MY CALL: If you love bizarre and violent 80s horror oddities, or enjoyed Basket Case (1982) or any other Henenlotter film, then you should enjoy this, too. It’s weird, it knows it’s weird, and it fully embraces this weirdness and goes full-tilt slapstick. MORE MOVIES LIKE Basket Case: Well, you ought to be sure you’ve seen Basket Case (1982) and Basket Case 2 (1990). If you want more communal-living monstrosities, try Nightbreed (1990) or Digging Up the Marrow (2014). I’d also recommend other films by director Frank Henenlotter (Frankenhooker, Brain Damage), as his films share a similar zany tone. To that end, there’s also The Greasy Strangler (2016).
We open with a recap of Belial’s mutant sex scene with Eve, and Duane (Kevin Van Hentenryck; Basket Case 1-2, Brain Damage) and Susan’s intimacy resulting in her death at the end of part 2. Basically, the first scenes of part 3 are literally replaying the last scenes of part 2, culminating in Duane brutally stitching Belial back onto his side. So all three movies are one continuous story with no time lapses between films whatsoever.
Now under the “psychiatric care” of Granny Ruth (Annie Ross; Witchery, Basket Case 2), Duane emerges from a catatonic state to learn that Eve is pregnant with Belial’s offspring. And with Eve’s complicated pregnancy, Granny Ruth’s whole household heads to Georgia to see Ruth’s estranged son, the only doctor that they can trust. The ensuing birth scene produces a dozen little malformed Belial clones. They’re… kinda’ cute actually.
Writer and director Frank Henenlotter’s (Basket Case 1-2, Frankenhooker, Brain Damage) wacky fever dream has reached new levels of lunacy. This kind of movie is most certainly an acquired taste. I could imagine many finding this aggravatingly cartoonish and intolerably silly. I did prefer the somewhat less slapstick and more brutal fare of part 1 over parts 2-3. The secondary characters toodle around the house and deliver wacky lines with the kookiness of a kids’ show, like a macabre Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.
Still, as wack-a-doo as this movie is, it also has its share of bloody gore, though not as much the 1982 original. Among the enjoyable gore gags is one of the most zany, eye-popping strangulations I’ve seen (to which The Greasy Strangler calls back); a deliciously gross and wonky face-eating scene pulling the teeth out of a deputy’s jaw; and a backwards-spun neck break was pretty cool! And for the finale, an homage to Aliens produces a sort of wonky robo-Belial.
I like part 1 the most and this the least… but it doesn’t mean I don’t like this one at all. Really, it’s just less rewatchable for me. With this said, revisiting any of these movies truly merits revisiting the trilogy as a whole since, unlike Freddy or Jason movies, these movies tell a seamlessly continuous story.
Recommended to fans of bizarre horror comedies.