Basket Case (The Last Drive-In)

Film Year:  1982
Genre:  Horror, Comedy
Director:  Frank Henenlotter
Starring:  Keven Van Hentenryuk, Terri Susan Smith, Beverly Bonner, and Belial as himself

The Movie

You want to get nuts today?  Well, well, well, have we got a movie for you!

Basket Case is the story of Duane, who checks into a shithole hotel with a wad of cash and a wicker basket.  People suspect that he's weird, but what gets to them is that he lugs around his basket almost everywhere he goes, leading people to wonder...

It turns out that the thing inside the box is Duane's surgically separated and deformed conjoined twin, Belial.  Together they seek out to murder the doctors who separated them and then (this part still makes me laugh) sacked up Belial in a garbage bag and threw him in the trash.  But their kinship is put to the test when Duane falls in love with a cute receptionist, and Belial grows jealous.

So...yeah.  This certainly is a movie that exists, aint it?  It seems almost unfair to critique it by the normal standards of film since it exists on its own spectrum of filmmaking.  It took me a few days to mull this movie over to finally have some sort of grasp on how I feel about it.

To put it simply, it made me feel dirty.  So very dirty.  But strangely enough I'm not unhappy that I watched it.

Basket Case is a fairly unique experience.  It doesn't adhere to basic storytelling, but I have to give it credit for working in spite of that.  I suspect it works because it's an exorcise in bad taste an stretching the audience's stomach for obscene ideas to the limit, and then playing it for laughs.  It's a crude movie about crude things with a crude sense of humor without limit to its own imagination on where to take it (even if the budget is limited.

Both the acting and dialogue are subpar, and the movie oddly seems aware of this.  It may have been even weirder an experience if these aspects were up to scratch, so let's just accept that this is the way this move should be.  Really if any aspect of the movie could be taken seriously, then there is a high probability that both the silly concept of Belial and that goofy puppet that brought him to life wouldn't work.

That's the thing, if a movie needs to be traditional, Basket Case will not work for you.  If you're willing to succumb to the ugly and nonsensical world it creates, you probably will have a good time.  I try to walk in both worlds, so I'm half amused and disgusted by it.  But I'm pretty sure it got the laughs it wanted out of me, so I'll consider Basket Case a success.

The Drive-In

There has been a slight bit of escalation going since Joe Bob has started his marathon.  We started with a simple but silly slasher like Tourist Trap, then topped that with the infamous Sleepaway Camp.  We then went hog wild with Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama and then got our hands dirty with a murder film that was genuinely about the murders, Blood Feast.  I thought we might have peaked there, but Joe Bob then pulls Basket Case out of his sleeve and I find myself questioning if there will ever be an end to the upward insanity.

In his interview with James Rolfe, Joe Bob was asked what movie he's been linked to the most, and he said Basket Case without hesitation.  He gives some context as to why here, as he claims to have seen it during ita premiere and helped it debut in American drive-ins.  Joe Bob also claims Rex Reed (who also confirms this) was attending this screening, and contributed in his own way to getting the film known.  He was asked by (unknown to Reed) Basket Case director Frank Henenlotter his opinion on his way out of the film, to which Reed responded "It's the sickest movie I've ever seen!"  Henenlotter loved the reaction so much that he put it in the advertising campaign.  I'm all for humiliating Rex Reed in any way possible, so Joe Bob's story already has convinced me this is one of the all-time greats.

The facts that Joe Bob shares about the film are fairly interesting, such as the wad of cash that Duane flashes around in the film being the movie's entire budget.  There's also an interesting story in which Terri Susan Smith actually wore a wig because she shaved her head bald.  I honestly didn't notice, or wasn't paying attention.  All 80's hair looks fake anyway.  He also has some words about director Frank Henenlotter, who not only directed the entire Basket Case series (this story DEMANDED to be a trilogy) but also films fans like us may know by name even if you haven't seen them (speaking of myself here, of course) in Brain Damage and Frankenhooker.

But there are a lot of times where Joe Bob just takes us aside to give us a breather from this little oddity, which we probably need, and he doesn't really say much except assure us we haven't seen the weirdest part yet.  In fact the climax flies so off its rocker that the filmmakers broke several laws by filming public nudity for it and had a death scene so offensive that most of the crew walked off the set.  I, personally, think the idea of the scene is more offensive in concept than I actually feel offended watching it, which is portrayed in such a silly way that I just laughed and said "Jesus Christ, movie!"

(In my defense, that rubber Belial puppet bobbing up and down just makes me laugh.  I laughed the same way when he was shaking the table idly earlier in the film.)

Even if Joe Bob is as linked to Basket Case as he feels, it seems about as good a film as any to be linked to.  It's batshit insane and there is always something unique and funny about it.  Joe Bob's career has always had a knack for bringing films like this out of the shadows.  Basket Case might not prefer to be in the light, but it's an interesting one to visit.

Joe Bob's Rating

⭐⭐⭐⭐