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Great Film overall

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

This is one of those movies that you watch and think who in the h*ll dreamed this up. It's super low budget, but super creative too. Just really freaking weird! If you like David Lynch or John Waters movies, you will love this sick little gem. It's a film that you'll never forget . . . no matter how hard you might try. If you can watch it with Joe Bob Briggs on Shudder, it's even better!

They say that horror films run in cycles. The first major one involved the classic Universal monsters like Frankenstein, Dracula and the Wolf Man. The second came during the fifties when we had radiated monsters that turned miniscule pests into giant sized terrors. The early sixties provided us with two forms of horror, the drive in low budget films that included the Poe tales from Roger Corman and the imported Hammer horror films more often than not starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Then a lull came along with only THE EXORCIST on hand. All of that changed in the late seventies and early eighties.The invention of the VCR ushered in a new wave of horror films. Once again the budgets were low but the creative levels were high. Video renters couldn't get enough of horror films. Directors who went on to become famous were making many of these movies, cutting their teeth on combinations of editing techniques and gushing goo. It was a time when horror fans were delighted. Then Hollywood became aware of the money to be made. Suddenly it changed from creative output to franchise material. Many were good movies but it became all about how long a series could run.Fortunately fans can still partake in the classics of the time period, those 70s and 80s slashers and creature movies that made you force your parents to allow you to traipse down the horror aisle as the local video store. One such movie has now made its way to blu-ray format in the best offering of the movie ever seen. That movie is Frank Henenlotter's BASKETCASE.The movie tells the story of two brothers, Duane (Kevin Van Hentenryck) and Belial. Joined together at birth Belial was a malformed creature attached to his brother's side. When years later a medical team separates the pair, Belial survives and communicates with his brother. Together the two run away with plans of revenge against the medical staff who forced them apart.After an initial murder we find the pair walking the streets of New York in the 42nd Street area, notorious for the sleaziness of the times. Porn theaters, hotels with hourly rental rates and greasy food joints abound. Checking into a hotel with Belial in a wicker basket, Duane begins his search for the staff.As their story unfolds Duane meets and falls for a young nurse named Sharon (Terri Susan). With his attentions deviated from their goal Belial is enraged. The malformed monstrosity is not one to take lightly, especially when angered. Whether the pair will carry on with their plans for revenges or if Duane will find some sense of normality isn't revealed until the end of the film. The fact that the film generated 2 sequels answers part of that question. Both of those films are available on blu-ray now as well.To start with the movie provides us with a new monster, something that had disappeared from the film landscape for some time. After years of radiated creatures we now had one born for no apparent reason other than that he simply was. It would be a few more years before the genetically altered creatures arrived and Belial is not one of those. The effects used to create Belial were practical effects, puppets and the like, giving him a more sinister appearance than any computer generated creature has had. That added to the terror aspect of the character, making him frightening, something you'd hope to never encounter. And at the same time there is an amount of sympathy imbued in the character, a monster not by choice but by birth. In this way he becomes the new Frankenstein in a modern world.As I said earlier the movies from this time period had some of the most miniscule budgets ever known to man. Many were shot on the fly, no permits sought out for locations, shot in actual buildings rather than sets and using actors who were lacking on so many levels. But all of that combined to give films like this one a charm all their own. Hentenryck's delivery of lines leaves much to be desired but it also makes his performance as an innocent in a nasty world more believable. The side actors also offer lines in the worst way possible but who cares? This is a creature feature and no one is looking for Shakespeare.Henenlotter has delivered the goods with this film, his first feature length movie. Many directors their first time out try to dazzle us with their techniques, film angles, effects laden shots and more. Henenlotter just wants to tell us a story and frighten us at the same time. That makes for a much more enjoyable film. The seediness of the area the film takes place in is embraced by Henenlotter, a world most of us will never visit but we get a glimpse of here from someone familiar with it. It is a world that suits Duane and Belial Bradley and their story.Arrow Video has done their standard amazing job with this one. To begin with their presenting the film in a digital 4k format making it the cleanest possible version you'll find of the film. In addition to that they've loaded the film with a ton of extras sure to make any fan foam at the mouth. Those include a brand new audio commentary track with Henenlotter and Hentenryck, "Basket Case 3 : An Interview with Duane Bradley" a look back at the character with Henenlotter, "Seeing Double: The Basket Case Twin" a new interview with Florence and Maryellen Schultz the twin nurses from the film, a brand new making of featurette with interviews of producer Edgar Ievins, casting person/actress Ilze Balodis, associate producer/effects artist Ugis Nigals and Belial performer Kika Nigals, "Blood, Basket and Beyong" a new interview with actress Beverly Bonner, "Belial Goes to the Drive-In" a new interview with film critic Joe Bob Briggs, an outtakes featurette, "In Search of the Hotel Broslin" an archive featurette, "Slash of the Knife" a short film made by Henenlotter in 1972, "Belial's Dream" a brand new Basket Case inspired animated short by filmmaker Robert Morgan, behind the scenes of "Belial's Dream", trailers, TV spots, radio spots, an extensive still gallery, a reversible sleeve with original artwork by Sara Deck and for the first pressing only a collector's booklet with new writing on the film by Michael Gingold. Whew! That's an exhaustive amount of extras for a movie that probably costs less than all of these combined!Fans of the film will rejoice at the opportunity to revisit Duane and Belial once more. They'll revel in every blood soaked moment that appears on screen. Those who have never seen the film will discover just how great it truly is, enough so that they might decide to gather the entire set of three films. In any event this edition from Arrow shows once more how dedicated they are at offering the best quality version of the films they carry. A fan couldn't ask for more.

We are back to the grimy New York of the early 1980s. Times Square is sleazy with sex shops, low rent hotels and seedy cinemas. Somewhere running around in the city is The Exterminator, Ms 45 and Charles Bronson with a death wish.Duane Bradley arrives in New York with plenty of cash and a locked basket. He checks into a cheap hotel and inside the basket is his deformed and horrid Siamese twin brother, Belial separated forcefully by some doctors under their father's order when they were young. Both brothers have a telepathic link and Duane knows that Belial is also insanely jealous which he discovers when he strikes up a friendship with a nurse.Belial resents being cut off from his normal looking brother and seeks revenge against the doctors responsible by killing them horribly. He even split his own father in two.Basket Case is regarded as a low budget camp classic horror. It has laughably bad effects with cheap stop motion and the acting is atrocious. I would like to call it wooden but I have no desire to insult forests.The director adds gore to keep the horror fans happy and also there is plenty of screaming which eventually gets to be irritating. In fact once you realise there is a death coming, you gather that the screaming is just padding to extend the length of the movie.I liked the comical hotel manager trying to keep order in his dive but having endured this film you kind of wonder why it is held in such a high regard. It fails as a horror film because its not scary.

Though riddled with lotsa z-grade flaws and cheesy cheapness, Basket Case (surprisingly) still does manage to deliver a grotesque, little frenzy of grimy horror movie fun from the early 1980s.I don't think that I need to tell you that Basket Case is mighty far from being considered a great movie. But, all the same, it is genuinely creepy and absurd and (at times) equally funny in a very twisted, tongue-in-cheek sort of way.(In other words - This Horror/Comedy is so bad that it's actually good)Basket Case tells a decidedly grim and grubby little tale about the small-town misfit nerd named Duane Bradley who travels to NYC in order to track down and kill the doctors who (under his father's raging demands) were responsible for surgically separating him from his beloved, Siamese-twin brother, Belial, some years earlier.Duane carries around his bad-natured, grotesquely malformed brother (who looks something like a squashed octopus) in a large, wicker picnic basket and feeds this ravenous, little runt bag-loads of hamburgers and hotdogs.After taking a crummy, little room at the Hotel Broslin (a real dive that is the ultimate epitome of Times Square sleaziness), the loyal Bradley Brothers embark on their revenge mission, spilling more blood and killing enough people to satisfy any gore film fanatic (even by today's standards).To prove that its story isn't completely heartless, right to the core, Basket Case does actually take some time out from all of the carnage to delight the viewer with a "romantic" interlude - As well, it gives us a brief glimpse of both male and female nudity.But, be warned, this trashy, over-the-top travesty of low-budget film-making also features some of the worst acting imaginable on the entire face of this planet, bar none.