BASKET CASE (1982) is one of those cult movies everybody knew about in the ‘80s and ‘90s. It stayed alive by having a couple sequels and being in video stores or being mentioned often in Fangoria. Now it’s on 4K disc and on Shudder with credits saying it was restored by the Museum of Modern Art. But it was genuinely a creature of the grindhouses, a $35,000 exploitation movie conceived in Times Square by twentysomething New Yorker Frank Henenlotter, written on napkins at Nathan’s Famous, and shot in 16mm, partly in front of XXX theaters on 42nd Street. The producer was a hospital administrator whose only other films are Henenlotter’s and two yoga videos.

It opens with a mysterious murder at a house out in Glen Falls, before cutting to Times Square and a strange young man named Duane Bradley (Kevin VanHentenryck), who carries a large wicker basket. He checks into a shitty hotel, the kind where the v-neck undershirt-wearing clerk asks, “Couple of hours, couple of years, what? Give me a hint.” It’s twenty dollars a night up front and the lobby is crowded with residents gossiping about the death of somebody named “Dirty Lou.”

Duane claims the basket carries his clothes, then he goes to his room and has one-sided conversations with it, occasionally feeding it hamburgers or a full package of uncooked hot dogs. Whatever’s in there stays out of our sight for a while, or we see from its point of view. You may be surprised how long Henenlotter delays explaining the now famous premise that Duane was born with a conjoined twin brother named Belial who was basically just a lump on the side of his torso.

“He looks like a squashed octopus,” Duane says one time, while drunk. Yes, the iconic killer of this classic slasher trilogy is a weird little blob man portrayed by puppets and, occasionally, crude stop motion animation. (Weirdly most of the animated shots seem like they would’ve made more sense to do with the puppet.)

I would never say this about a real person born different, but Duane’s brother is a monster. He’s strong enough to throw furniture around, or to grab Duane by the dick and lift him off the ground. He can bite into you pretty good, he has sharp claws and strong fingers that can (and often do) slash a face or tear open a belly. Also he speaks to Duane telepathically. “Sometimes he talks for hours and won’t shut up.” A terrible set up for Duane.

It’s a really effective story structure, introducing us to Duane on the run and dropping hints about what’s going on, then late in the game giving us a pretty involved flashback about their childhood, his father blaming them for their mother’s death giving birth to them, how their aunt protected them but their dad found quacks to perform the separation surgery. They meant to kill Belial, and in a really inspired bit Duane hears his telepathic cry and finds him on the curb with the garbage. A bag wiggling, a hand tearing out. All of this could’ve been at the beginning, but it’s much more satisfying coming as an explanation after some mystery about what’s going on. Also it allows for the best FX stuff to happen later on instead of wasting it all up front.

For all the movie’s DIY crudeness, some of the makeup effects are pretty ambitious. I like how in the flashback before the twins were separated Belial has prettier, sadder eyes.

Also this shot is really good:

Obviously Belial survived, got stronger and meaner, is out for revenge. Duane is in the city to visit some of the doctors. Stalking them, I guess. It’s kind of hard to have a social life when that’s what you got going on, but Duane gives it a shot. He hits it off with Sharon (Terri Susan Smith), the assistant of one of the doctor’s he’s targeting, and he does some tourist things with her, like seeing the Statue of Liberty. When he kisses her Duane can sense it back at the hotel, gets pissed off and goes on an angry lumpy man rampage. The little bitch. I found it genuinely sad, though, the idea that Duane’s brother is so threatened by him finding happiness and always has to sabotage it.

In Belial’s defense, he doesn’t always psychically interrupt the makeout sessions on purpose. This one is just ‘cause a guy broke into the hotel room and opened the basket right then:

Duane is a nice kid, Belial is a serial murderer, rapist and panty thief, a repulsive little fucker with violent impulses. I doubt Henenlotter thought too much about the meaning of it at the time, but there’s obviously a question asked about whether you can separate yourself from your dark side, your id. Or from your fucked up family that wants to drag you down with it. On one hand, Duane is taking care of his disabled brother who was horribly mistreated. On the other hand, Belial is very abusive and controlling. Fuck that guy. He doesn’t deserve to be taken care of.

This is an ultimate New York sleaze movie, with its grainy, muddy look, its excellent time capsule footage of theater and peep show marquees on 42nd Street (and a scene in a theater showing THE BODYGUARD starring Sonny Chiba), its rathole hotel (even if it’s fake), its elderly eccentrics, neighborhood sex workers, and thieves (who will always regret checking for valuables inside that basket). But actually if you think about it most of these alleged lowlifes are the victims. Belial is the only threat and he’s from Glen Falls, population less than 15,000, home town of “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan. This is his first time in NYC. So don’t blame the city – blame the tourists.

In a genuinely seedy movie like this there simply can’t be a cute ending. The brothers’ battle results in tragedy and culminates in the two dangling from the hotel sign, a gaggle of prostitutes below wondering what the fuck they’re looking at. Of course there are sequels that keep the brothers alive, but I think this works well as a one-and-done story, a sordid affair that happened mostly in secret in this hotel room and ended in death on the street in front of a bunch of witnesses who surely go on to tell the story just like they did the one about Dirty Lou. Good movie.

This is gonna be blasphemous and I apologize, but I think BASKET CASE would actually be a great candidate for a remake! I was thinking that even before they finally did it with THE TOXIC AVENGER. I think you’d want to do it as a period piece to keep the gritty New York atmosphere, and certainly it would be a very different feel even if the budget was one million dollars. But if they found somebody with style and audacity like Fede Alvarez when he did the EVIL DEAD remake I think you could do something really crazy and fun with this story, and as much as we love the cruder FX in this wouldn’t it also be beautiful to see Belial portrayed with modern animatronic technology? I think it would.

The other thing is that it would keep his name alive in the mouths of babes. I don’t think Stranger Things ever did a season about a psychotic lump brother, so we’re running out of options for passing this on to future generations.