[Film Review] Basket Case (1982)

The first time I heard about Basket Case, I was sitting inside an Alamo Drafthouse theater for a showing of the Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Alamo theaters, for those of you outside of the southern United States, are famous for not doing commercials, but for curating pre-show content for every viewing, often old trailers and promotions for the American Genre Film Archive, or AGFA. At this showing, they had managed to scrounge up the original trailer for Basket Case, and I was instantly enthralled. I had to see this movie. 

Since that fateful trailer, I’ve seen Basket Case at least six times, and every time, I love it a little bit more. I will attempt to give the briefest of spoiler-free plot synopsis’, although I would argue that spoiling this film would not in any way ruin enjoyment of it. A young man named Duane arrives in the city with a mysterious wicker basket that contains his malformed Siamese twin brother Belial. Duane and Belial embark on a journey of revenge against the team of doctors who surgically separated them as children, but Duane begins to feel some reservations as he attempts to find human connection outside of his murderous brother.

However, this really only scratches the surface of Basket Case. If there was an ideal form of a B-movie, this would be it. The existing transfers of the film preserve the gritty look and feel that is emblematic of late-70s to early-80s horror, and the costume and character designs are deliciously dated. Timelessness is overrated in this case, and watching gives you a sense of experiencing it for the cult deep cut that it is. These low-budget visuals carry over into the practical effects – the gore and violence are largely cartoonish and full of schlock, but the earnestness with which the mutilated victims wail their final lines does more than enough to forgive the silliness of it all. This is a film with an awful lot of heart, and sometimes that heart spurts a truly ridiculous and unwarranted amount of blood onto the screen. 

The centerpiece of the film’s practical effects is Belial, who is sometimes a puppet, sometimes a mascot suit, but who is always a foot-tall beige lump of meat with a three-foot wingspan, a mouth full of snaggle-tooth fangs, and eyes that change from dead rubber to troublingly human, depending on whether there is a person inside. You never fully understand how Belial engages in locomotion, since he seems able to get around fine outside of the basket Duane carries him in, despite not having long enough arms to walk, in any sense. But you don’t particularly care, since watching him latch onto people’s faces and hearing their death throes is fantastic. It’s especially fantastic when you can see that, because they couldn’t puppeteer Belial when his full body is on screen, he is never actually clawing or biting people as they are dying, but is just kind of stuck to them like the world’s grossest chewed gum. 

While Belial steals the show fairly evidently, the rest of the cast gives him a run for his money. I can’t think of an actor in this film who doesn’t chew the scenery every time they’re on camera. The melodrama of the surgical separation flashback, as well as every single death, places Basket Case firmly as one of the progenitors of slasher camp, which is now nigh ubiquitous in horror media. Diana Browne as the aptly named Dr. Judith Kutter is especially noteworthy for her performance. It’s a shame this was her only feature film role – the B Movie scene lost an opportunity for a real Scream Queen. 

All of this, up to this point, might have you thinking that this movie doesn’t sound particularly good. And on some level, you’d be right. In terms of technical polish, budget, or quality of acting performances, this film sits pretty low on the register. The reasons why it wasn’t on the roster at any awards ceremonies are obvious. But as I say again, this film just has so much heart. Everything about it is painfully earnest, and it’s clear that the people who made this film did so because they love horror movies. And this makes up for a lot, at least to me, and apparently also to the legions of fans who made Basket Case the cult classic it is. So, if you love horror movies too (and you do, if you’re here, reading this), give this movie a shot. You most likely will not be disappointed. 

Also, in the third one, Belial gets a mech suit.

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