Basket Case 2 (1990)

The boys (Duane and Belial) are back and ready for some more mayhem.  Just in case you haven’t seen the 1st movie (check out my review here) the brothers are Siamese twins that were separated from each other.  Duane is a regular looking guy, but Belial is a little twisted bit of flesh that is angry at the world.  In this sequel they have ended up at a haven for freaks run by Granny Ruth.  Things seem to be going well for them there as both the brothers are falling in love.  But this is spoiled when a tabloid newspaper tracks them down, threatening their existence.  Their only choice is to fight to save their new home.  This is very bad news for everyone that works at the paper.

Basket Case 2 is one of those sequels that has a much different vibe and feel to it then the original.  The 1st Basket Case movie is a much more serious movie with the revenge aspect and the kills that go along with it.  This sequel picks up right where that one left off with Duane and his brother Belial falling from the hotel (they even use footage from the 1st movie for this).  After the setting moves to Granny Ruth’s house and the other freaks are introduced the mood and tone changes dramatically.  This is a much more, well silly isn’t the right word; I guess I’d say campy take on the characters. 

Most of the time when a sequel tries to change the formula of what made the previous entry work it is a bad idea.  But with Basket Case 2 it works and is a blast.  I found myself just as engaged and entertained by this one as I was with the 1st, but for entirely different reasons.  Instead of being into the gritty setting and story here I enjoyed the cheese.  You have all the strange looking characters and the two dimensional villains (the tabloid reporters) for them to get revenge on.  Also while Kevin Van Hentenryck’s performance of Duane is mostly the same as it was in the original towards the end he starts to seriously chew up the scenery.  This leads to the ending of Basket Case 2, which I thought was very clever and a lot of fun.

Also very clever were the creature designs.  We have many different freaks that live in Granny Ruth’s place and it is clear that a lot of design work and thought was put into each of them.  I was going to talk about some of the specific designs, but I don’t want to ruin them for you.  All I will say is that it was nice to see this much effort put into the practical effects work.  I give props to make up effects artist Gabriel Bartalos and his crew.  His work never fails to live up to what I want in a movie. 

Like I’ve mentioned in some of my other reviews of director Frank Henenlotter’s movies I’m pretty new to his stuff.  But I will say right now that if like me you haven’t seen any of his movies yet you need to right now.  I’ve really liked each and every one of them that I’ve seen so far.  Basket Case 2 is no different and I recommend it.

3 ½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer

© Copyright 2011 John Shatzer