The Spotlight 8.04.07: The Basket Case Trilogy
Posted by Scotty Flamingo on 08.04.2007
Because there aren’t enough goood deformed Siamese Twin movies…
Do you have a certain movie, show, or celebrity that you love, but you don't see much praise about? We're not talking The Shawshank Redemption here, everyone loves that. This column is about those things that seem to be unfairly criticized or forgotten completely. This is The Spotlight.
Hello and welcome to another edition of the column that seeks to dig up the buried treasures of the past. I've been thinking about my high school phase of watching bad horror movies lately and figured I'd expose you guys to some of the more oddball flicks I used to enjoy.
So I read the final Harry Potter book. I have to say that it is one of the best. The first half was kind of meandering and I started to worry that everything wouldn't be wrapped up by the book's end, but the second half is loaded and tied things up nicely. Looking back, here's how I rank them from best to worst:
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkeban
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
I ranked Sorcerer's Stone a bit higher than it probably deserves. It is definitely not as polished as the later books, but I give it credit for establishing the Potterverse. However, the first five are all very close in quality. I didn't enjoy the last two nearly as much. Order spends too much time on Harry whining about everything and Secrets just never clicked with me. Now that I've established my nerd credentials, let's move on.
This week's column is focusing on three of the sickest movies ever, the Basket Case series of schlock horror flicks.
But before I get to the praise, I'm gonna throw out a Quickshot on something that's been annoying me.
The Quickshot: The Beckhams
Let me just remind everyone in the states that we are AMERICANS. We don't give a crap about soccer, much less a soccer player and his defunct pop singer wife. Sorry Brits, but I've never understood your fascination with these two, but at least it is somewhat excusible since soccer is such a big deal across the pond. But in America it means nothing. I think the only people that care are celebrities that wish they were British like Madonna.
Basket Case
You may or may not have heard about Basket Case. It is somewhat of a well known cult horror movie from 1982 that was made on a shoestring budget and was shown frequently on cable shows like USA's Saturday Nightmares in the 80's. Even if you have heard of the original, you may not know that it spawned not one, but TWO sequels in the early Nineties. However, all three are some of the best bad horror movies out there.
Basket Case (1982)- This was the original. It is the story of Dwayne, a seemingly normal teenager who has just moved into a seedy apartment in the big city. On the surface, he seems normal, except for the wicker basket he carries around everywhere. Turns out, the basket contains Dwayne's conjoined brother, Belial, who is a little blob of protoplasm who also happens to have a telekinetic link to Dwayne and is completely out of his mind. The duo go on a revenge mission to hunt down and kill the doctors responsible for seperating them. Unfortunately, Dwayne falls in love during the process and Belial gets jealous. I won't spoil the ending, but let's just say it involves necrophilia.
Basket Case 2-Eight years later, a sequel is made. BC2 is much more of a comedy than the original, whose humor was more unintentional. Dwayne and Belial are reunited with their Granny Ruth, who happens to run a home for deformed people. The patrons come in all shapes and sizes. Much to Belial's delight is that one of them is a little mutant female just like him. And you know what that means…SIAMESE TWIN SEX SCENE! Yes, the two freaks get freaky and it is one of the most hilariously disturbing things I've seen on film.
Basket Case 3: The Progeny-The final act of the series. Seems that those irrisponsible mutants didn't use any sort of protection and the little woman is knocked up. The main event here is the birth of a whole litter of baby Bilials. You have some crooked cops trying to ruin the blessed event and a big battle at the end between Bilial and the Sheriff.
These movies are some of the few legit "so bad they're good" movies. Most movies that people make that claim about are just plain horrible. While the Basket Case movies have some super cheesy special effects (especially the original, which is laughably fake looking and even breaks out some low budget claymation), at the center there is a descent story that holds your interest.
