The Candy Man

Year releasted: 1969

by Keith Phipps
March 4th, 2001

Playing not the fun-loving imp immortalized in song by Sammy Davis Jr., but a drug-dealing English villain, aging bon vivant George Sanders stars in The Candy Man, a kidnap thriller shot under the unforgiving sunlight of Mexico City. "There's a man with a peppermint stick in his hand," Roger Calleo proclaims over a psychedelic title track, as Sanders distributes peppermint sticks to a pair of park-going children. But the candy addressed in the title and in Calleo's song is actually intended as a metaphor for the illegal drugs Sanders uses to bend a handful of hapless criminals to his will. "Everybody needs some candy... one kind or another," Sanders states ominously, and he proves his thesis by using something stronger than peppermint to leverage pot-addicted Carlos Cortés into kidnapping the child of visiting Hollywood star Leslie Parrish. But Sanders doesn't anticipate his reefer-mad henchman getting beaten to the punch, as Parrish's little girl is kidnapped by a delusional woman reeling from the death of her child. But the tweed-favoring master criminal finds ways to bend even this to his advantage. Meanwhile, Parrish's agent sees an angle of his own. "It would be terrible if something happened to the baby," he says, "but a story like this would be a hell of a break." Could he be the man behind the candy man? A series of terse phone calls heightens the tension, as does the toddling kidnappee, who wanders away from her captors and into a cathedral apparently constructed out of badly stored stock footage. When she later dangles on the edge of a tall building, could anyone be so heartless as to leave her in harm's way? This candy man can, but Sanders soon finds his plans thwarted by his own fall from on high, his evil reign brought to an end as Parrish's tot waddles back into her arms.