Basket Case
Directed by Frank Henenlotter
USA 1982
PLOT
Duane is a young and quiet guy who is often seen carrying a large wicker basket. What seems like a comedic gimmick hides a terrible and monstrous secret related to the boy’s past, which inevitably affects his present.
CONSIDERATIONS
Basket Case is a violently intense body horror film that evokes the theme of conjoined twins separated at birth.
Strongly influenced by Cronenberg, Henenlotter’s debut film “plays” with the relationship between the Siamese twins, where the protagonist is the good one whose life is overshadowed by his horrible and sadistic monstrous, deformed brother.
Furthermore, the director chooses to show us everything: from when the two were conjoined, how the family and society pretended to accept them, to their separation by a team of surgeons who, in effect, save and normalize Duane but “kill” (metaphorically) Belial, confining him to a life as a social outcast.
Thus, it is a body horror film with a strong social critique component that does not shy away from pushing hard on the accelerator when it comes to blood and violence.
The deformed Belial will kill anyone who crosses his path and threatens his relationship with his brother: from the doctors who separated them to the girlfriends who want to take him away.
Despite the ironic tone of numerous gags and dialogues, the sense of dread, pain, and “decay” that permeates the entire film and screenplay remains. These feelings reach their peak in the heart-wrenching but beautiful finale.
An old film (with evident use of stop-motion technique to animate the monster at some points) but it has not lost any of its macabre charm and “heavy” message.
PANDEMONIC MOMENT
When Belial kills the brother’s girlfriend in a bloody and distressing sexual act.
A film that leaves a mark
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