4 out of 5

Directed by: Frank Henenlotter

A masterpiece of shlock.

There are a million and one Z-Grade works out there, and a surprising amount that poke their mutated heads between folds of nil budget and overreach to make a notable, smudged stamp upon the world of film.  But there’s still only one Frank Henenlotter: one man who set out to make a tossed-off, sloppy, play-once-and-never-again midnight nightmare like Basket Case.  On the commentary to BC (one of two included on the Arrow bluray re-release), Henenlotter tells an amusing story – he’s a damned amusing, and intelligent storyteller, underlining why this flick works in ways that other cults landmarks may not – of being at a latter-day screening and listening to an armchair reviewer tell anyone who would listen about the movie’s genius.  Frank say by, bemused, especially when said armchairer claimed that the best part was that the director – Henenlotter – had no clue what he was doing; had no idea what he’d unleashed; that it was an accident that had made its way onscreen.

And your usual proud papa might laugh at this and then remind us that it was all, indeed, purposeful, but Henenlotter instead tells this tale with the joy of someone having achieved the legacy for which he’d hoped: if he was remembered as an accident of filmmaking, all the freakin’ better.

Indeed, Basket Case is a mess.  Again referring to that commentary (or the prodigious extras included on the fantabulous release), there are plenty of points where Frank and crew refer to the lack of money as the guiding factor – shooting a ton of scenes for cover if locations were going to go away; getting everyone together on a whim when funds were available; basing the movie, literally, around a twisted idea scribbled on a bar napkin.  It’s a mess, and like the works produced by fellow shlockmeister Larry Cohen, a mess with these time-filling, somewhat boring shots and stitched-together vignettes that admittedly prevent me from considering this a five star watch-it-anytime piece o’ perfection (I have to be in a mood to commit to Basket Case).  But it’s a damned impassioned mess, synced to a very specific, trashy NY time that Frank was purposefully wanting to – and succeeding in – documenting, and populated with the kind of outsider humans that Tim and Eric wish still existing: oddballs, fiends, drunks, louts, wandering into frame of an insane horror movie.  Some of them are in it 100% just because they are who they are, but the majority of the Basket Case crew just get what kind of production they’re in, know to laugh at it, and go with it.  And I think that’s really where the movie stands apart: having established a very self-aware m.o. with Slash of the Knife, Frank found his world and happily nestled in for decades to come: bloody, perverse, willfully weird.  Z-Grade is the goal.

Basket Case is about a dude who carries his mutated, now-separated, Siamese-twin brother around in a basket, sharing a telepathic connection that drives him – with bro Belial in tow – to take revenge on the doctors who split ‘im.

There’s a long build up to What’s In The Basket?, and once that’s established – as well as the duo’s murderous intents – the flick is a sequence of screaming women and lingering shots of blood splashing to and fro.  You’ll tap your toe during some of these moments, but it’s On way more often than not, and is a hoot – and a masterpiece of the genre – during those Ons.