Product Details

• Format: Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 1.0)
• Region: All Regions
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Studio: Image Entertainment
• DVD Release Date: December 1, 1998
• Run Time: 89 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (77 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6305186677
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #279,188 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Basket Case" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Here's a sick little movie for you--a creepy-funny shocker that's become a semi-cult classic since its release in 1982. It's a cheesy, low-budget horror flick about a small-town geek who arrives in New York City's Times Square carrying his mutant, telepathic twin brother in a big basket (hence the movie's title, get it?). They were once Siamese twins, and now they're seeking gory revenge against the doctors who surgically separated them against their will! Talk about brotherly love! The "normal" sibling has to keep his brother well- fed, and the basket-dweller's appetite runs the gamut from hamburgers to hookers. There's plenty of lowlife "meat" to be found in the seedy motel where the brothers live. Not exactly mainstream fare, as you might already have guessed, but director Frank Henenlotter handles the gruesomeness with resourceful ingenuity. The movie even gathered enough horror-buff momentum to spawn two lesser sequels in 1990 and 1992, which is all the proof you need to add this dubious trilogy to the gross-out hall of fame. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars What's in the basket, kid?, July 6, 2003

By 

cookieman108 "cookieman108®" (Inside the jar...) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Basket Case (20th Anniversary Special Edition) (DVD)

'The tenant in room 7 is small, twisted, and very mad.' One of my favorite tag lines from a movie. This is a great, low bugdet shlock horror/comedy from the early 80's. It involves two brothers and their plot to get revenge. I hate to give anymore away, but this is a cult classic that has spawned a couple of sequels. I haven't seen them, but I have seen this one, and it's lots of fun. The story is definately interesting with its flashbacks and the actors will never win any Oscars, but they really help to make this movie. And then there's the seedy locations. Basically this type of film making is called "using what you got and making the most of it". And then there's the special effects....not over the top, but effective enough to fit nicely with the story. The stop motion animation was a little cheesy, but then that added to the fun of the movie for me. All in all, I had a great time watching this movie.

Something Weird Video (SWV) did a really great job with this DVD. I was a little disappointed that the movie was only available in full screen format, but the amount of extras included was truly amazing. I really enjoyed the piece where the director goes back and tries to locate certain locations from the movie. Great stuff, and pretty complete.

So, in closing, if you want to see a low budget, gory, horror/comedy schlockfest that was done really well, get this movie, if you've got the guts. And as an added bonus, get a glimpse of what times square used to look like before it got all cleaned up and 'disneyfied'. Not a lot of footage on this, but a chance to see how seedy and raw it used to be, with it's hookers, grindhouses, triple-X theaters, etc., compared to what it is now.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars What's in the basket!!?, April 16, 2005

By 

Puzzle box "smockey_421" (Kuwait) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Basket Case (20th Anniversary Special Edition) (DVD)

Frank Henenlotter has definently made a bizzare and very cheap horror film, the film contains some blood and gore but some of it looks so unbelievably fake like the scene where one of the doctors gets killed by the monster Bilial looks like they just squirted some ketchup and told the actor to scream alot like he was being killed. But what I really liked about this film was its humor and the filmakers determination despite having an extremley low budget, the freak twin itself looks like a bad lump of plasticine with a face on it and two big arms, the film starts when the two brothers go to the city to have there revenge on the doctors who have separeted them from each other when they were younger using a small operation procedure as you will see in the flashback sequence. They soon rent a realy small rundown appartment where there lives a prostitute and some low life scum. Theres this scene that I thought was an absolute riot where Duane Bradley goes on a date with the secratery who he met at the doctors office which makes his twin freak gets jeuolos and then throws a fit of rage, what bothered me about this scene was the bad stop motion effects were completley outdated but who cares because the scene was just so hilarious especialy when he threw a chair across the room and started lifting the bed and banging it on the floor. I recomend this to horror fans who like low budget early 80's horror films.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A stunningly prescient rumination on Euro-American relations, March 30, 2005

By 

Curtis Swackhammer, Ph.D (Goshen, Virginia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Basket Case (20th Anniversary Special Edition) (DVD)

Every generation or so, a movie appears that redefines the boundaries of the medium, that turns the status quo on its collective head and brings about a paradigm shift in broader social and academic circles. Basket Case is one such film. Released to lukewarm attention at the Cannes Film Festival in 1982, the movie's overarching theme -- two separated brothers engulfed in a love-hate relationship because of their once conjoined state -- seemed out of place in the height of the Cold War. Yet the Berlin Wall ultimately fell, much as a doctor's scalpel separated the film's mismatched protagonists. Who knew then that the brothers' subsequent search for justice, marred by periodic distrust and misunderstanding, would so aptly serve as a post-glasnost roadmap for diplomats on both sides of the Atlantic? After all, Europe and America were separated, too, if by revolution rather than a surgeon's knife. If the thinkers at the Project for a New American Century and the French parliament had heeded this movie's cautionary tale, we wouldn't be involved in such current frivolities as "freedom fries."

But I digress. While this film was unjustly shut out of Oscar honors in 1982, someday Kevin VanHentenryck may well receive the award his masterwork most richly deserves: The Nobel Peace Prize.