31 Days of Horror: "Basket Case" 2 and 3

by Sean McTiernan

“Basket Case 2” and “Basket Case 3” are not typical sequels. They don’t really have the same tone as the first movie and both take the most unexpected turn possible. This is especially weird considering they’re horror sequels. One thing I love about horror is the constant borrowing-re-invention and multiple fictions fold in on themselves. This weird nebulous place where somehow “Night Flier” (an upcoming entry in this series) and “Twilight” can share some of the same conceits. Very little of “Night Flier” is about Mormonism though, so maybe that’s an unfortunate comparison.

This is especially true in horror sequels. Because the brief for a horror sequel is usually along the lines of “hey make that again, but with more of the thing that people liked.” Some of the genre’s most interesting movies come from weird attempts to reinvent the wheel (with gayness! Or as a cartoon!).

But all people wanted Frank Henenlotter to do was make another “Basket Case,” considering the minuscule budget and huge success it had. And although Frank’s movies are all tributes to the sort of schlocky stuff that used to be stock and trade in cinemas on 42nd Street, they also have so much of his own unique voice in them. None of his movies are plotted that conventionally; none have the same sort of beats and characters. So when Henenlotter had to, for funding reasons, revisit Duane and Belial Bradley, he more or less told the wheel to suck it.

Made ten years later but picking up the day after the original ended, the premise of “Basket Case 2” is that Duane and Belail Bradley survived their supposedly fatal fall at the end of the first movie and also managed to escape the hospital. They are now tabloid curiosities and also wanted for the murders Belail spent the first movie committing. Luckily they are taken in by a kindly old lady who happens to care for “unique individuals.” Obviously people like this don’t get left alone, so the plots of both sequels revolve around people trying to get at them. In “Basket Case 2” it’s journalists (the most evil creatures known to man) and in the third, it’s cops (because who likes cops right?).

Where the real strength of these movies lie though, is in the aforementioned “unique individuals.”

Granny Ruth’s community is chock full of bizarre characters. They don’t say much but these “freaks” have more than enough aesthetic charm to make up for that. While Belial was pretty impressive, albeit poorly animated, nothing about the first movie indicated that the sequel would feature a large number of equally mutated beings, all of whom are gifted with far superior character design. Really, these guys could each convincingly support an episode of “Are You Afraid Of The Dark” (and some are even a bit Eerie, Indiana, a tall order).

There’s a man who has a giant face in the shape of a moon, his name is Fernando and he plays the trombone. What more encouragement could you possibly need?

The biggest freak across either movies is Duane Bradley. In the first “Basket Case,” he was an outwardly normal guy who was trying to fit into the society that his loyalty to his brother had kept far from. In the sequels, Duane is constantly flipping between being an inconsiderate madman and a needy dickhead. For all the caution he displayed in “Basket Case,” all the problems in both sequels stem from moments of carelessness on his part. You see, while his job used to be to look after his brother, now Belail is fitting in really well in the community. He’s even sparked a bit of a romance with the lady version of himself, called Eve. Yes there is a sex scene and yes, it is exactly as gruesome as you’d imagine vigorous sex between two befanged testicles to be.

So Duane feels like an outcast and grows more and more resentful of them. He also falls for Susan, Granny Ruth’s outwardly normal assistant. Of course this is a Henenlotter movie, so Susan has a bizarre problem that I won’t spoil but will also tell you that whatever you’ve guessed, you’re severely underestimating the situation.

Duane’s discovery that Susan, whose normalcy he fetishised, is indeed a freak makes his mind snap completely. He throws Susan out of a window (nice going, dude) and then races to Belail and knocks him out. The film ends on a classic Henenlotter shock, with Duane forcibly sewing Belail back on to his side in the hopes it will make everything right again. Fittingly he spends the third movie mostly in a straight jacket (and from the second he gets out of it, he just messes things up for everyone again).

Duane being a moron and an asshole is helped in no small part by Kevin Van Hentenryck’s inexplicably crawly and odd approach to acting. Van Hentenryck did many things between the first and second “Basket Case” movies. Getting better at acting definitely did not number among them. His needy, squawky performance as Duane makes him the fulcrum for a lot of the weird energy these two movies have. He seems to think intensity of emotion is tied directly to how wide you are opening your eyes and that when things get really serious you can always move your head like a child asking for sweets to add emphasis to every word. His off-kilter approach to acting comes to the fore in the scenes where he is leading unsuspecting journalists to their death. His forced and sinister mock sincerity is actually more disquieting than any of the disfigured people that are ready to attack.

There’s a good amount of death in the second half of both “Basket Case” sequels, but especially the third which manages to match the brutality of any of Henenlotter’s other offerings. It’s treated really oddly though. People get seriously injured or killed and then it’s sort of brushed off, not in the usual “we must save OURSELVES!” horror-movie way. Rather it’s like everyone just immediately forgets what happened.

For instance, much is made in the third movie of Uncle Ben, the kindly doctor who is going to help Belail’s lady (?) give birth to her kids (?). Then, halfway through the surgery, Belail realizes a doctor is pointing a needle at his special lady and immediately rips the doctor’s face off. Instead of massive outrage, the doctor is carted upstairs and only the vaguest of allusions are made to him for the rest of the movie. Even his mutant adopted son, seems more and less cool with the fact his benefactor got Nicholas Caged. Said son, the gigantic Little Billy, also has a bizarre, presumably improvised and hilarious reaction to the birth of Belail’s babies, which are delivered in precisely the same comedic style as every scene in a Will Ferrell movie that runs too long and ruins said movie.

This dreamlike treatment of the violence, which only matters when it needs to, actually fits quite well. The moral waters of these movies are deliberately murky. The viewer is constantly bombarded with the message that these “unique individuals” (or “freaks” if you’re a journalist or cop) are still people and should be treated with respect. But leaving it at that would be too easy. These movies also show how damaged these individuals are from how society treated them and how this has made them both clannish and quick to resort to physical force. The zeal with which Granny Ruth defends her oddball tribe is disquieting. She’s quick to turn to to violent retribution-witness when she takes Belail to murder a daft old coot (one of the better coots of the last 20 years of schlock cinema actually, and playing the coot is an underrated artform) who has a fake Belail skeleton in his obviously fake sideshow.

(Not) funnily enough, the cruelest moment in all three of the “Basket Case” movies comes when Duane admits to his brother that he hopes he and Susan can be together. In movies where as soon as anyone admits to liking someone, another character will kill them almost immediately. And so the cruel, scornful way Belail laughs will cut to your core deeper than any of the various face-ripping murders he commits.

These two movies have all the Henenlotter trademarks. There’s the odd, tight plotting that goes in unexpected directions. There’s the inexplicable snippets of human interaction that are off-the-wall-enough to be somewhat plausible (in the third movie, the sherrif’s daughter is an oblivious girl next door until she is alone in the jail with Dunae, and then she strips off to her leather underwear, produces a bullwhip and becomes a salacious and obviously experienced dominatrix with a fetish for incarcerated criminals). Oh and both movies go completely insane in the last 15 minutes (Steampunk Cyborg Belail? Check. Freak Insurrection? Check).

“Basket Case” 2 and 3 are unusual feats. Sequels that go in a completely different direction to the original, under the careful guidance of a director with a fierce appreciation for thinking outside the box. Or outside the basket, as the case may be.

Sean Mc Tiernan has a blog and a twitter. So does everyone, though. He also has a podcast on which he has a nervous breakdown once an episode, minimum. You should totally email him with your questions / insults/ offers of tax-free monetary gifts.