This is one of the more bizarre movies I’ve ever seen. From writer/director Frank Henenlotter, Basket Case is an ultra low budget black comedy horror flick about a young man and his brother. By all accounts, Duane Bradley is a normal person. Raised in upstate New York, he’s on his first trip to the big city. He’s naïve — green as all hell, in fact — but he has his charms, and it’s easy to tell that the city can’t come close to extinguishing all his innocence.
Duane finds himself a room in a seedy hotel near Times Square (Basket Case was released in 1982, a whole universe away from today’s Times Square). He carries all his worldly possessions on his person. A big wad of cash, a backpack full of clothes, and a wicker basket in which he carries his brother. Wait...what?
I’m not going to pretend it’s any surprise what’s in the basket. It could have been anything, but it’s pretty clear early on this is a creature feature, so of course there’s a monster in the basket. It’s revealed that the monster is Duane’s onetime conjoined twin, forcibly removed by a gaggle of less than ethical doctors when Duane and his brother were just boys. Left for dead, the twin, named Belial, reunites with Duane, and after the two grow into adulthood, they set in motion a plan to take revenge on the doctors who wronged them. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Basket Case”