The 1982 low budget flick, Basket Case, is a cult classic—and deservedly so. It’s a bloody good time. We’re happy to report that we’ve got some previously unseen outtakes from the film to share with you, dear reader. But first, a little background.

Basket Case was written and directed by Frank Henenlotter, a young filmmaker, who, up until that point, had just a few short films to his credit. The movie follows formerly conjoined brothers, Duane and Belial, on the hunt for revenge after a forced surgery separated them. Belial is incredibly deformed, so Duane keeps him hidden from view, carting his sibling around in a basket. This leads to a frequently asked question; it’s also the picture’s catch phrase.
 

“What’s in the basket?”

Shot in New York City, the entire budget amounted to $35,000. Nearly all the expenses went towards buying and processing 16mm film, as well as generating oodles of fake blood. Henenlotter was greatly influenced by the “Godfather of Gore,” Herschell Gordon Lewis (Basket Case was dedicated to Lewis).
 

 
Last year, I spoke with Gus Russo, who not only composed the top-notch score for Basket Case, but pitched in in other ways, too. He told me some of the ingenious ways the production saved money, as there was so little of it to go around.

The lights were basically car headlights that he (the lighting guy) had screwed onto a two-by-four [laughs]. The walls in the hotel and in all of the hallways and rooms that you see, that’s just canvas hanging from the ceiling that we painted to look like walls. What we did was, Edgar (Ievins, the producer) and I, we would go out at night, scrounging the Upper East Side, in the alleyways—because those people would throw out furniture and pieces of lumber, pieces of canvas—and we’d drag it back down to his apartment, and that became the sets. Almost everything you see in that movie is garbage.

Belial was made of latex, and the stop-motion technique was used to animate the little guy. For scenes in which only Belial’s arm is seen, a crew member would don a latex glove.
 

 
The special effects makeup was done by Kevin Haney and John Caglione, Jr. Both were soon hired by Saturday Night Live, and later won Academy Awards for their work.
 

 
The picture premiered at the Waverly, a New York theater, in 1982. In a move inspired by the gimmicks devised by legendary producer William Castle, surgical masks were handed out to ticket holders “to keep the blood off your face.”
 

 
Prominent movie critic Rex Reed said that Basket Case was “the sickest movie I’ve ever seen.” Viewed as a badge of honor, the quote was incorporated into the advertising for the film. Reed’s critique wasn’t taken from a formal review, but was said to Henenlotter by Reed when the director spotted the critic leaving a theater after a screening and asked him what he thought. Reed didn’t realize he was talking to the director—HA!
 
Keep reading after the jump…

 
Director Frank Henelotter is best known for his classic cult films Basket Case and Frankenhooker, but a lesser-known film he made between those two is his masterpiece.

That film, 1988’s Brain Damage, is truly one of the most original horror films of that decade. The psychedelic horror film centers around Brian, a young man who comes into contact with a centuries-old, penis-shaped creature named Aylmer that injects him with brain-altering chemicals (seemingly sort of a highly-addictive cross between a hallucinogen and Ecstacy) in order to use him as a host to procure victims to feed his ravenous appetite for human brains.
 

Aylmer, the parasite, speaks with his host, Brian.
 
While Brian is high on the drugs injected into the base of his skull by Aylmer, the parasite is able to use him to obtain new prey. The entire affair is absurd, bordering on campy, but never falling into the Troma-trap of being overly self-aware and intentionally “bad on purpose for yuks.”
 

Aylmer preparing to make an injection of go-juice.
 
The horror genre thrived in the 1980s, but one could divide that decade in half and see two very distinct arcs in the genre. The first half of the decade was utterly dominated by the slasher films that came in the wake of Halloween and Friday the 13th‘s success. Public interest waned a bit in these types of films by the mid-point of the ‘80s, and you began to see more comedic elements entering the horror genre for the last half of the decade.

The second half of the ‘80s gave us the humor-tinged horrors of Evil Dead 2, Re-Animator, Street Trash, and House. Freddy Krueger, one of the most horrific screen villains of all time in 1984’s A Nightmare on Elm Street became a cornball one-liner machine in the subsequent Elm Street sequels. I’m not personally a huge fan of comedic horror, but some of them really get the formula right, and Brain Damage is one of those transcendent titles.

In fact, I’d personally rank Brain Damage right up there with Re-Animator and Street Trash as the three best, most “must-see” horror/comedy films of the 1980s.
 

Brian learns the trials and tribulations of being controlled by a centuries-old dick-shaped drug-administering brain-eater.
 
Brain Damage is a clever, witty, gory film with one of the most entertaining horror villains of all time: the wise-cracking, phallic, parasitic, singing brain-eater known as Aylmer (or also “Elmer,” as he is referred to in the film). The creature, incidentally, is voiced by beloved TV horror host, John Zacherle.
 

“Shock Theater” host, John Zacherle, voices the evil Aylmer.
 
The film is also a not-so-subtle allegory about the horrors of drug addiction with Aylmer continuously taunting Brian as he struggles to “get clean.” 

More after the jump…

 
The Los Angeles premiere of director Frank Henenlotter’s new documentary, Hershell Gordon Lewis: The Godfather of Gore takes place at Cinefamily in Hollywood, CA on October 12th on a double feature bill with the gore classic, Two Thousand Maniacs. Henenlotter and producer Mike Vraney will be here in person for a Q&A in-between the films.

Frank Henenlotter, one of our favorite HFS directors and the man behind classics like Basket Case and Brain Damage, is back with the definitive portrait of Herschell Gordon Lewis, one of the godfathers of exploitation movies! Featuring John Waters, drive-in movie critic Joe Bob Briggs, Lewis’s legendary early producer David F. Friedman, Herschell himself, and testimony from the people who were actually there! You’ll witness Lewis’s beginnings in the bare-naked innocent era of “nudie cuties,” just before he shocked the world with Blood Feast, the first ever gore film—and then you’ll be treated to a madcap whirl of his notorious, controversial career, featuring Two Thousand Maniacs!, She-Devils On Wheels, Blast-Off Girls, Just For The Hell Of It and the incredible The Wizard Of Gore! Experience a decade of motion picture madness, with tons of film clips, rare outtakes, and unintentional hilarity, as The Godfather of Gore leaves you laughing and screaming at some of the most amazing movies to ever play American theaters!

[True story: When I met future “Club Kid Murderer” Michael Alig (when both of us were still teenagers) he was the first person I knew who had a VCR, but he only had three videotapes: Hershell Gordon Lewis’s Blood Feast and 2000 Maniacs and Abel Ferrara’s Driller Killer. Coincidence? You decide!]
 

 
Below, the trailer for Lewis’s hicksploitation “masterpiece” Two Thousand Maniacs. I’ve only seen this film twice, and yet I can still remember most of the lyrics to the insanely catchy theme song.