It’s not every director who ends up with his debut feature film becoming a staple of the midnight movie run in New York City, but Frank Henenlotter managed it with his nearly-zero-budget 1982 exploitation classic Basket Case, brought to us on UHD for the first time ever in the UK by the fine folks at Arrow Video.
Arrow had released this on Blu-ray back in 2019, but not in the UK. Over here you had to be happy with the Second Sight release if you wanted to see Belial in all his gruesome rubbery glory, and the special features were decent enough, but nothing hugely special. Arrow has rectified that oversight with a slew of special features that should be enough to satisfy even the most ardent of Henenlotter fans.
The plot on offer is a relatively simple affair. Once upon a time there were two brothers, but they weren’t like other folks. They were conjoined twins. One of them, Duane (Kevin VanHentenryck) was completely normal, except for the horribly deformed lump of his brother, Belial, attached to his torso like a misshapen tumour with eyes. Violently separated in an operation that neither of them wanted or consented to, the brothers have come to New York to hunt down the people who separated them, and make them pay in a variety of gory, blood-splattered ways.
The production of this movie is a fascinating read even now, with a lack of time, crew and budget necessitating some ingenious ways to make the most of what they had; from illicit late night streaking to filming at the Statue of Liberty without a permit and even inventing names for most of the entirely fictitious people who show up in the credits because they didn’t just want to repeat the same names over and over again.
For a film that Frank Henenlotter assumed nobody would ever see, the raft of special features on offer here show the deep and abiding love that horror fans have for this gruesome little tale, starting off with the new 4K restoration, which looks really good when compared to the Second Sight Blu-ray. It retains that glorious, gritty film grain while sharpening up the details and retaining much of the original colour palette. No ham-fisted colour re-grading or thick slathering of AI filters to smooth out wrinkles. (Looking at YOU, James Cameron.)
There’s not one but two different audio commentary tracks, one with Frank Henenlotter and Kevin VanHentenryck, and the other is Frank Henenlotter, the producer Edgar Ievins, actor Beverly Bonner (who played Casey) and filmmaker Scooter McRae (who was the editor for Henenlotter’s Bad Biology in 2018). Among a smorgasbord of behind the scenes features there’s some standouts that are well worth singling out as being worth your attention. There’s ‘Belial Goes to the Drive-In’, an interview with film critic Joe Bob Briggs who has always been a vocal supporter of the film since its inception; ‘What’s in the Basket?’ which is a feature-length documentary covering all three films in the Basket Case series; and ‘The Frisson of Fission: Basket Case, Conjoined Twins, and ‘Freaks’ in Cinema’, a really informative video essay by Travis Crawford.
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There’s also two shorts included on the disc. There’s Slash of the Knife, Frank Henenlotter’s short film which features many of the same actors from Basket Case, and the stop-motion animation short Belial’s Dream by filmmaker Robert Morgan, which is gloriously trippy.
This new 4K restoration of Basket Case comes to UK audiences with a great looking transfer that doesn’t ruin the sleazy, exploitation-era feel of the film and a raft of special features that are the most comprehensive a fan could hope for. A true classic of 1980’s grindhouse cinema, it remains a delight for genre fans and collectors alike.
Basket Case is out now on Limited Edition 4K UHD from Arrow Video, and available to stream on Arrow.
