Basket Case (1982) on Netflix
Duane Bradley takes a New York hotel room with only a locked wicker basket. Inside is Belial, his deformed twin. They have come for the doctors who cut them apart.
- Netflix2.8/5
- IMDb6.2/1024,422 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes77%
Trailer
Plot summary
Duane Bradley reaches New York with a wicker basket he keeps locked and takes everywhere. He rents a room in a cheap hotel down the hall from Casey, a sex worker. The basket holds Belial, the twin brother he was born joined to, a body so deformed that the surgeons who cut the two of them apart were unsure they could call it human. Belial talks to Duane inside his head, and Duane feeds him hamburgers. The brothers hold a grudge against the medical team that separated them, and Duane visits the office of Dr. Harold Needleman, where he gets to know the doctor's assistant, Sharon.
Cast
- Lloyd Paceas Dr. Needleman
- Bill Freemanas Dr. Lifflander
- Ruth Neumanas Duane's Aunt
- Richard Pierceas Duane's Father
- Sean McCabeas Young Duane
- Dorothy Stronginas Josephine
- Kerry Ruffas Detective
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Basket Case (1982)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- A promotional line credited to critic Rex Reed, that this is the sickest movie ever made, came from no printed review: Reed was asked his opinion outside the cinema by a stranger who was in fact director Frank Henenlotter. Furious at first, Reed later granted permission.
SPOILER
During the shooting of Sharon's death scene Henenlotter poured blood over actress Terri Susan Smith's groin. The crew were offended and walked out of the production, leaving Henenlotter, Ievins and Van Hentenryck to finish the scene themselves.- A scene in which the Belial puppet ran through the streets of Manhattan was beyond the puppet, so it became a dream of Duane running nude instead. Van Hentenryck agreed, and it was shot without permits on a cold February night with the sidewalks cleaned first.
- Henenlotter wrote Basket Case only after he and producer Edgar Ievins failed to raise money for an unrealised project called Ooze. As he put it, he wrote a film that could be made for far less money, designed from the start for a low, low budget.
- Henenlotter wrote the screenplay while walking around Times Square, which he called a seedy, wonderful atmosphere, and reportedly put the dialogue down on napkins in the basement of a Nathan's Famous.
- In March 2017 the Museum of Modern Art selected Basket Case for preservation and restoration, and Henenlotter supplied the elements required, including the original 16 mm camera negative the restoration was sourced from.
