Basket Case (1982)

The following is an excerpt from my essay ‘BASKET CASE: What’s in the basket? Feelings!’

The first time I saw Frank Henenlotter’s low-budget exploitation body-horror revenge flick Basket Case was in 2019 at the Regent Street Cinema in London. The filmmaker Prano Bailey Bond was hosting a screening and what I didn’t know as I took my seat in that beautiful old auditorium was that I was about to discover an immediate new favourite and go on what can only be described as an emotional rollercoaster.

I hadn’t really known what to expect from Basket Case. I’d clocked the poster and its tantalising tagline (The tenant in room 7 is very small, very twisted and very mad) but otherwise it wasn’t a movie that was particularly on my radar.

What I didn’t expect was to feel all the feelings.

Basket Case is full of sleaze and shock. But it’s also - not unlike Tod Browning’s Freaks from 50 years earlier - surprisingly full of heart and pathos. Centred around the relationship and revenge-fuelled antics of Duane Bradley (Kevin VanHentenryck) and his twin brother Belial, this is a story about otherness and rejection, focussed on this ‘monster’, this ‘freak’, who has to live in a basket hidden from the world.

This bizarre little movie from 1982 about a man and his murderous flesh nugget brother has me roiling from feeling shocked to grossed out, amused to confused, sympathetic to sad. Much like Belial himself, Basket Case is a marvel and should be given the chance to warm your heart under a blanket in a rocking chair - before it rips it out.

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