Let others sit through Mel Gibson's flagellation film for an inspirational experience. Easter Sunday morning I turned to my DVD player for a different kinda viewing treat: Frank Henenlotter's low-rent classic Basket Case.
I have a major soft spot for this film. It's the first horror flick I bought on videotape back when I was doing (gulp!) betamax. Originally released in 1982, the film had garnered a cult rep on the midnight movie circuit, which only grew when then-video giant Media Home Entertainment debuted the tape at budget price. I purchased the tape cheap and played it to stretched-out death. This was the first time, though, I'd watched Something Weird's 20th Anniversary DVD Edition.
The low-budget flick tells the story of two sibs: Duane (Kevin Van Hentenryck) and his hideously misshapen Biblically-named brother Belial ("He looks like a squashed octopus," Duane tells a sympathetic hooker). The two were born conjoined, but are separated in childhood via an ultra-splattery operation. The doctors treat Belial as a malignant growth, not as a living entity, so he's casually discarded: a big mistake since the creature survives the procedure and enlists Duane to enact revenge against their father and trio of quacks responsible for their painful separation.
When we meet the duo, Duane is walking along Times Square, carrying Belial in a padlocked wicker basket, being followed by a drug dealer attempting to interest the young man in his wares. (Among other things, the flick serves as a visual document of the pre-cleaned Times Square.) He rents a room in a skuzzy hotel called the Brosnin and immediately draws the interest of the low-lifes hanging around the check-in desk. Everyone Duane comes into contact with asks him, "What's in the basket?" but we don't really get to see for ourselves until halfway into the film.
The creature, a lumpen head with arms and claws that it uses to propel itself across the floor, is a wonderfully cheesy creation that reminds me of something Frank Zappa collaborator Cal Schenkel might've created for Uncle Meat. Sometimes it's a puppet; other times it's a big rubbery figure that victims clasp to their bodies as they pretend to try and push it away - and in two memorably incompatible sequences, it's rendered in jerky stop motion. There's no way you can take Belial seriously, which is probably for the best since his actions grow more unspeakable as the movie unreels.
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