Parents' Guide to Candyman (1992)

In CANDYMAN, Helen (Virginia Madsen) is a sociology graduate student who's working on a graduate thesis about "urban legends." In interviews, she learns of Candyman, a killer with a grappling hook for a hand who appears if someone looks into a mirror and repeats his name five times. While working late on campus, a cleaning lady overhears Helen going through her thesis, and brings in her coworker to tell Helen about how they believe Candyman killed a woman named Ruthie Jean, a neighbor of one of the women in the Cabrini-Green housing project. While researching Ruthie Jean's murder, Helen discovers dozens of other murders attributed to Candyman. Believing this to be an "urban legend" spread by Cabrini-Green residents as a coping mechanism to cope with the high crime and poverty, Helen decides to go to Cabrini-Green with her colleague Bernadette to learn more about Candyman and the circumstances surrounding Ruthie Jean's death. Helen explores Ruthie's former and still empty apartment, and enters into a passageway through the bathroom mirror that seems to be the lair of Candyman. Helen meets Anne-Marie, Ruthie Jean's neighbor, and a young boy named Jake, who takes Helen to a public rest room where a horrific incident involving Candyman took place. In this rest room, Helen is brutally attacked by a man with a grappling hook and his henchmen. When she later identifies him in a police lineup, Helen believes that the true Candyman has been found, until the real Candyman appears to her. Angered that Helen was skeptical of his existence, Candyman goes on a killing spree while making it look like Helen was the actual murderer. While in and out of jail and psychiatric observation, Helen must now find a way to prove that not only is Candyman real, but that she's innocent of the brutal murders of which she is accused.