Basket Case 2

MOVIE #1,212 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 10.29.23 50 MOVIES IN 32 DAYS! It’s a full eight years later but the movie starts right after the events of the original. I really thought they had both died but inspiration for a sequel can never be killed. Duane and Belial escape the hospital and connect with a long-lost aunt, Granny Ruth (played by British-American singer and actress, Annie Ross, perhaps the most respected thespian ever seen in a Henenlotter picture). Right off the bat, we see the upgrade in the design of Belial and what a 2.5-million dollar budget can do for the Basket Case franchise (it feels wrong calling it a “franchise” tbh). They go off to Ruth’s secret hospital outside the city which is inhabited by an array of comically freakish people who like this…

The tone of this movie is so much more comedic that it barely registers as a slasher/horror. While there’s still something of a plot, this leans into the absurd, like the presence of this living gargoyle who pops up a couple times and otherwise serves no purpose…
Narratively, this is probably the weakest of the trio. The story surrounds a reporter seeking to out Duane, his brother and the house of freaks, and there is a subplot involving sexual jealousy between Belial and Duane that doesn’t really go anywhere either. Interestingly enough, the closing fifteen minutes or so really feel like the beginning of the first act for Part 3 (and in fact, The Progeny actually begins with a condensed version of this segment) and it’s probably the best thing in the movie, featuring an alien rip-off/homage amongst the insanity…


This is great but it was probably my least favorite of the trilogy, mostly because the thread that begins there (which also includes a Belial sex scene!) is essentially the start of Basket Case 3 which is the superior sequel imo.

---

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #1,211 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,213 ⫸

---

Basket Case 2 is a 1990 American comedy slasher film written and directed by Frank Henenlotter, and the sequel to the 1982 film Basket Case. It stars Kevin Van Hentenryck as Duane Bradley, who moves with his deformed, formerly conjoined twin brother Belial into a home for "unique individuals" run by their long-lost aunt, eccentric philanthropist Granny Ruth (played by Annie Ross). It was released on March 2, 1990.