8 Horror Movies Where The Villain Is Really The Hero

While a Candyman reboot is on the way right now, Bernard Rose's 1992 Candyman is an all-time great piece of horror cinema. As the titular Candyman, Tony Todd cemented his place in horror folklore with that '92 picture - not to mention its subsequent sequels.

On the surface, Todd's Candyman is a hook-handed murderer who was on a killing spree to keep his own legacy alive. But dive down a little deeper on Candyman and there's so much more at play with that first movie and with its supposed antagonist.

It's easy and often lazy to throw around the 'sympathetic villain' tag, yet Candyman is that and so much more. Daniel Robitaille is a heroic figure wronged by evil, backward-thinking sorts, and in Candyman he can easily be viewed as a hook-handed hero rather than a hook-handed villain.

The son of a slave who had achieved post-Civil War success in the shoe market, Robitaille grew up to become an artist who specialised in painting portraits and landscapes for the wealthy. His 'mistake' was falling for the daughter of one of these elite sorts, and a mob attacked Daniel, doused him in honey, and left him to die from bee stings after he'd fathered a child with his beloved.

Things didn't stop there, of course, for Robitaille's corpse was burnt and his ashes were spread on the land where Cabrini-Green would be built - hence his mission to terrorise the neighbourhood and keep his story known.