Frank Henenlotter, 1982 (89 min.)
My rating: 
IMDB
“A” for effort, “D” for execution.
* * *
Premise
Duane Bradley checks into the disreputable Hotel Roslin in New York, bearing a serious grudge against the doctors who wronged him and a child, and carrying a wicker basket containing hideous cargo: his formerly conjoined twin brother, Belial, barely little more than a monstrous, insane blob of flesh.
Critique
Sigh. I feel for Basket Case, I really do. It wants so desperately to be more than your average “glowy-eyed psychic blobby monster gets revenge and has weird sex” movie. It doesn’t just want to gross the audience out. It wants to be poignant, but it doesn’t quite know how to go about doing it.
Here’s a hint: you have to make the audience feel something. That generally requires good writing and decent acting, not just okay writing and crappy acting, which is what Basket Case has. The conventional wisdom seems to be that the entire cast sucks, with the exception of Kevin Van Hentenryck, who plays Duane. I didn’t find that to be the case. First, there were several minor and supporting performances that were actually pretty good—Robert Vogel as the unnamed hotel manager, for example. Second, Van Hentenryck isn’t really all that good. The part requires him to stand on the line between fresh-faced naïveté and seething rage, and while he’s likable enough, he just doesn’t have the range to make the more negative emotions, such as anger and resentment, work. A scene where he drunkenly spills his guts to Casey, his prostitute neighbor (played by Beverly Bonner) comes off as more comical than heartfelt.
The writing is similarly lacking. The plotting is okay (with the exception of a flashback sequence clumsily inserted into the film’s midsection), but writer/director Frank Henenlotter does not seem quite sure about how best to get his themes and motifs across. There are constant references to neuroses and mental illness (“We’re both so messed up,” Duane tells Casey about his relationship with Belial, “I don’t know which one of us is worse.” At another point, the hotel’s manager proclaims, “This isn’t a hotel, it’s a madhouse!”), but if Henenlotter is actually trying to say something, I can’t figure out what it is.
The deeper characterization and dialogue, similarly, leave a lot to be desired. Terri Susan Smith, who a receptionist smitten with Duane, may not be one of her generation’s greatest actresses, but even Meryl Streep would have trouble making some of those lines sound like something someone might actually say.
That being said, the more practical aspects of the film save it from being unwatchable. Henenlotter seems a bit out of his depth when his characters are required to do anything other than act as stereotypes. However, when they do act as stereotypes, they’re eminently entertaining and help reinforce Basket Case’s greatest strength, which is its setting. Henenlotter and his cast do an extraordinary job of bringing the Hotel Broslin and some of the less savory parts of Manhattan to life; as far as evoking “sleazeball New York” goes, this is right up there with Taxi Driver.
Almost as entertaining but nowhere near as good are the Belial effects. Words fail me when trying to describe Belial; “amorphous lump of flesh with vaguely human-looking head and arms, but nothing below the torso” is the best I can do. Usually he’s represented by a mostly static fake-looking puppet or someone off-camera wearing a misshapen glove. Two sequences in which Belial is seen to move under his own power are so abysmally animated that the film turns into pure slapstick—I’m not kidding you when I tell you that I’ve seen better stop-motion in Devo videos and episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. I’ll warn you: anything you try to drink during these scenes will end up coming out your nose, so don’t even bother. And let’s not even mention the sight of Belial having sex with someone.
The sequences don’t work as anything other than ridiculously bad special effects, but I’m glad they’re there…not just because they’re ridiculously funny, but because they sort of represent the film as a whole. Basket Case is rickety, cheap-looking (it was made for $30,000 and looks it; the legend states that most of the crew members’ names in the closing titles are fake, to cover up the fact that Henenlotter did almost everything himself), and silly—sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. But it’s also ambitious, even if it isn’t entirely successful. You gotta respect Henenlotter for that, even when it’s hard to keep a straight face.
Moment of Zen
Stop-motion hotel room rampage!