Basket Case | Anatomy of a Franchise

in 1982 a man walks down the streets of new york bathed in the glow of neon signs proclaiming the ability to provide people with the comfort that they desire another man approaches him and tries to sell him drugs saying that he has anything that he could possibly want he even has several women if that were to interest him but he walks past all of this and arrives at the hotel brossland where he will be staying for several days whose sign crackles with incandescent electricity and in these opening moments it is already apparent that basket case is one of those films that somehow is able to capture the mood and atmosphere of a particular time and place that is no longer the grime and hedonism and the desperation of this late stage new york before its reformation that came soon after i think basket case written and directed by frank hennenlotter is an important movie because it is more than the sum of its parts it isn't particularly well shot they had no money the acting is exaggerated the people making it didn't particularly care if it was good or not and it reminds me frequently of the early films of john waters which is funny considering the hennen lotter's first film slash of the knife ran as the opener for midnight screenings of pink flamingos in 1972. on the surface it is a trashy exploitation film about a parasitic twin who never fully developed who was removed from a man named dwayne's body but somehow managed to survive and now lives in a basket that he carries around with him as they communicate telepathically and travel around new york together trying to seek revenge on the doctors and medical professionals who tore them apart against their will an idea very much inspired from larry cohen's 1974 film it's alive it is unapologetic questionable hyper-violent sleaze but underneath it all there is something compelling about the whole thing i recently re-watched 1987's street trash a few weeks ago and in revisiting that film i was again shocked at how well produced it is the camera glides through that world in a dreamlike way and it is clear that even for something as repulsive as that film is there was genuine care and craft that went into it a fun fact is that the director of the film j michael murrow would later go on to be a camera operator on films like terminator 2 casino titanic and dances with wolves and a fun thing that i have always loved about horror is that you often get to see these talents develop in young people through a genre lens that would later be refined in more mainstream titles i love examining trash cinema because there really is an art to it that takes a special set of skills to present something meaningful and fun with essentially no money while also being as gross as possible with what is available at hand and when it is done correctly it can bring about fascinating results that are able to comment on social or political unrest of particular eras i think in this way the first two maniac cop films present a similar new york to what we see here in the first basket case movie handenlauter said on the production of the film that we had 35 thousand dollars and i couldn't film the script that i wrote it just didn't work but i didn't care because i was having fun i wanted to make a movie and i knew nobody would ever see this and i was horrified quite honestly when it opened at midnight and there were lines around the theater it played for two years at the waverly and i groaned every time it played i think there is something to this idea of making art for the joy of making art without any preconceived idea on how it will later be able to be used to turn a profit henlotter has said of his own work that it is obvious that it comes from someone who isn't interested in making films commercially and in that zone of creation i think is where a lot of interesting things can potentially happen there can be a lot of bad in that zone too way more bad than good really but real magic can happen here under the right circumstances there's a reason that we are here almost 40 years later still talking about basket case most of the names that appear in the credits of this movie are not real people only a few individuals worked on this and instead of listing the same names over and over again they decided to make up a lot of fake names to make it seem more like a real movie hannan lotter did all of the sound effects himself telling fingoria that anytime a woman is walking on screen the sound made for that was himself going down a hallway in heels they couldn't afford any equipment besides the sound and camera so anytime the shot is moving they were filming out of a car or in a wheelchair all the furniture for the movie was found in the trash or on the side of the road or was donated the hotel brazlen's sign was literally just hung off the fire escape outside kevin van hinten rick's apartment who plays dwayne in the film the role of cash that the detective finds on the floor is what was left of the film's budget by that point of the production and because they had so little money they consistently were having to take breaks from filming to raise additional funds which resulted in the actual shooting of basket case taking over a year to complete beverly bonner who plays casey in the film said of her experience it was wonderful it was one of the best experiences of my life and to that frank always says that's sad but it was just really warm and we had a good time the budget was low but i enjoyed myself the underlying tone of the film is related to the idea of a person being fearful of what their darker side may do everyone is capable if pushed far enough to do monstrous things and for some that emotional burden is something that has to be carried with them like a monkey on their back or in this case a disconnected siamese twin in a basket every time the smaller brother belile commits violence dwayne experiences it with him due to their telepathic link even from miles away and he receives psychic damage from feeling that intense violence and rage he isn't as committed to the idea of vengeance against the doctors and he fears belial for what he is capable of doing while also loving him as a brother he wants to live a normal life wants to make friends and find love and meaningful connections in the world but this part of his past is connecting him still to that path of violence he is torn in half by his desire to live a normal life and is an ability to deal with his trauma in any healthy way when taking his brother to commit their next kill at one point he wakes him up and says come on let's get this over with there is no joy or catharsis or closure or desire to do this on his end that he is receiving from this pain that they are imparting on these doctors who are mostly innocent unaware of the events that they have set into motion but why would he feel as dedicated to the idea of vengeance out of the two dwayne has it better off belial couldn't return to a normal life if he wanted to that has been taken away from him attached to his brother he is a person that a lot would still fear but some would ultimately understand and empathize with but alone people see him only as a monster and treat him as a monster and as a result he does monstrous things the world and his experiences in it have led belisle to becoming an entity uneducated and screaming in the dark unable to express himself or how he feels about anything capable only of lashing out at those around him i think in this way basket case and castle freak have a lot in common with what they're trying to say thematically and would probably make a good double feature pairing after being separated dwayne has to save belial from the trash after he is thought to be dead by the surgeons and was just thrown away there is a commentary here about how people are treated who deviate from the traditional norm even if that deviation isn't a choice made by them it's about how people in this situation are viewed and othered made to feel like something other than human because they don't fit into a preconceived mold of what a person is or what a person should be or should look like no one cares for belial's feelings except his brother even though he does have real genuine valid human emotions and experiences all anyone cares about is how to safely free dwayne from being dragged down by his twin because he fits more in line with what is expected there is an authentic goodness and heart to the center of the film dwayne befriends the hotel prostitute casey who looks out for him despite thinking he is mentally unwell after he confides in her about his twin a story that she does not believe at all she takes a motherly role in the story and for at least these few nights fills a void in his life that he has never had you see dwayne and belial's mother died while giving birth to them something which further adds to their father's hatred of belial and fuels his desire to have the surgeons destroy him everything about casey refuses to play in any common stereotypes or ideas you think she's being set up to be killed but she escapes with no real physical harm being done to her in fact she's the only character who enters the story who is mostly unaffected by the events she ultimately could be cut from the story and little would actually change but her being here adds a great deal of realness and character to the film and the time spent with her is not wasted basket case acts as both a celebration and condemnation of the city in a similar way that it is about life and the societal structures around us it shows the world in an ugly way but isn't pessimistic about it either saying that joy can still be found even in desperate situations that there's still room to laugh when the events of our lives seem grim it is a movie that is very character focused and through that highlights the idea that belial is deciding to continue to hunt after these people and is not forced into it that he could be making more of his situation but isn't allowing himself to find happiness for himself in his circumstance he feels trapped in his body and in his situation and in this city and the oppressive shots of new york that surround them adds to this feeling that the world is holding them and everyone in it down everyone who gets harmed by belial in this movie in a way has it coming he almost always acts in self-defense these people instigate the initial conflict but their motivations for doing so are forced onto them because of their own economic desperation their first victim comes soon after they are first separated as they decide together to kill their father because he forced the surgery onto them they then for a time go to live with their aunt who accepts them for who they are and loves them for the first time in their lives despite what they look like their cycle of violence does not start back up again until after her death it implies that they live for many years at peace with her it is only after she is gone and they again have no support system to help them or show them love that their bitterness again takes hold soon after they arrive in the city a man steals the basket that carries belial thinking that there must be something in it that he could possibly eat or steal only to then be mauled by the person inside the drunk from the hotel picks the lock to raid their room while dwayne is gone which results in his death at the hands of belial as well it presents a difficult world destroyed by extreme poverty and human needs not being met and these brothers are most of the time just trying to protect themselves and what little they have left from outside forces the core theme of the basket case franchise all relates back to the idea of separation anxiety and the need to find a community that accepts the individual for who they are these two personalities were literally joined at the hip for most of their lives and their entire relationship and reality is dependent on what the other is doing dwayne's franchise character arc is based on the idea of wanting to move on with his life but finding himself unable to do so because of his attachment to his brother even after they are separated he is literally and metaphorically mentally still connected to him the way they were born is a part of him and always will be and will always define who he is and how he interacts with the world around him it is a franchise about the idea of separation and reunification throughout it we see people who find something that comforts them only for that thing to be taken away from them time and time again leaving us with people who are continuously trying to pick up the pieces and make the best of the situation that life has dealt them and i think that it is most evident in the first film we have this pair who are separated from each other their families society and anyone that they grow to care for all they have is each other and they resent the other because of this and it all ends with the dichotomy of conflicting images and ideas in his sleep dwayne dreams of running nude through the streets of new york he no longer has scarring on his side he has been freed and liberated from all social constraints to be able to do as he pleases he is no longer held back by his brother's need for vengeance the dream ends though with an interruption he finds his dream self going to his girlfriend's apartment and touching her as she sleeps a vision forced onto him by his psychic connection with his brother because meanwhile while dwayne sleeps belial has escaped his basket and their room at the hotel and has gone in real life to her apartment out of jealousy for her taking his brother's attention and motivation for revenge away where he assaults her and ultimately ends her life and their internalized conflict that they have both shared their whole life through her death and their previous actions against the doctors becomes an externalized battle of the self one side of the person who wants to move forward and the other who only wants to brood and ruminate on the events that have led them to where they are and in this they are locked in an immovable impasse duane and belial fight each other and fall out of the window to their deaths the movie was completed it was purchased for distribution by the analysis film corporation who recut the entire film to be a comedy removing all of the blood and violence from it in the process they released it in a limited run in new york houston and san francisco and in all locations it was both a critical and commercial failure to the point that the distribution company was actually having to pay theaters to keep the films running in the hopes that word of mouth would spread about them and it is here where joe bob briggs enters the picture he stepped in and offered to help the film out by hosting the dallas premiere at a drive-in because the previous year at a film festival he had seen an earlier version of the film before the violence had been removed and he loved it but he said he would only host the event if they were going to show the unedited cut and by doing that job pretty much used his standing as a critic to turn basket case into a cult hit in major cities around the country before its national rollout and i was walking past the waverly one night i see this line stretching around the block and i see john caglione on it you know who did you know half of the makeup effects with kevin haney and i go john what are you seeing and he goes i'm seeing our movie i said what are you nuts i said all your effects are gone he goes like hell i was there last week i said you saw the scalpels in the face oh hell i sure did one thing that i would like to point out is that in this time period there were some insane ideas on how to spread word of mouth about a film's release often through the use of shock value especially in the case of movies like this that were opening in single cities and this one was about as strange as i have ever seen as when the film was coming out unrated in new york they had a man walk around the street that the waverly theater was on shirtless with basket case pins inserted directly into his skin that you would pull off of him if you wanted one they also gave out grimy looking basket case themed surgical masks to quote keep the blood off while watching the film it certainly was a different time but evidently it worked for them in the years following basket case's success hennen lotters seemed to continue doing what he had already been doing for some time now trying to get fun little horror movies made for a long period of time he thought that making a sequel to basket case was a bad move in his opinion the doctors were all dead both dwayne and belial were dead there was no suspense in the beginning about what was in the basket but it's obvious that some idea was beginning to form there in his next film brain damage there's a scene in which our main protagonist is riding the subway and seated across from him as dwayne holding his basket in the late 1980s frank henenlotter was trying to get writer director and producer james glickenhaus who had worked on films such as the protector maniac cop and shakedown to fund his next movie that would be titled insect city which he turned down and ended up never getting made but he liked the script enough to ask about other projects that could be a potential possibility for them to work on together and it was in that meeting that the pair decided to team up to create frankenhooker and basket case 2 in 1990. now i love basket case 2 but it is a really strange movie don't i can't i'm i'm pregnant i've been pregnant for the past six years what it is essentially taking the concept that was intended to be done on a micro budget and seeing what it would look like almost a decade later with some actual money put behind it it looks like a traditional movie now it is shot in a much more standard and competent style and in that it loses some of that original gorilla filmmaking identity it doesn't feel anywhere near as seedy as it previously did or violent for that matter and it lacks a bit of that tactile upsetting feeling of pure desperation associated with extreme poverty that most good new york films from this time had but through that this is able to stand apart from its predecessor and be its own thing which was the ultimate goal of the filmmakers in fact hinnon lotter originally intended for dwayne to only have a small role in the film and have it be almost entirely a new separate original tale set within the basket case universe but on this glickenhaus overruled him and forced the story to be much more connected to the first one than hindenlotter desired right from the beginning the film makes some interesting writing decisions and goes full-on weird from the outset we start by watching news coverage taken from the evening that the brothers fell from their hotel window and through this we learned that the outside world knows who these two are and what they have done they wake up in the hospital and in mid-escape they are rescued by these two who claim to have been friends with their aunt the brothers are secretly loaded into a van and taken to their home where they house a community of other people like belial that the older woman granny ruth refers to as her children she has made it her life's mission to travel the world and collect people that would otherwise be made to be outcasts of society or would be commonly thought of as circus freaks and she gives them a chance to have a loving home and community where they can rely on one another there's even a woman who lives there who has a similar connection to belial that he grows close with and like she has done for many others ruth opens up her residence to both of the brothers to live and heal in even going so far as to offering therapy sessions to help them integrate better into this family that they have formed more easily it is incredibly camp weirdly wholesome and very fun and in just the first few minutes it is attempting things that few movies would ever go for which i think is great a sanctuary has been violated all of this is in service of setting up the three parallel stories of the film the first of which is about marcy an investigative tabloid reporter who's been tasked by her publisher with finding any information about the missing twins that she can she has a lead that they might be associated with the so-called freak commune and similar to richard dee's in my previous video she will do anything that she has to to deliver her story we follow granny ruth as she further facilitates belial's path of revenge taking him around the country to kill people who exploit others based on their looks or disabilities and we also focus on dwayne who is in a weird place emotionally since we last saw him feeling for the first time in his life distanced from his brother who no longer needs him to enact his vengeance or even to survive he's able to be free and move on but something is keeping him here that he can't quite figure out he has gotten what he has always wanted he is able to be separate and free and not have to worry about his brother anymore but this isn't the liberation that he imagined it would be and he sort of just exists in this house for months on end in a depressed state and these three tales collide in an all-out battle to keep their refuge of a home that they have created intact and hidden from the outside world as dwayne joins the members of the house to go around town killing all the investigative reporters to keep their secret from becoming public knowledge this section is where most of the kills of the film are and while it is good i think it does hold the film back as a whole a little bit because they're not nearly as graphic and visceral as they were the first time around and this was a result of the filmmaker's experience with their previous movie frankenhooker that went through a lengthy public battle with the mpaa that was by all reports and exhausting time for both parties and to avoid a similar situation a lot of the violence is significantly toned down for this movie this results in one of the best moments though in which the family confronts marcy in her home and trap her and instead of killing her they grab her head and stretch it leaving her like this so that she will now know what it feels like to look like them and to have to face daily public life as they do it is a fun moment that plays by cartoon logic but it really works in the context of the story and world they are creating here the final messaging of the film though is a little disappointing to me on a personal level but i feel as if it might have been what they were trying to go for after learning that susan has been pregnant for six years and has a giant worm living inside of her that occasionally has to come up for air dwayne is driven insane the thought that everyone beneath their surface no matter how normal they look is a freak is too much for him to handle his entire vision of the future is based on him returning to a normal life and reintegrating into society and living amongst normal people that he could reach a point in his life that he would be considered to be normal and learning that even if someone presents a certain way they are still flawed in their own unique manner that no one really knows what they are doing that the world is truly chaos made up of individuals who are making it up as they go along and presenting in ways that are not true to their self and only true to the expectations of what others want to see and that he has more in common with these people who live here in this community than he would ever like to admit breaks him into frenzied state he throws susan from the window killing her and her unborn child and with her crochet needles he rejoins himself to belial as the people of the home watch in horror with a look of revulsion upon their faces and for a movie so based in the concept of a home for people who are not related by blood forming a family and support group to make it in this world who accept one another for how and who they are and embracing each other despite the way they look this ending doesn't feel right to me there's a good mirroring to the end of the last story there belial stole dwayne's happiness for selfish reasons to keep them connected and dependent on one another and here dwayne does the same to him these two are bad for each other and this cycle of abuse towards each other continues with this ending but if any horror movie were to conclude on a happy note then i think this should be one of them the end feels tonally off from what we have seen so far the whole movie is goofy and brightly colored and full of whimsy it really isn't a dark story at all if you were to take away the violence and it more so feels as if it's about the healing process after a dark time in someone's life rather than the dark time itself an emotional reaction to part one if you will everything leading up to this moment feels as if these brothers are finally going to reach a place of mutual understanding and happiness in a situation that is healthy for both of them where they are able to attain independence and thrive without having to use or lie on the other but then this end happens that feels separated from all of that and in a way i think that is pretty tragic i don't know it's a complicated conclusion but part of it has never really sat well with me but maybe it's a good ending because of that this movie also does one of my least favorite horror sequel things from this era which is reusing a lot of footage from the first movie to catch us back up to speed we get extended flashbacks to them falling out of the window the lead-up to their surgery the surgery itself and it mostly isn't needed as this information could have been conveyed in a different way through dialogue that allowed for further characterization that tied into this movie's story rather than just making us sit through something that we have already seen before but i also get that this was a different time and it might have been years since most people in the audience actually had an opportunity to watch the first basket case so it is just a product of the realities of its time on designing the creatures for the film the team focused on creating fun and surreal concepts that were not visually connected in any way to real-life human deformities or disfigurements the message of the film being what it was and accepting people of all kinds no matter the way they look and through that discovering talents that would have never been seen otherwise they felt it would be a bit cruel to try and create horrific on-screen monsters they would build horror on othering illnesses that people actually go through in real life and while people often talk about the sequel not having the same tone as the first film i think through this it kind of does these cartoony designs all signaled that the people creating these monsters were wanting to have a fun time making a movie together they were ultimately doing it for themselves which i think is really in the spirit of how the first basket case was created i think that is something that could largely be said about all of henlotter's work there is a tangible joy in the creation process that can be felt in each of these and adds to the enjoyment of the experience the creature effects were designed and created by makeup artist gabriel bartolos and he said on the design philosophy that they were going for in this movie that it was all with a wink and a nudge and was about having a good time frank really stressed to me let's not make this mean-spirited and let's not bring this too close to home i've personally always enjoyed full body rubber prosthetic monsters with wild designs which is one of the reasons that the recent psycho gorman appealed to me so much and the weirdness on display here with these creatures is just great it feels at times like an r-rated precursor to the monsters that the first spy kids was calling back to that i loved when i was young the setting of the film also played into this idea of not wanting the film to fall into stereotypes commonly associated with this kind of display in a horror story as hennenlotter put it we had a great time just making this crazy world and i thought well okay i've got a world full of freaks where do i have them living in some dilapidated gothic mansion somewhere that was too easy i thought you know they are just misfortunes of nature they aren't evil so let's have them living in splendor so i thought let's go get ourselves a beautiful looking mansion so we did it was exactly what the film needed one thing that i think is kind of funny here is the film's connection to jolt cola which is a soda that has a much larger amount of caffeine than most do apparently hen and lotter was a big fan of the drink and by the end of filming everyone on set got kind of addicted to drinking it every day you can even see it stacked up in one of the shots when the tabloid publisher gets killed and this somehow got back to the people who make jolt cola and they decided to have a really bizarre advertising campaign focused around basket case 2 that included the creatures from the movie wearing jolt t-shirts and drinking it it was a weird time for advertising but i miss stuff like this i know this movie isn't particularly loved by a lot of folks and i get that it isn't like the first movie in almost any way besides the presence of belial and the basket it doesn't have the same energy that made that movie what it was but for me there is just something here that endears me to the whole thing it feels very much of its time it is just one of those strange movies that is really watchable and even though it is quite different i love it for what it is it would go on to be the largest opening and highest grossing at the box office out of all the films that hennon lotter directed and to capitalize on this they immediately went into production on basket case 3 which i think ended up being a really big mistake frankenhooker and basket case 2 were both released in 1990 and basket case 3 was released in 1991 and those first two movies and this new partnership between hidden lotter and glickenhaus are just filled with creativity from beginning to end but in basket case 3 you can really begin to see some burnout and it probably would have ended up better if they had taken their time with this one to be completely honest it's a shockingly bad movie but i think it and the productions surrounding it are really fascinating and on the quality of the film the filmmakers agree hidden lotter said that the producers offered to fund a sequel and that he accepted to make it without even knowing what the film would ultimately be about he has since said that it is the only film of his that he actively dislikes and if you were to ask him on the right day he might even go so far as to say that he hates the picture people associated with the film have described working on it as henan lotter being in a mental creative place of just being down for any possible gag that he could fit into the narrative whether it logically made sense to be there or not but according to him this isn't quite the case and that the strange tone of the film mostly comes from restraints being placed on the production after they had already written the script and designed some of the effects in his words he puts it as i wanted to give it the flavor of part 1 again by making the violence very gory and you know looking back on it now i don't remember exactly where my head was at but i was under the impression that because they put frankenhooker out unrated and it did so well that i thought they would go along with putting basket case 3 out unrated so i was making the comedy a little more comical than i normally would thinking i was going to make the blood a lot more violent but at some point they were even saying can we do it pg-13 so what you have now in the film is not the effects that i wanted but unfinished effects basically that's why it looks so cheesy it's unfinished an example he cites is the scene where belial chokes one of the police officers and his teeth and eyes shoot out of his head in the original version it was still going to be cartoony but blood was intended to shoot out of the mouth and eye holes and would have looked a lot more convincing than it does in his current state because the blood would have hidden the rough edges of the effect because of the limitations put on the production on the amount of violence that they were going to be able to get away with 11 pages had to be cut from the script there were also cash flow problems leading into this movie which would ultimately result in his next film voodoo doll being cancelled and never getting made as well as the shooting schedule for basket case 3 being drastically scaled down meaning that oftentimes what they'd planned to shoot on any given day would be impossible to pull off with the time that they now had meaning that the daily script and shot list was being completely remade every morning watching him today talk about this is hard because you can really tell that how everything went down still bothers him that he is still sad about what happened surrounding this movie and i get it because it really is a hodgepodge of quickly slapped together ideas that don't really work in any way but it is clearly a product of him just wanting to get a film made and having very little time or resources available to do that i think the whole thing is a little depressing to watch and based on what i've seen of him i think he was probably a little depressed when trying to figure out how to cobble this movie together into something that was at least watchable and somehow make it work because the same spirit just isn't there with this one we start with a recap of the love scene that i'm sure everyone wanted to see a second time i said before that i dislike reusing footage from previous movies to feel time in the new ones but i like it here just because i've always loved monster sex scenes and i just think it's really funny to start a movie with this shot but after the initial joke of starting with this it gets old because it goes on for way too long we don't see a single frame of new footage for this movie until the 6 minute 51 second mark which is way too long to spend on any recap or opening credit sequence also later in the film we again have to re-watch the surgery scene from the first film in its entirety and it really messes with the pacing when watching these back-to-back in the month since the previous movie belyal has been removed again from his brother and duane has been placed in solitary confinement in the basement of the house for granny ruth to attempt to rehabilitate him but he is brought out of his cell because the entire family is going on a road trip to visit a man named uncle howell who has some medical experience because eve needs help giving birth after bilal got her pregnant at the end of the last film and this sets off a journey that is truly unpredictable and bizarre there's a full-on musical number here where ruth leads the family and singing their own rendition of lloyd price's 1959 pop hit personality and i just feel like this is the level of camp that this series has been slowly escalating towards and is the definite peak of the film and shows a glimpse into the mindset of how we've gotten to the point where anything can happen and that they just didn't care anymore as hennon lotter puts it you know we got so crazy doing it that i just thought why don't i add a musical number i mean if that doesn't tell you that somebody is out of their [ __ ] mind it's the director saying let's put in a musical number i think one of the biggest disappointments for me personally is that it sets up a road trip premise that it can't fully deliver on one of my favorite sub-genres is the road trip movie and i think it's sad that it hasn't been attempted all that much within a horror setting almost every time that it's a part of a story like in jeepers creepers children of the corn taurus trap or the first texas chainsaw we find characters who are in the middle of a road trip that gets interrupted by the horror the road trip doesn't really continue with the horror following them which i think is a more interesting idea even though texas chainsaw massacre 2 is one of my favorite films of all time it is held back in a similar way as it sets up the idea of the sawyer family traveling on an aimless path of rampaging carnage across the great state of texas and then almost the entire film ends up taking place in one location in fact a lot of the texas chainsaw movies are similar to this and that they kind of involve a road trip but then allow us to see very little of that which is sad to me because a full-on mad max style cat and mouse texas chainsaw road trip movie could be incredible so does a disappointment to me that this is yet another horror film that feels like it wants to be a road trip but doesn't actually do that in any meaningful way as once they get to uncle house place around 20 minutes into the film they are pretty much here for the rest of the run time but this is just the first thing in a series of aspects that i don't really care about in this movie we soon learned that uncle hal has been taking care of ruth's son little hal for his whole life because he was deformed when he was born and ruth was disgusted by him and abandoned him she tries to explain her actions at one point by saying i wasn't always the woman i am today i didn't always understand the beauty of unique individuals but i was fortunate to have uncle hal to adopt my son and while i like the idea of showing someone coming around to learn how to accept and show love to someone that they first feared i kind of wish this was done with a different character because granny ruth is supposed to be a figure that is representative of absolute unconditional love towards people no matter how they look or appear and learning that it took time for her to get there and that she initially abandoned her son kind of lessens this for me because in a way it is kind of saying that all people have to get to be like that in their own time and that it isn't natural for someone to just accept people for who they are from the beginning and that even the most welcoming people have to go through their own personal process of letting go of harmful views i don't know i just like the idea that there are genuine good people like granny ruth out there and giving her a dark back story didn't work for me entirely and with this they aren't ever really able to explore her relationship with her son and why she left him and how they feel about each other because they can't even show him on screen for most of the movie because they are saving showing off his body for the big reveal in the battle against the cops at the end of the film this moment of sensationalism overtakes all story necessity in a really bad way the hinders what could have potentially been a character revealing storyline it would be as if in the first movie they didn't show belial until the end of the film because they thought that it would be better to shock the audience with the reveal of what's been in the basket the whole time and that the character stuff with him didn't really matter it was a bad decision to hold off showing him until the 11th hour because it makes him not even really a character in the film him and ruth only share a few lines in the movie he never gets to express what it was like to not have her growing up they never get to have a conversation about how her views have changed in fact he doesn't even have a last scene he just enters the movie to have a body horror shot and then they don't know what to do with him as a character so he stops appearing in the movie at one point and never again talks to his mother or has any real relevance to anything that is happening it is clear that they came up with a monster design first and then shoehorned away into forcing it into the story that wasn't in any way organic or meaningful to the overall narrative of the film that they were trying to tell the only thing that i can make sense of with this as to why this subplot is in the movie actually comes from a single line in annie ross's wikipedia page who plays ruth in the films under the personal live section it says in 1949 ross had a brief affair with drummer kenny clark this affair produced a son kenny clark jr who was raised by clark's brother and his wife there is nothing else said about the child and maybe this is an instance of an actor having a bit of say in the direction that their character goes and that she wanted to explore something from her past through a safe place in fiction that is entirely speculation on my part and i have no evidence at all to support that but if it is just a coincidence then it is at least interesting how her real life was later mirrored with this movie i also don't like how this film makes pregnancy out to be a really gross and scary thing through over-the-top body horror every time eve moves while she's pregnant there's a nasty wet sound her stomach bulges in and out in strange ways and on the bus when her water breaks it literally shoots out like a fire hose and floods the vehicle she ends up delivering 12 belial-like children and at this point it becomes clear that the whole movie was conceived around this one idea and at least in my opinion it doesn't entirely work and feels a little mean-spirited just the image of eve sitting with her children is framed in such a way as to other and produce revulsion and it just doesn't jive with the overall message of the film series about accepting and loving people with different types of bodies especially considering that having 12 children in one go is very animalistic cats and dogs have litters of children but not humans and belile and eve are supposed to be human people they just look different and should be accepted for who they are but consistently are not because of preconceived social prejudices based on the idea of how a person should look that's kind of the point of the first two films and giving them a trait that is associated only with animals just for a gag shows that a lot of thought wasn't put into this one and that they probably rushed making this film too quickly which results in it not really being about anything and instead actively against the ideas of the previous films also from what i understand most of the content in the cut 11 pages from the script were pregnancy effects and if that is true and this segment was originally intended to go on for much longer than it already does then i'm honestly kind of glad that it was removed hindenladder said of this scene that originally there were pages of liquid goo and blood and all kinds of serum squirting and filling the room the room was supposed to have tarps on it because of the amount of stuff coming out of her to me this is pretty disappointing this type of comedy pregnancy body horror can be done well i think but it has to be handled kind of carefully last year's mortuary collection on shutter for instance was a really good example of this that features a complete [ __ ] whose main character trait is that he mistreats women who through magic becomes pregnant and he has to come with the terms of what women experience in the childbirth process it was a way to explore pregnancy body horror and in relation to that empathy without being misogynistic or cruel also commenting in a funny way on common toxic behaviors that a lot of guys have also this movie in general is just really good and you should check it out if you've not seen it yet basket case 3 strangely feels a lot more misogynistic than what came before the first movie had well-developed women characters who were in rough situations because of the cards they were dealt in life but were making the best of it but here there are a lot of instances that are a bit off-putting for example in belial's dream that he experiences after being knocked out there are two nude women rubbing him while reciting poetry to classical music just for the sake of having two nude women in the film it doesn't add anything to the narrative and sticks out in a strange way there's a similar scene in the jail later near the end of the film and it doesn't work in the greater context of the world that the series is building so far that's not to say that there isn't anything good in this movie though there is some actual substance that's just dragged down by all the random ideas that were thrown in here at breakneck speed similar to how the first film resolved around revenge against the medical staff that separated the brothers this story is centered on fighting the cops in uncle how's town who don't like that these so-called freaks have invaded their space and some of this is very real feeling despite how cartoonish a lot of the stuff is here the main conflict of the film is really grim and it begins with the cops breaking into the home that the family are staying in and killing eve in her bed because she wakes up and they're afraid of the way that she looks there's a real commentary here about police aggression and how they inappropriately handle situations involving people that is both cruel and dehumanizing at one point one of the cops says to the sheriff when talking about how to handle the family we gotta go out there with more than shotguns for christ's sakes we're gonna need [ __ ] bazookas he is talking about a group of people who are mourning one of their own who was just killed for doing nothing except existing but then the big battle ends with balal showing up in a mech power suit to kill the sheriff and you end up wondering how we went from a story that was fairly grounded in reality to this they were trying to say something here but its meaning just isn't as clear or purposeful than it was in previous entries because there's no longer any sense of reality to anything happening in the story that was already breaking in the second film but it didn't go far enough to do so and it was fun enough that you can let it slide but it fully breaks here and it just isn't able to stand on its own anymore and after everything is over and the battle against the police is won it all ends with a talk show for some reason the host ronaldo is introducing the topic of the day freaks and the women who love them when all of a sudden the stage walls collapse and the show is taken over by the family ruth looks directly into the camera and says from now on this is our world no more hiding no more running away if you see us walking down the street and you don't like it then get out of our way we are here to stay and nothing and no one can ever make us hide again and for a movie this messy this is the closest that either part two or three gets to making a statement of marginalized people taking control of the way that people see them and showcases them standing up for their rights as people in front of the whole world but it is literally a non-sequitur there's no setup for any of this this scene just happens out of nowhere at the end of the movie with no context no build up how did they get here this scene should work but there isn't the writing groundwork to make it work within the frame of the story it's just one of the many ideas that are being thrown out there and not developed beyond a short scene and demonstrates this sequel's lack of focus this movie is a series of ideas that could on their own be a movie each one going by so fast that it lacks all notions of any preconceived meaning there's just a lot going on all at once and very little of it is either fun or interesting i think this quote by hinnon lauter is probably the most telling of the creative process not only for this movie but for a lot of creative endeavors it is just really relatable i think he said you know how you can have this sinking feeling that what i'm making is a piece of [ __ ] but you're always hoping that maybe a miracle can happen and you can splice it together and it'll look good despite that i had a wonderful time making this even talking about the film now is somewhat masochistic because i wish i could blame somebody else but i made the choices i made the wrong ones it is what it is it's actually the closest to my early eight millimeter films that i used to do in the backyard which were never good they were self-indulgent bizarro pieces of non-humor there's an obvious love of this franchise that persists to this day even though there were only three films made in it which is few by horror standards there's something about it that has kept a longing fan base going with it writer and artist joshua emerick started a fan comic based on the series on facebook the hennen lotter eventually joined on as co-writer that eventually went on to be serialized in both scream and fangoria and would run until his early passing at the age of 39 in 2015. here on youtube there have been fan films made including a one-hour musical adaptation of the original film most recently in 2017 arrow commissioned the short film belial's dream from robert morgan the filmmaker of the cat with hands for their blu-ray release and honestly this short is so good and i really think that if there's a continued future of basket case they should go further in this direction because it really works belile dreams that he is relaxing on a couch he has a long tail-like umbilical cord and a sexually suggestive monster appears to him she rubs him with a feather and he appears to like this before she cuts him in half and he falls to the floor looking much more like his usual self in the sliced cord he sees the face of dwayne and it is centered around the idea of belial's sexual insecurities and fear of intimacy and fear of detachment and independence from his brother he has no freedom for himself he has to depend on others for everything and because of the way he looks he is afraid that he cannot have normal human experiences he is afraid of interacting with this creature in any way because of the way that he has been treated for his whole life the film begins and ends with a lonely shot of his basket with a padlock on it so he won't escape and in just 5 minutes it is able to very accurately make a meditation on his mental state as a character and show what it is like to be him through a psychological profile of himself beverly bonner for several years toured the country doing a show titled casey 30 years later which would begin with the screening of basket case and then would be followed by a play written by her about her character in modern day running a coal girl service in new york reflecting on the events of the first film she passed in november of last year and if there were ever to be another basket case film her presence would be missed she appeared in every single frank hennon lotter movie and as for the future of basket case it seems uncertain kevin van hintenrick has stated that he's opening to returning to make one last entry into the series and has reportedly even been working on his own draft of a script for a hypothetical fourth film but for years frank henenlotter has been adamant about not wanting to do it anymore and seems to have at one point in his life grown a resentment against the franchise he said that consistently for the past 30 years he's pitched movies that get rejected but that those same investors always end up asking about making a basket case for he's an artist whose identity has been entirely defined by these films and i imagine that has to be a bit of a frustrating feeling wanting to work and not being able to unless it's within very restrictive parameters a similar situation i believed what romero faced with struggling to find funding to make movies that didn't have zombies in them but in the past decade he has opened up again to the idea saying now i have an idea for a basket case for and it's so crackpot and it's so out there and i don't know i'd love to do it it's a ridiculous great idea i've been talking to gay bartolos about it and i've been saying gabe i mean this thing is really cracked should we do it and he says that's why we should i don't know it may happen and it may not i don't know but i have written some of it already and i sit there and laugh and think oh boy this is wild so i just might but the unfortunate reality of the situation is that hindenlotter has always had a difficult time finding funding for his projects which is not all that surprising coming from an artist who self-describes as not interested in creating art that is any way or shape commercial since basket case 3 he's only able to get one fiction narrative film made 2008's bad biology but he has said that a number of other projects have gotten close but fallen apart at the last moment so what currently exists may be all that ever exists in this series and if that was the case ultimately i would have to be okay with that but i would be lying if i said that the idea of seeing what he would do with this universe today didn't incredibly excite me or if he was able to have a late career renaissance and get some of these films made that he's always wanted to work on i think both would be great things to see but even if we never get another entry into this world i'm thankful for what we have here because it is rare to get a franchise that is this unabashedly weird that stands out in a genre that is known for weird ideas say what you will about them but i'm just happy to live in a world where the basket case movies exist hey everybody i hope you're doing well if you like this video and would like to see more of them more often i would like to ask you to consider supporting me on patreon where for only one dollar per month you can ensure that i'm able to continue making long-form videos on weird or interesting subjects in this style that is patreon.com forward slash praise of shadows thank you so much and i hope you have a wonderful rest of your day [Music] food you

Channel: In Praise of Shadows

Views: 85,209

Rating: 4.9366584 out of 5

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Id: 2F_JEx4EI1g

Length: 49min 28sec (2968 seconds)

Published: Sat May 22 2021