begins stirring and muttering in the other room. As Karen calms her, a dark shadow of hair emerges from a corner of the room, terrifying Emma. Karen looks up to see Kayako reaching for Emma. Kayako's hair, which was covering her face, flies back to reveal the whites of her eyes. The irises roll into place and focus on Karen as she backs away in fright. Alex, Karen's boss, finally arrives to find Emma dead and Karen in a state of shock. Karen is taken to the hospital while detectives question Alex. Detective Nakagawa (Ryo Ishibashi) asks Alex about the people that lived there, and tell him that Yoko has been missing from work. The detectives notice that the phone handset is missing from the cradle and push the page button. They trace the sounds to the attic where they discover the corpses of Matthew and his wife. They also make the grisly discovery of a human jaw and wonder to whom it belongs and where the rest of the body might be. Later in the movie, Yoko is spotted again by Alex as she is shuffling down the stairs of the caretaking facility where Alex, Karen, and Yoko work. As he is walking towards her, he accidentally slips on a liquid, which he discovers is blood when he touches it. Alex calls out repeatedly to Yoko, who does not answer in any way until she reaches the bottom of the stairs. She then turns around to reveal her face, now horribly disfigured without her jaw and her tongue is hanging out. Alex screams in terror, and the screen fades to black. Karen tells her story to detectives, emphasizing the appearance of a boy. Over the next few days, she is constantly tormented by Kayako, in her shower, on a bus, etc. Frightened but determined, she begins to research the history of the house. Eventually, she learns of the murders. Detective Nakagawa becomes convinced that the rash of deaths and missing people is connected to the house when he views the entire security video taken at Susan's office building. He watches as Kayako proceeds down the hall, then to come face to face with the camera as the video fuzzes out. He then returns to the Saeki house with two cans of gasoline. He is distracted by sounds of Toshio drowning in the bath tub. He enters and finds a boy hanging out of the tub, and tries to revive him. His eyes snap open, and Takeo appears behind him. He shoves Nakagawa into the tub and drowns him like Toshio. Karen questions Maria Kirk, Peter's widow, who does not appear to know anything about the house, its occupants, or why her husband committed suicide. She allows Karen to search through old photos. Karen discovers a living Kayako in the background of every photograph, clearly following the couple. Karen then attempts to go talk with her boyfriend, Doug (Jason Behr), at their apartment. However, she discovers he has gone looking for her after his own investigation. Karen then returns to the house in search of Doug. Inside the house, Karen experiences a flashback of Peter Kirk's visit. She watches him, reliving the experience with him finding the body of Kayako and leaving the home. Karen flees downstairs. Doug grabs her ankle before she leaves. He is incapacitated, and she tries to drag him to the door. A door opens upstairs. Kayako's ghost crawls down the stairs toward them, and Doug dies in the same way Jennifer Williams did. Karen opens the door, but Kayako's ghost is suddenly there. She slams the door and kicks over one of the gas cans. She takes Doug's lighter and tosses it onto the gas as Doug suddenly becomes Kayako. The screen goes white. (In the director's cut, there are shots of Karen being put into an ambulance van). At the hospital, Karen learns that the house was saved from burning and mourns Doug's dead body. Suddenly, Kayako's hair and arm comes from beneath the sheet that covers him, but Karen realizes that it's just her imagination. Kayako then appears behind Karen. As Kayako utters her death-rattle, the movie ends with an eyeshot of her.

The narrator, Angus Scrimm, in his only words in the film, introduces the audience to the creatures called "djinn***" ***(which are actually mohammedian efreets; correction should concern every following mistake)." with the following statement: Once, in a time before time, God breathed life into the universe. And the light gave birth to Angels. And the earth gave birth to Man. And the fire gave birth to the Djinn, creatures condemned to dwell in the void between the worlds. One who wakes a Djinn shall be given three wishes. Upon the granting of the third, the unholy legions of the Djinn shall be freed to rule the earth. Fear one thing in all there is...fear the Djinn. The next scene is set in Persia during the year 1127 A.D. with the Djinn asking a Persian emperor to make his second wish. The emperor asks the Djinn to show him wonders. The Djinn uses his powers to torture and mutilate people in the palace. Before the emperor can make his third wish, Zoroaster, a sorcerer (Ari Barak), interrupts and states that upon the third wish granted to the one who woke the Djinn, a gateway will open between the worlds and the evil race of Djinn can live on earth. The sorcerer then reveals a fire opal. The Djinn is sucked into the jewel, where he remains captured. In present day America Raymond Beaumont (Robert Englund) is supervising workers as they lower a box containing an antique statue of Ahura Mazda onto a ship's deck. The worker who is lowering the crate is drinking on the job and accidentally drops it from his crane, killing Beaumont's assistant (Ted Raimi) and destroying the statue. It breaks open and a dockworker finds the fire opal inside which he steals and pawns. The jewel ends up at Regal Auctioneers, where boss Nick Merritt (Chris Lemmon) gives it to appraiser Alexandra Amberson to examine. Her examinations of the jewel wake the Djinn. Thinking she saw something inside the jewel, Alexandra takes it to her labworker best friend and potential love interest, Josh Aickman (Tony Crane) to analyze. Later, as he is collecting data, light reflections cause the gem to explode and the Djinn is released. The lab is destroyed and Josh is killed, upon his wish for relief from his physical pain. Alex, thinking the gem has something to do with the explosion and subsequent death of Josh, tracks down Beaumont, to whom the statue belonged. Beaumont tells Alex to visit a folklore professor named Wendy Derleth (Jenny O'Hara) to find out more about Ahura Mazda and the gem. He also invites Alex and her sister, Shannon (Wendy Benson) to a party he is hosting. The folklore professor tells Alex about the jewel, the Djinn, and its evil history. Later, Alex learns that the Djinn needs to power the gem with the soul of humans, and then grant her three wishes before he can unleash the Djinn on Earth. During this time, the Djinn, who had been in demonic form removes the face of a corpse in the morgue, taking on the dead man's form and the name Nathaniel Demerest. The Djinn, now as Nathaniel, goes about granting people wishes in return for their souls while he searches for Alex. He finally tracks down Alex's boss and grants him a greed-inflicted wish so that he can get Alex's address. Alex is haunted by visions whenever the Djinn grants a wish. She goes to Wendy's house to consult with her again, but Nathaniel has already killed her and taken her form. During their conversation, Alex realizes she is really talking to the Djinn. He confronts her and asks her to make three wishes. He even gives her a "test" wish. She uses this wish and orders the Djinn to kill itself. He complies by blowing his head off with a gun, yet the wound heals instantly; as the Djinn is immortal, he cannot be killed. Alex then uses the first of the "official" three wishes: Her first being to know her opponent, the Djinn. He teleports her to his terrifying world within the gem, thus demonstrating his true nature to her. Next, she wishes herself back to her apartment, alone. The Djinn had been threatening Alex's sister, so Alex sets about finding Shannon. She races to Beaumont's party and Nathaniel follows. While talking to Nathaniel at the party, Beaumont makes the mistake of wishing his party would be unforgettable, and Nathaniel begins wreaking havoc by causing the art pieces to kill the guests. The Djinn finally corners Alex and traps Shannon, trying to scare Alex into making the ultimate third wish. Alex wishes that the dockworker had not been drinking on the job two days ago undoing the events that followed (and presumably reviving the Djinn's victims back to life) and trapping the Djinn in the opal. The dock scene is shown again and the now sober operator has no trouble lowering the crate containing Ahura Mazda. Alex goes to see Josh at the lab. He notices that Alex is strangely pleased with herself, but she will not say why. Back on the statue of Ahura Mazda, which is now in Beaumont's private collection, the camera zooms inside the jewel and shows us the Djinn on a throne, waiting to be released.

Helen Lyle (Virginia Masden) is an affluent young woman who is working with her good friend Bernadette "Bernie" Walsh (Kasi Lemmons), on a master's thesis involving modern folklore. Her husband, Trevor Lyle (Xander Berkeley), is a university professor, of whom she suspects infidelity with one of his younger students, and we suspect her home life isn't quite satisfying, despite the fact that she seems to be very much in love with Trevor. Helen and Bernie have been interviewing numerous people about various 'urban legend' type stories. One young woman tells them a story about "Candyman", a mythical being who has a hook instead of a right hand. The legend goes that Candyman will appear behind you if you say his name five times while looking in a mirror. Clara (Marianna Elliott) dares rebel other-boyfriend Billy (Ted Raimi) to repeat Candyman's name five times in front of the mirror while she's babysitting the Johnson family's baby. Billy only repeats it four times but when she is left alone in the bathroom, getting ready to lose her virginity to Billy and not Michael, her "too good" boyfriend, Clara repeats the name a fifth time. Then, she turns off the light and right behind her, Candyman's appears and kills her with her hooked arm. As Helen reviews the recorded conversation in an empty classroom one night at the university, a cleaning woman overhears the story about Candyman and pays special attention to it. Henrietta Mosely (Barbara Alston) calls in another cleaning woman, Kitty Calver (Sarina C. Grant), who tells Helen about the murders that have taken place in Cabrini-Green, Chicago, the low income housing project where she lives. The people of Cabrini-Green have attributed the deaths to Candyman, as the victims have been butchered with a weapon determined to be a hook. The mention of the murders leads Helen to research it in archived newspapers, and she finds out the names of the victims. Even more intriguing to her is the fact that her own apartment building was designed exactly like Cabrini-Green; she learns that it was intended as another housing development, but eventually the idea was scrapped when the developers realized that the location was too desirable; Helen and Bernie theorize that the white developers relocated the housing project to a more forbidding area that would keep the ghetto separated from the rest of the city. Helen is aware that the units in her building are connected to one another through the medicine chests in the bathrooms; when removed, they reveal a small space that links the apartments together. Helen knows that Cabrini-Green's apartments must be the same, and that the stories of Candyman coming out of the medicine chest could indicate a human assailant who had also made this discovery. With Bernadette in tow, she visits Cabrini-Green and finds the apartment of one of the murder victims; on the other side of the medicine chest is a strange lair, with holes in the wall and elaborate graffiti-style artwork depicting a large man's head with a hole in the wall for a mouth. Helen is fascinated by it, as well as the fact that an altar appears to have been constructed there as well, with candy left behind as an offering. Helen and Bernie meet Anne-Marie McCoy (Vanessa Williams), the neighbor of the deceased victim. Anne-Marie is initially hostile to them, as she feels the presence of white people in the all-black housing development indicates nothing but trouble (Bernie herself is black, but Helen is white, and the tenants they meet on the way inside mistake them for police officers). But eventually Anne-Marie softens and invites them into her apartment. Helen is taken by Anne-Marie's baby boy, Anthony (Lanesha Martin & Latesha Martin) admitting she would like to have a child of her own one day. Anne-Marie says that she is determined to make a better life for her son, one that does not involve Cabrini-Green or the drug-dealing youths that loiter on its grounds. While at dinner one night with Bernie, Trevor, and a few of Trevor's colleagues, Helen makes the mistake of baiting Philip Purcell (Michael Culkin), a snobbish folklore expert, by mentioning her thesis project. Philip attempts to belittle Helen by telling her that he's already written an essay about Candyman. Philip shares with her Candyman's strange back story, revealing that he was the son of a slave who had come into a great deal of wealth due to an invention that became hugely successful. Candyman grew up well-schooled and comfortable, and was a prodigious artist who was in high demand among the wealthy to paint their portraits. Eventually Candyman had an affair with the daughters of one of his wealthy white clients, and when she became pregnant the man exacted a horrible revenge on Candyman. He sent hired goons to attack Candyman, cutting off his right hand, stripping him nude, and smearing him with the honeycomb of a hive of angry bees. He was killed by the numerous bee stings. Philip claims that it all took place on the site where Cabrini-Green now stands. Even more intrigued, Helen returns to the building on her own. When she finds Anne-Marie is not home, she meets a young boy named Jake (DeJuan Guy) who gives her more information. Another death in the project was attributed to Candyman, the brutal castration of a young boy (Kenneth A. Brown) who entered a filthy public men's room only to meet an attacker who cut off his genitals, resulting in his death. When Jake takes Helen to the site, she goes inside and starts taking photographs, but a group of young toughs enters after her. One man (Terrence Riggins) approaches her and announces that he is Candyman, and his is carrying a large hook, which he uses to beat Helen's face, knocking her unconscious. Later in a police lineup, she identifies her assailant, much to the satisfaction of Detective Frank Valento (Gilbert Lewis), who informs Helen that the young man who beat her was suspected of the previous murders. He had been using the legend of Candyman to frighten the residents of Cabrini-Green into silence, and Helen's testimony will help to put him away. Helen meets Jake there at the police station, and she thanks him for his help, explaining that her attacker was human and that Candyman is not real. Jake almost seems disappointed. Some time later, Helen and Bernie have a discussion where Helen reveals that she is unsettled by the fact that the two murders, both of which featured black victims, went practically unnoticed, while her own mere assault caused a lock-down of Cabrini-Green, presumably because she was a white victim. Bernie surprises her with slides from her camera, which Helen had assumed was a complete write-off after the attack in the men's room. On the way back to her car, Helen looks at the slides, when suddenly she is confronted by a strange figure, a tall black man wearing a long coat and speaking in an unearthly voice. She realizes this is Candyman, although she can barely comprehend how it is possible. Candyman urges Helen to become his victim, almost as if he were speaking to a lover. He tells Helen that because she has exposed the real killer at Cabrini-Green, she has caused a sudden rift in his world; the belief in him by hundreds of people is what allows him to go on living. Helen's incident has caused this belief to drop, and now he is in danger of ceasing to exist entirely. Candyman intends to kill Helen, which would then give rebirth to his legend and cause belief to surge once more. Helen swoons and loses consciousness. When she awakens, she is disoriented, and realizes that she is somehow in Anne-Marie's apartment. She is covered in blood, and Anne-Marie is screaming hysterically in another room. A meat cleaver is lying next to Helen, and she picks it up, terrified at what she may find going on in the other room. She finds Anne-Marie's dog, decapitated, its blood everywhere. Anne-Marie is screaming over the empty crib of her son, who is now missing. When she sees Helen approaching her with a cleaver, she immediately thinks Helen is responsible, and she rushes at her, attacking her. When it seems as if Anne-Marie may kill her, Helen strikes her with the cleaver, wounding her shoulder, just as police break though the door of the apartment and surround Helen. At the precinct, Helen is subjected to a strip search in a humiliating way by a rude policewoman (Rusty Schwimmer) who would not even get close to her, only bluntly asking her to take off all her clothes. Later, Detective Valento appears, this time speaking furiously to Helen. It is clear that everybody thinks she is responsible for the attack and kidnapping of Anne-Marie's child. She makes a phone call to Trevor, only to discover that Trevor is somehow not home, even though it is 3am. The next day he comes for Helen and takes her home, helping her though a throng of reporters and news cameras. Her lawyer (John Rensenhouse) tells Helen that the prosecutors seem to have released her because they think the child's body will turn up and they will then charge Helen with murder 1, which he thinks is unlikely to stick. Helen is somewhat comforted, but she still cannot comprehend what has happened to her. She questions Trevor about where he was at 3am, and he claims he was home, sleeping. The next day, Helen looks more at the slides she took at Cabrini-Green, and in one shot she is able to see Candyman standing behind her, even though he was not there when she took the shot. He then appears to her once again, emerging from her medicine chest, then seemingly everywhere at once. She cannot escape him. He talks to her again, saying she belongs to him and that she will be immortal if she surrenders to him. She is paralyzed with fear, but she hears Bernie knocking at the door to her apartment, carrying a spray of flowers, presumably to cheer Helen. Helen tries to scream and warn her, but Bernie enters and is killed by Candyman. This time Helen awakens under much more dire circumstances. Trevor enters the room and she watches bloodied Helen holding a knife asking him to help her. She gets handcuffed to a gurney and being given injections. She breaks free from her police guard and rushes into the other room to see Bernie's mutilated corpse. As Helen is taken away in a police car, she hears Candyman's voice, and she begs him not to hurt the baby. Helen is taken to an institution and strapped down and injected, but when she is alone, Candyman appears to her again, hovering in the air over her. He tells her that her life is over and that she belongs to him now. When she screams for help, medics come in and of course, they cannot see Candyman, only Helen. Helen is eventually taken to see Dr. Burke (Stanley DeSantis), who informs her that he is working for her defense. Helen is astonished to learn that she has been in the facility for an entire month, under heavy sedation. When they breach the subject of Candyman, Helen "calls" for him by looking into a mirror and saying his name five times. Candyman appears and kills Dr. Burke, then slashes Helen's bonds. He levitates through a window and disappears, smashing the glass. Helen uses the window to escape, edging her way to another room and knocking a nurse unconscious, stealing her uniform and ultimately escaping the hospital. Helen goes home to her apartment and is in for an even greater shock: Trevor has moved his young student in, and they are in the process of completely redecorating the apartment. They are terrified to see Helen, as she has been accused of savage crimes. She tells Trevor he was all she had left in the world, and then she leaves, much to their relief. With nowhere else to go, Helen goes to Cabrini-Green and seeks out Candyman's lair. She finds him asleep and tries to kill him with a hook, but he awakens and tells her to surrender to him. He promises Helen that the pain of her death will be "exquisite", and that she needn't fear the afterlife, as she will be immortal like he is. He tries to kiss Helen and bees swarm out of his mouth and his body, stinging Helen, and she swoons. Helen regains consciousness and finds that she is alone. Looking at the walls of the lair, she realizes, through paintings he has done on the walls, that she herself is the image of Candyman's lost love, the young woman that he lost his life over many years before. Wandering outside, she hears the baby crying from somewhere nearby, and realizes that Anthony is inside the large pile of scrap wood and garbage that the resident of Cabrini-Green intend to burn for a bonfire. When she goes into the pile to rescue him, Jake awakens and sees her scrambling among the garbage, with a hook in her hand. Mistaking her for Candyman, Jake alerts a group of other residents and together they go outside with gasoline and torches to burn Candyman alive on the bonfire. As the flames spread, Helen reaches the baby inside the bonfire, but Candyman appears to restrain her from escaping. He encourages Helen to stay with him and be burned alive in order to fuel their own legend. Helen fights back, impaling Candyman with a burning shard of wood, and she manages to crawl out of the fire while protecting baby Anthony. Anne-Marie sees them and is overcome, both by finding her child alive and realizing that Helen has delivered him safely out of the burning wreckage. Badly burned by the fire, Helen dies. At Helen's funeral, Trevor a few others are the only mourners, until suddenly they look up and see a huge group of residents from Cabrini-Green marching among the gravestones, making their way to her grave site. Anne-Marie and Jake are at the forefront. Anne-Marie is carrying baby Anthony triumphantly. Jake removes Candyman's hook from under his coat, apparently pulled from the ashes of the fire. He drops it into Helen's grave. After the funeral, Trevor and his new girlfriend Stacey (Carolyn Lowery) are at their apartment, the same apartment where Helen used to live. Trevor has isolated himself in the bathroom, shaking with grief, while the young girl angrily waits in the kitchen, seemingly annoyed that Trevor is grieving the loss of his wife. Sobbing, Trevor looks in the mirror and mumbles Helen's name and over and over. Suddenly, Helen appears behind him, a ghostly apparition holding a hook. She uses the hook to murder Trevor, gutting his body and leaving it lying in the tub for his new girlfriend to find. Her own legend has just begun.

A brilliant scientist left for dead returns to exact revenge on the people who burned him alive. Mild-mannered scientist Peyton Westlake, who works out of a lab set up in his loft apartment, is beaten within an inch of his life but assumed dead by criminal Robert Durant and his thugs, Durant solely wanting to retrieve a document discovered by Peyton's lawyer girlfriend Julie Hastings implicating Durant's developer associate Louis Strack, Jr. of offering bribes to get his latest waterfront development passed by the zoning commission, and about which Peyton ostensibly knew nothing. In the aftermath of the lab being destroyed in an explosion set by Durant, Julie knows nothing about Strack being behind what happened let alone that Peyton was targeted or that Peyton survived in only fragments of his body being discovered in her assumption that he perished in the explosion. She further believes that the document was also destroyed in the explosion, while in reality Durant was able to locate it in the loft. Peyton's still alive body is discovered, he only a John Doe, and is operated on by an experimental burn unit whose operation is able to keep him alive albeit permanently physically scarred, but change him fundamentally in three ways: that he no longer is able to feel physical pain; that he has increased physical strength; and that he is emotionally more aggressive to the point of being violent if pushed. Able to escape, Peyton returns to his work in developing synthetic skin. He plans to use this synthetic skin to don disguises in exacting revenge not only on Durant and his entire team of thugs, but on Strack. The problem for Peyton is that he is only able to maintain the skin for ninety-nine minutes in open light in the discovery that the material is light sensitive. —Huggo Peyton Westlake is a scientist who has discovered a way to produce synthetic skin. This could revolutionise skin grafting, except for one minor glitch; the synthetic skin degrades after 100 minutes of exposure to light. When gangsters attack Peyton, he is horrifically burnt, and assumed dead. In his quest for revenge, Peyton, aka the Darkman, is able to take on the appearance of anyone (using the synthetic skin,) but he only has 100 minutes per disguise. —Rob Hartill Scientist Peyton Westlake is working on a project to create synthetic skin. Now the skin he has developed has a flaw--it will not remain stable for more than 99 minutes. His girlfriend, Julie, a lawyer is investigating a developer. She leaves some incriminating documents at Peyton's. One night Peyton was working when the lights in his lab went out, he then discovers that the synthetic skin has remained stable past 99 minutes, he deduces that it's because of light that the skin doesn't remain stable. And it is at that moment that a psychotic criminal, Robert Durant appears demanding the documents that Julie left there. They beat up Peyton, and after finding the documents they blow up Peyton's lab. Peyton was blown away and everybody believes he is dead but in reality, he was found, burned seriously and a new procedure was performed on him that renders him unable to sense pain, he also now has tremendous strength and is now prone to violent outbursts. He is now working on perfecting the synthetic skin and at the same using his technology to make synthetic skin masks of the men who attacked him so that he could strike back at them. —rcs0411@yahoo.com

The first 15 minutes of the film acts as an edited account of The Evil Dead (1981). This alternate version starts with protagonist Ashley 'Ash' J. Williams (Bruce Campbell), and girlfriend Linda (Denise Bixler), driving to an abandoned cabin high in the mountains. Within the cabin plays a piano while Linda dances in underwear. He has recently given her a silver chain with a little magnifying glass on it. When Ash goes into another room to get a bottle of champagne, and Linda changes out of the rest of her clothes, he finds a reel-to-reel tape player and switches it on. The recording explains that the cabin belongs to a Prof. Raymond Knowby (John Peakes) who was busy translating passages from "Necronomicon Ex Mortis" (called "Morturom Demonto" in the recording), the "Book of the Dead", which they found in the Castle of Candar, beside a ceremonial knife with a skull on its handle. The tape says that "it is through the recitation of the book's passages that this dark spirit is given license to possess the living", then precedes to recite one of the passages, which awakens an evil force that possesses Linda. Discovering Linda's disappearance, our Hero ventures outside and is attacked by the now-demonfied Linda. Panicking, the terrified Ash gets lucky and manages to decapitate the love of his life with a handy shovel. Following this murder, Mr. Williams decides to do the decent thing and buries his, now headless, girlfriend, keeping the silver necklace and pendant. It's at this point the summary of the first film ends as the evil force sweeps through the woods and cabin and spins the stressed Ash through the woods, possessing him. Fortunately the sun comes up and drives away the Candarian demon, the mist in the woods retreats into various trees, and the cloudiness from Ash's eyes, leaving Ash perfectly healthy, if not a little depressed. He has a little nap in the woods. Looking at the cabin, Ash sees a face superimposed on it and hears a voice saying "Join Us". Ash bravely clambers into his Oldsmobile and makes a dash for freedom only to find that the bridge is now destroyed (the gap it spans is much shorter than the bridge they drove over when arriving), presumably by evil forces. The sun goes down rapidly and yet again the evil pursues him, branches whipping into his face, a tree stump stopping the car abruptly enough to send Ash flying out the windshield, to have his face stopped by a tree. He runs the rest of the way through the woods to the cabin, and the pursuit continues, through at least 9 doors between 10 rooms and an unfinished hallway in the small cabin, but Ash, using all his cunning, evades it by hiding under a trap door. The evil presence continues back outside and retreats into the woods. At an airport, Annie Knowby (Sarah Berry) arrives by plane, with 3000-year-old pages of the Book of the Dead, and is picked up by her boyfriend Ed Gentley (Richard Domeier). They start their drive to the cabin to join her father. Following a manly little nap, our terrified and bloodied hero wakes in an armchair to piano music, and finds that the piano is playing itself. The music must remind him of Linda as he takes the silver necklace from his pocket. Some boards barricading a window fall, and looking outside he sees the Linda's grave marker fall over and her headless and already badly decomposed corpse (Ted Raimi) re-animate and dance, and regain its much fresher head, which can conveniently keep facing in one direction while the body spins around many times. Her moves include seductively straddling a tree limb. She then vanishes into the dark, then reappears just outside the window and grabs Ash, telling him to dance with her. After being slammed into the window barricades several times he breaks free, and Linda's head falls off again. Ash discovers that he is back in the chair, screaming. Was the dancing corpse a dream? The window barricade seems intact. Suddenly Linda's smiling head drops into Ash's lap, says "hello, lover", and bites hard into his right hand between thumb and forefinger. Unable to remove the head he rushes to the work shed and clamps it in a vise, causing it to release its grip, and it starts to mock Mr. Williams, who has already had a trying day. He reaches for the spot on the tool shelf marked for the chainsaw, but it's not there. The headless torso charges into the shed and attacks Ash with a chainsaw, but he deflects it with a crowbar and the corpse clumsily saws into itself, not having an attached head to let it see what it's doing. He pries the chainsaw from the body and the detached arm still holding in, and yanks on the pull-start cord. The head, looking much nicer, begs not to be hurt, then spews black bile and turns evil again, and Ash destroys it. She's obviously gotten on Ash's bad side since she gets no further burial. Upon returning to the cabin and trading the chainsaw for a double-barrel shotgun and a handful of extra shells, Ash is further frightened by an unseen entity moving the rocking chair and moaning. It stops when he brings his right hand near it. Dropping the shotgun, he tries to console himself by telling his reflection in the mirror that everything is fine. However, his reflection suddenly comes to life, leans out of the mirror, and contradicts him, laughing at Ash's predicament and then throttling Ash before vanishing, leaving Ash holding himself by the throat. He taps the mirror with his right hand, but it is just an ordinary mirror again. Dark veins radiate outwards from the bite wounds on the edge of Ash's right hand as it mutates and grows longer finger nails, and it begins to move around under its own control, and make strange laughing noises, then starts attacking Ash by grabbing his face. He holds it down and screams to be given back his hand. Annie and Ed's drive is blocked by workman Jake (Dan Hicks) putting a barricade in front of the destroyed bridge. Bobby Joe (Kassie Wesley DePaiva), leaning on their car, says that there isn't any other road that leads there, and Jake points out that there is a trail through the woods, and that they would lead them there for $40... $100. Annie says sure, if they also carry the luggage. Sly grins all around. Ash tries drowning his evil hand, and it smashes crockery over his head and bangs his head into the sink, hits him, and flips him onto the floor. After a few more plates and bottles, it spots a cleaver and starts to drag Ash's unconscious body towards it. But Ash wakes up stabs his own hand, pinning it to the floor, and hacks it off with the very chainsaw he used only moments ago to carve his lover to pieces. He starts it by pulling the rope with his teeth. "Who's laughing now?" He binds the stump of his arm with cloth and duct tape. Annie, Ed, and Bobby Joe are preceding through the dark woods, trailed by Jake struggling along under a huge trunk. Ash traps his amputated hand under a tin and a few books (including "A Farewell To Arms"), but it escapes and hides inside the wall. Ash fires several shells into the wall, and the hand taunts him, then gets its thumb caught in a rat trap. It shakes that off and gives Ash the one-finger salute. After several more shots, the walls begin to bleed, then spew like firehoses, spraying Ash and covering the entire room in blood. Suddenly the blood turns black and vanishes back into the walls. Ash sits on a chair that breaks under his weight. An evil-looking deer head mounted on the wall suddenly begins to laugh at Ash, and other items in the house, such as lamps, cabinets, and books, join in. Ash, who appears to be losing his sanity, laughs along with them. The laughter ends abruptly when Ash hears movement outside the front door, and unloads the shotgun into it. The people at the door are Annie Knowby (Sarah Berry), Prof Knowby's daughter, who has pages of the Necronomicon with her, boyfriend Ed Gentley (Richard Domeier) - who's not really important as he'll be hacked to pieces within 15 minutes - and their two red neck guides, Jake (Dan Hicks) and his honey Bobbie Jo (Kassie Wesley DePaiva). Ash shoots through the door, clearly on his last nerve. This result in grazing Bobby Jo. Ed and Jake beat Ash as Annie notices the absence of her parents in the cabin. After seeing the blood on the chainsaw and on Ash, they come to the conclusion that he killed Annie's parents. The four newcomers throw Ash into the fruit cellar. Annie, Ed, Jake, and Bobby Jo listen to recordings of Professor Knowby's, where they learn that Knowby killed Henrietta (Lou Hancock) - Annie's mother - after she became possessed, and buried her body in the fruit cellar. Surprisingly Henrietta then rises from the grave and attacks the luckless Ash. The other four take pity on him and release him from his basement prison, hauling him out of by his head, and force the demon wife into the cellar, although this procedure results in Jake getting grabbed by the face, Ed similarly grabbed and thrown into the wall, and Bobby Jo getting a mouthful of flying eye ball. Fortunately Henrietta is locked underground. But that's not this demon done yet, it takes human form and tries to persuade Annie to let it out (that's right, she's a crafty Candarian demon). Ash sees through this trick, grabs Annie and shakes his head. This sheer act of manliness overwhelms Annie and makes her say "That thing in the cellar is not my mother". At this point it becomes apparent that Ed too has rudely became possessed, levitating, and, even more rudely takes a bite out of Bobby Jo's hair and tells them all that they will be "Dead by Dawn". Other corpse-oids join in on the chant. Jake is thrown up and breaks a light bulb with his head. Ash appears to flee at this point and receives a shouting from Annie. But lo and behold our hero has not fled and as the others have been frozen with fear Ash returns brandishing an axe. He hacks Ed to pieces (told you), spraying green slime everywhere. In a lull, Jake notices through the barricaded window that the trail they came in on just ain't there no more. The clocks pendulum stops suddenly. It's so quiet. For a moment. Following some unconvincing sound affects, the spirit of the professor appears ghost-like before them and says that the pages Annie possesses are the key to dispelling the evil dead. Bobby Jo then discovers Ash's possessed disembodied hand holding hers, and she screams, and knocks down their only oil lamp, and runs into the forest, where she is attacked and killed by the trees. Annie and Ash find a drawing in the pages of the book she brought along which depicts a hero in 1300 A.D. said to have dispelled the evil; the hero appears as a figure with a chainsaw-like hand and a "boomstick." Hysterical with fear for Bobby Jo, Jake picks up the shotgun and brandishes it at the others. Ash tries to convince Jake that Bobby Jo is dead, but Jake grows furious and throws the book pages into the cellar, and forces everyone to go after her. Outside, the trees are moving, and not the way they would in a wind. The group goes into the woods, only to discover that the trail has disappeared. A demon rushes them, again possessing Ash, and throws Jake into a tree. Ash chases Annie back to the cabin. She grabs the bone dagger from the first movie and accidentally stabs Jake as he is trying to get back into the cabin. She has to pull Jake's body inside so that she can shut the door. Ash pounds on the door, then suddenly stops. Annie removes the dagger from Jake and then drags him to a safer place, right next to the cellar door, where of course Henrietta pops up and drags him in head-first to kill him. Annie is hosed by a tsunami of blood. Ash attacks Annie, accidentally ripping her necklace off her neck. As she lays unconscious, Ash looks at the necklace and reverts to his normal self after being reminded of Linda. After convincing a terrified axe-wielding Annie that he is no longer possessed, Ash and Annie agree to vanquish the evil together, for which they'll need those pages in the basement. This calls for an awesome montage, as Ash uses his technical know-how to convert the chainsaw into a chainsaw hand, fitting firmly on his amputated stump and sawing the end of his shotgun. The scene ends up with a close up of his rugged face and he announces "Groovy". This establishes that the previous coward has become a lean mean deadite slaying machine. Ash and Annie return to the cabin, where Ash cuts the cellar doors in half, and enters the cellar and finds the pages strewn about the floor, seemingly leading him deeper into the darkness. Henrietta leaps out of the cellar door and attacks Annie. Ash emerges from the cellar and begins fighting with flying Henrietta; he has the upper hand until Henrietta transforms into a more vicious demonic form. Ash is saved when Annie distracts Henrietta by singing a lullaby that Henrietta sang to her when she was a girl. While Henrietta is focused on Annie, Ash uses his chainsaw to decapitate and dismember the demon, then deals the final blow by delivering a shotgun blast to its head. "I'll swallow your soul!' "Swallow this!" Annie & Ash have a tender hugging moment, and then the trees attack. Annie takes the pages and begins translating the text to manifest the evil, which appears in the form of a large bloody head covered in the faces of those it has possessed, and the power to wilt flowers. While Ash is grabbed by tree branches and brought closer to the creature, which he tries to fend off. The chainsaw in its eye seems to irritate it. Annie recites the incantation to rid the earth of the evil. A large vortex opens up just outside the cabin, gravitating everything around into it, including Ash's car, a large tree, and the evil itself. Annie is then stabbed in the back by Ash's severed hand with the bone knife. With her dying breaths, she speaks the last words of the incantation, and the giant head and its tree hands are sucked into the vortex before it disappears. Ash is left in the cabin with Annie's body for a moment, before the door is ripped away showing that the vortex is still there. Ash is sucked in along with trees and many items from the cabin. Ash, his car, and a tree fall from the sky and land on a large block of rock. He looks up and finds himself surrounded by armoured and mounted medieval knights. The knights are about to attack Ash when a winged demonic creature swoops down from the sky, terrifying the knights as they scatter. Ash reaches for his shotgun and blows the creature's head off. The knights gather around Ash as he prepares to defend himself. One knight then lifts his face plate and declares, "Hail he who hath fallen from the sky to deliver us from the terror of the Deadites!" The army of medieval warriors then falls to their knees and begins chanting "hail" as Ash realizes that he is in fact the prophesied "Hero from the Sky." The film closes with Ash shaking his head in disbelief and screaming "No!" as the camera pans out to show the large army that now awaits Ash's command.