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.

BASKET CASE, the full-length movie that launched the career of schlock maverick Frank Henenlotter, is a fairly ordinary B-movie with a plot that could have been (and probably was) written on the back of a beer mat. It concerns the misadventures of a geeky young man and his detached Siamese twin, Belial, who just so happens to be a bloodthirsty, misshapen monster.

As a B-movie, it's fairly par for the course, with the film only really coming to life during the scenes involving Belial's gory rampages; in between those, it treads water and not too well. But there's a lot to be said for the sleazy atmosphere and the scenes of the main character wandering through New York at night, complete with cinemas playing old kung fu movies and the like. Great for nostalgia, this.

Henenlotter has a genuine love for his genre and that shines through and counts for a lot, and Belial is one of the great creations of '80s cinema, a wonderful combination of rubbery puppetry and a few choice stop motion shots. Overall I found the film doesn't hold together as well as FRANKENHOOKER - it sorely lacks humour, for instance, and is dull between the kill scenes - but I'm looking forward to seeing how the sequels turned out.

Now - you know how they say you can't plan on how things will be perceived and what can be succesful? It applies here ... for all intents and purposes the movie itself is quite bad ... and mostly not the good kind of bad. So I reckon timing was on its side - because you have to have luck with these things! And in this particular case it really was lucky ... and was quite succesful and got infamous.

Having said all that, it is clear there was not much budget here - the actors really ... well some would call. Their acting below any standards ... others may recognize a concept here or just cherish the madness in all of it. It's over hyped and overplayed to say the least. And it has an ending, which one may think would not spark any sequels ... but you know how money rules everything? Exactly ... so bring on the next ones.