Bad Biology

MOVIE #1,399 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 02.26.24 Can Frank Henelotter translate his very specific brand of bad taste to the 21st century? Well, the master has returned 17 years after Basket Case 3: The Progeny with what is still his last narrative feature to date, 2008’s Bad Biology (co-written by a rapper named R.A. the Rugged Man), and like the character “Batz” here who is constantly looking for the right combination of drugs to control his monster, sentient, detachable penis, results vary. I write this one day removed from the experience of seeing it and, while I continue to wrap my head around it, I think it’s pretty crazy that this far into the game he's made his most tasteless film by a longshot. A potential tagline for this could be “this time the creature doesn’t just look like a dick - it IS a dick!”

This is very disjointed in a way the early films aren't. Not to say that, for example, Frankenhooker is a model of coherency, but something has clearly been lost in the passage of time. I think it probably falls on the shoulders of the performances, to be honest. But I can’t really blame them either (this is a tough sell for ANY actor). By the time the detached penis goes on a rape spree, any semblance of what we’re traditionally looking for in a film has flown completely out the window. There’s something thrilling in that pushing of the envelope, though. This isn’t always the case, but because it’s Henenlotter: you trust him. Sure, the religious overtones are bizarre and left me feeling dizzy. But if I made a picture that involved a woman spontaneously giving birth to mutant babies immediately after having sex and then leaving them to die as they wailed their little CGI heads off, I might be calling upon the Lord as well.


Also, shout-out to the actress Beverly Bonner, the only person who has appeared in EVERY single Henenlotter flick, who I saw passed away in 2020. RIP.

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Bad Biology is a 2008 American black comedy horror film directed by Frank Henenlotter. Produced by rapper R.A. the Rugged Man, it stars Charlee Danielson and Anthony Sneed as sexually unfulfilled people who are drawn together because of their mutated genitalia. The film received generally positive reviews, and was released on DVD in the United Kingdom in 2009, and in the United States in 2010. It was released on April 4, 2008.