Basket Case

UPC: 014381074628

Studio: Image Entertainment

MPAA Rating: NR   Contains:[Violence, Graphic Violence, Nudity, Adult Situations, Not For Children, Adult Language]

Summary: The poor social skills of a young yokel turn out to have a horrifying explanation in this low-budget splatterfest, which marks the debut of Frankenhooker director Frank Henenlotter. The film begins with a bloody prologue and the arrival of young Duane Bradley (Kevin Van Hentenryck) at a broken-down New York hotel full of drunks, hookers, and assorted weirdos. An upstate native with few big-city survival skills, the earnest Duane seems slightly off. He flashes lots of bills at the hotel manager, carries a large wicker basket with him, and seems bewildered at the variety of characters on display. Once he's alone, Duane's own behavior becomes bewildering as he talks incessantly to some unseen presence and drops prodigious quantities of fast food into his basket. After Duane visits a surgeon's office and the doctor gets rendered into a mangled corpse, all becomes clear; Duane is half of a pair of Siamese twins who were separated against their will in a brutal operation a decade earlier. Belial, his lumpen, beachball-sized brother, secretly survived the procedure and now wants to exact revenge on those who separated him from Duane. Things go according to plan except for one thing: Duane falls hard for coy, busty Sharon (Terri Susan Smith), the receptionist of one of the nefarious doctors. That doesn't sit well with the malformed Belial, who's as attracted to Sharon as he is jealous of Duane's romance with her. Although no sequel appeared for several years, Basket Case was eventually followed by Basket Case 2 and Basket Case 3: The Progeny; Hentenryck and Belial also make a cameo in the director's Brain Damage. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi

Category: Horror

Features: New film-to-tape digital transfer
Audio commentary by director Frank Henenlotter, producer Edgar Levins, and actress Beverly Bonner
Two theatrical trailers
TV spot
Outtakes and behind-the-scenes footage from the director's personal collection
Special Video Short: "In Search of the Hotel Broslin"
Gallery of "Basket Case" exploitation art and never-before-seen behind-the-scenes photos
Two rare "Basket Case" radio spots
Two radio interviews with actress Terri Susan Smith
Clips from Beverly Bonner's comedy cable TV show, "Beverly Bonner's Laugh Track"

Basket Case

Format: DVD

Release Date: 07/17/2001

Audio: 5.1 Dolby Digital 5.1, 1 USA & territories, Canada

Runtime: 91 Minutes

Sides: 1

Number of Discs: 1

Language(s) English

Chapters: Side #1 --
0. Scene Selections
1. Main Title; First Strike! [3:31]
2. Hotel Broslin [8:51]
3. Nosy Neighbors [2:55]
4. A Visit to the Doctor [8:41]
5. All Worked Up [8:48]
6. Don't Touch That Dial [3:27]
7. Belial Goes Bonkers [9:09]
8. Brotherly Love [6:02]
9. The Split [4:49]
10. Apart, But Not Alone [6:36]
11. Simply Irresistible [7:19]
12. An Adolescent Punk With a Smoldering Grudge [4:47]
13. Jealousy [4:37]
14. A Horny Little Devil [7:11]
15. Falling Out [2:49]
16. End Credits [1:18]

Brian J. Dillard

This quirky, inventive little comedy-shocker was only the first of many efforts from writer/director Frank Henenlotter, and it's certainly his most modestly budgeted outing. The gory auteur gets around this problem throughout much of the film by using suggestion rather than explicit special effects and focusing on the clash between Kevin Van Hentenryck's wholesome if offbeat Duane and the assortment of freaks who surround him in his bowery abode. With this fish-out-of-water framework in place, the director slowly teases out his revelations about evil twin Belial, culminating in an extended flashback that is among the film's most cheerfully creepy segments. The lumpy little guy himself is often shown only in flashes, jumping out of his basket on attackers or attached to his victims' necks. Unfortunately, Henenlotter stretches his budget with a pair of extended sequences that utilize stop-motion animation of a quality several steps below that of your average Christmas claymation extravaganza. Far more effective are those scenes that go for lots of blood and just a little Belial, or those that use puppetry, stationary poses, and offbeat humor. (One sequence involving indoor plumbing proves particularly amusing.) Although Beverly Bonner makes a strong impression as Casey, the hooker with a heart of gold who befriends the bewildered Duane, the rest of the acting is what you'd expect from a low-budget horror film. Playing Duane like a particularly winsome autistic child, Van Hentenryck exhibits a strange kind of charisma, but it's hard to tell whether he's a master thespian or just inexperienced. Lucky for him, Henenlotter has learned a lot from the schlock horror of the '50s and '60s, and fashioned a vehicle that renders all such questions of quality and skill moot. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi

Cast and Crew: Kerry Ruff  Actor 
Joe Clarke  Actor 
Ruth Neuman  Actor 
Richard Pierce  Actor 
Dorothy Strongin  Actor 
Frank Henenlotter  Director 
Frank Henenlotter  Screenwriter 
Gus Russo  Composer (Music Score) 
Edgar Ievins  Producer 
Tom Kaye  Executive Producer 
Arnie Bruck  Executive Producer 
David Maswick  Composer (Music Score) 
Kevin Van Hentenryck  Actor 
Sean McCabe  Actor 
Ilze Balodis  Actor 
Terri Susan Smith  Actor 
Beverly Bonner  Actor 
Tom Robinson  Actor 
Robert Vogel  Actor 
Chris Babson  Actor 
Maria T. Newland  Actor 
Diana Browne  Actor 
Lloyd Pace  Actor 
Florence Shultz  Actor 
Mary Ellen Shultz  Actor 
Bill Freeman  Actor 
Constantine Scopas  Actor 
Charles Stanley  Actor 
Sydney Best  Actor 
Johnny Ray Williams  Actor 
Yousef Abuhamdeh  Actor 
Lubi Kirsch  Actor 
Catherine Russell  Actor 
Mitchell Huval  Actor 
Pat Ivers  Actor 
Emily Armstrong  Actor 
Noel Hall  Actor 
Bruce Frankel  Actor 
Russell Fritz  Actor 

Country: USA