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| “ | What's the matter, Trevor, scared of something? | „ |
| ~ Helen Lyle, revived as the Candywoman, before killing her ex-husband. |
Helen Lyle is the main protagonist of the 1992 horror film Candyman. She was a graduate student who lived in Chicago and was doing a study on the urban legend of The Candyman, a supernatural serial killer with a hook for a hand.
She is portrayed by Virginia Madsen.
History[]
In 1992, Helen and her friend Bernadette were studying the Candyman urban legend for a grad school project. The urban legend was popular amongst a Chicago ghetto known as Cabrini Green, where several murders had taken place and given support to the myth. Not believing at first, Helen and Bernadette foolishly call upon the Candyman by saying his name in the mirror five times. Although, Candyman doesn't show up until Helen inadvertently disproves his legend after she is attacked by a serial killer in Cabrini Green using the Candyman alias to commit his crimes.
With the belief in him slowly fading, Candyman appears to Helen while she's walking to her car. He makes her pass out and when she awakes, she's on the floor of Annie Marie's bathroom covered in blood. Helen hears Annie Marie's screams and investigates, finding Marie's rottweiler decapitated and her toddler son missing. When Helen gets her attention, Marie attempts to attack her, forcing her to defend herself with the meat cleaver. The cops bust through the door and arrest Helen. After getting the blood cleaned off of her, Helen calls her husband from jail, but he doesn't answer. She spends some time in jail before Trevor comes to pick her up.
A little while later, Helen looks at the pictures she took at Ruthie Jean's apartment. One picture shows the Candyman standing behind her in the mirror. Upon seeing, Candyman appears again and corners Helen. He attempts to kill her, but Bernadette interrupts him and gets killed in Helen's stead. Trevor returns to the apartment and finds Bernadette's mutilated corpse and Helen covered in blood holding a knife. She is once again taken away, but this time to a mental hospital where the staff strap her down on a table. Candyman appears above her and goes under the bed. She freaks out and garners the attention of the staff who drug her and put her to sleep.
A month later, Helen is taken to a psychiatrist who doesn't believe her Candyman story. So, she summons him by calling his name in a mirror five times. The Candyman shows up behind the psychiatrist, mutilates him with his hook, frees Helen from her bonds, and flies out the window setting off the alarms. Realizing that she'll most likely be blamed for the murder, Helen climbs out the window and into another room. She knocks out a nurse and takes her clothes, disguising herself to escape the hospital.
Helen runs home and finds Trevor with one of her classmates. She confronts the two and freaks them out before fleeing. After fleeing, Helen goes back to Ruthie Jean's apartment, where she crawls back through the mirror and into an upper area. She arms herself with a hook, finding the Candyman sleeping on an altar. He opens his eyes and she stabs him in the neck with the hook, to no effect. Once again, he puts her in a trance and she surrenders to him. Candyman carries her to another altar where he reveals his skeletal bee-covered chest and kisses her with his mouth full of bees, making her go to sleep.
When Helen awakes, Candyman is gone and has taken Annie Marie's baby to the bonfire pile. Helen grabs the hook and hears the baby's crying. She follows the crying to the bonfire pile and crawls through various tunnels, but a kid she had befriended mistakes her for Candyman and gathers people to set the pile on fire. Helen reaches the baby, but Candyman attempts to keep her quiet while the people set the junk ablaze. In order to escape, she stabs Candyman in the stomach with a blazing splintered stick of wood, causing him to let her go. She desperately crawls out of the tunnels while Candyman angrily slashes at junk blocking him. As Candyman is burnt to a crisp, Helen escapes just in time to deliver the baby back to Annie Marie, only to die afterwards.
At Helen's funeral, the Cabrini Green residents gather to pay their respects to Helen for her sacrifice, with Jake dropping Candyman's hook into her grave. After the funeral, Trevor sulks on the toilet while his new girlfriend is trying to cook. Trevor eventually says Helen five times in the mirror, causing her to appear and gut him with Candyman's hook.
It's unknown, what became of Helen after the ending, whether or not her spirit took over the Candyman legend or just killed Trevor as revenge for cheating on her. In the sequel Farewell to the Flesh, a newspaper explains that a majority of the public believed that she committed the murders because she went crazy after becoming obsessed with the Candyman legend. Though some also doubt that conclusion, and believe her to have been a victim of Candyman.
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