Basket Case (1981)

Belial's Rambo impression always cracks 'em up at picnics.

Basket Case is the very definition of a grindhouse movie.  It's gritty, ugly, sleazy, and totally bizarre.  It was shot for $35,000 and it played the midnight show at a theater in New York for two and a half years.

Duane Bradley causes quite a stir in the Hotel Broslin when he checks in with a wad of cash and a padlocked wicker basket that he carries everywhere with him.  Duane is a likable, naive sort of fellow with a secret - his deformed, separated Siamese twin brother in the basket, Belial.

Belial's reveal is unbelievably shocking.  He's a screaming, fanged head on a misshapen lump of flesh with arms and hands with giant claws.  Somehow, this mutated horror is freakishly strong - strong enough to knock down locked doors and tear a human body in half at the waist.  And despite an inability to speak aloud (all he can produce are loud, horrible screams), he has a psychic connection with Duane that lets him see what Duane is doing from afar and hold mental conversations with him, whether Duane wants to or not.

Evidently, Belial's plan is to cut in half anyone who had a part in separating him from Duane's body when they were young - and Duane's okay with that. It all goes according to plan until Duane meets a girl and begins the kind of relationship Belial can never have (or at least not until Basket Case 3: The Progeny). Belial's jealousy and bloodlust can't be contained by his wicker prison, and he - along with all Hell - breaks loose. That's right. All Hell.

The effects are cheap (especially the herky jerky stop-motion used for Belial getting around), the acting is amateurish, and the script is only here to get us from one violent scene to the next. But there's a heart, an attitude, and definitely a uniqueness to Basket Case that cuts through the movie's shortcomings and places it above its contemporaries as an icon of this strange era of filmmaking.