4 out of 5

Directed by: David Gregory

A jovial, but incredibly informative, documentary covering the creation of Basket Case 1 – 3, as well as the Henenlotter lot surrounding those mainstays.

Watched on the heels of the extras included on Arrow Video’s excellent re-release of BC 1, ‘What’s in the Basket?’ may not contain an incredible amount of new info – you hear and see how the Basket Case cast and crew have gotten seasoned at telling the same stories and jokes regarding the project over and over – but that all of this info is bound and contained in a single location (and recorded prior to many of those other extras) is proof of the energy that went into the project.

Director Gregory does an excellent job of keeping the talking heads couched in an appropriate light of mirth, mixing in Henenlotter’s growth and influence in the exploitation film scene (and in distribution of its flicks, via Something Weird video) with a celebration of that same scene and culture.  The colorful people populating this world come across as fun and mostly intelligent (especially Henenlotter); Gregory doesn’t try hard to plaster the whole thing with a ‘weird’ banner, just letting the experiences and those involved speak for themselves.  This also allows us to see the amusing ironies of the studio system getting caught up in trying to push splatter, relenting to an uncut version of the original flick when a more ‘palatable’ version did not make any waves.

Along with personalities like Joe Bob Briggs celebrating Henenlotter and Basket Case, we get – as it is ultimately relevant to the production of the three films – loose coverage of Frank’s other material, like his pre-BC short Slash of the Knife and Frankenhooker.  However, there is something of an assumption to the doc in that we’re familiar with the content of these movies, not really giving us any context when plot details are discussed (which is rather unfair regarding Slash, because I don’t think that was available prior to it being on the Arrow blu-ray), and because of the archival nature of some of the interviews (likely dating from VHS days), the sound mixing is occasionally atrocious, requiring a finger ready on the remote to up and down the volume.

But these are nits mostly external to the content, which is surprisingly heart-warming – Frank and his cronies love this stuff, even years on and post-career changes for many of them – and much more interesting than I would’ve expected 80 minutes coverage of Z-grade movies to be.  Any time I feel encouraged to show a documentary to people with zero interest in the subject matter – a feeling which What’s In the Basket? triggers – it’s a sign of the doc accomplishing its mission.