Basket Case

The next film to emerge from the Oubliette is Basket Case (1981): the debut feature of Frank Henenlotter, a New York exploitation obsessive who spent his youth in the grindhouses of 42nd Street and, with producer Edgar Ievins, put roughly $35,000 of mostly their own money into turning a title he liked into a film he never expected anyone to see.

Shot on 16mm over about 6 months of spare weeks and weekends, in the last years of Times Square as the Deuce, it follows a wide-eyed young man (Kevin Van Hentenryck) who carries his formerly conjoined and decidedly ill-tempered twin around town in a wicker basket on a revenge tour of the surgeons who split them apart.

It arrived in 1982 amid the slasher boom, with a first distributor keen to trim the blood, before a Texas midnight show, Joe Bob Briggs and a long run at New York's Waverly turned it into a midnight staple and, after a well-timed $19.95 VHS, a fixture of fans' bedrooms. It has since been restored by the Museum of Modern Art, which might be the strangest plot twist in the whole saga. But does the film, which has been on Dan's watchlist since we started the podcast, deserve a place in the world outside the Oubliette? Find out!

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