I went into this movie knowing very well that it was going to be stupid, but after seeing it, I now know that it's stupid in an entertaining way. The movie is kind of like watching a train crash in slow motion, where it's so terrible and macabre but at the same time you can't look away. It would make more sense why I think it's ridiculous if I talk about the plot. The movie is about a person named Duane who arrives in NYC. He's from upstate, and has never seen the city before. He carries around a locked basket with him most of the time, and the gimmick of the movie is that everybody wants to know what's inside it. This doesn't get revealed until much later, so the movie does build suspense pretty well. Duane also meets a receptionist at the doctor who he takes a liking to, and stays in a rundown hotel in the city to give himself a place to stay. Surprisingly, the hotel manager is probably one of the best characters, even though the movie doesn't give him a name. He has a stereotypical italian new york accent, and is impatient when his tenants are out of their rooms past a certain time. It's an overall decent movie, until about 50 minutes in when you see the monster. As it turns out, the basket contains Duane's hideously malformed brother Belial who doesn't even resemble a human being. Later in the movie when Belial climbs out of the basket when Duane is out with the receptionist, it makes a big scene in the hotel and screams, which obviously draws everybody's attention. It kills one of the characters, but even after investigators arrive, nobody is able to tell who did it. Duane is questioned, but eventually let go. It turns out Belial is murderous because as a child, Duane was forcefully separated from him by some surgeons, and now he's trying to get revenge on them. Duane himself doesn't hate the doctors, and he tries to convince his brother to calm down. Towards the end of the movie, Belial kills the receptionist that Duane was dating, which enrages him so much he tries to kill him, but the both of them are knocked out of the hotel window instead. The movie is obviously absurd and pretty bad, but at least it's funny. It manages to combine comedy and horror reasonably well. Also, when Duane's brother is out of his basket and moving around, it's all stop motion, which looks cool. Still, how this movie managed to get two sequels is beyond my understanding.

Basket Case was a horro movie that was intentionally funny. And because of how cheesy it is, it's even sillier now. The plot is quite simple and the acting is mediocre, but remember, it's a B movie. But the kills are funny and have just the right amount of gore. The ending was both weird and predictable. Not the best movie and not required viewing for horror fans, but a fun 90 minutes.

After first glancing at the article of this movie in the book "Cult Movies 2" some 25 years ago, I finally watched Basket Case today having bought the VHS from a used video store about a month ago. It concerns conjoined twins Duane (Keven Van Hentenryck) and Belial (which is a mixture of a puppet and stop-motion animation) and their revenge against the doctors that tore them apart. There's also a romance between Duane and one of the doctors' receptionist, Sharon (Terri Susan Smith). Written and directed by Frank Henenlotter, Basket Case is obviously low-budget and amateurish with cheesy moments to spare especially whenever Belial attacks someone. But it can also provide some genuine scares and shocks especially when Belial encounters Sharon. So on that note, Basket Case comes highly recommended. P.S. One of the players, a Dorothy Strongin who played Josephine here, died in my current hometown of Baton Rouge, LA, on May 25, 2006.