My love of Basket Case didn’t officially occur until its sequel – when the deformed brother of Duane Bradley (Kevin VanHentenryck), Belial, finally met the “girl” of his dreams. However, the original Basket Case has a lot to offer, and I’ve chosen it for the second installment of Terror Tapes because for many of us, Basket Case (directed by Frank Henelotter) was the reason we fell in love with horror in the first place. You probably have memories of walking into the video store, stepping into the horror section and falling in love with the font on the video cover, dripping with blood, and a horrendous face peeking out from inside a basket. That was the Media Home VHS box. Or perhaps your video store carried the Palace Version VHS with Duane on the cover, carrying the basket, with some of the sleaziest signs from New York’s 42nd Street in the background. Roadshow Home Video also came out with a version very similar to Media Home. Whichever box cover caught your eye, Basket Case changed your life, and here you are yet again, going down (a blood-filled) memory road with me!
Duane hides his horrifying secret (our monster, Belial) in a locked wicker basket that he constantly keeps at his side. Checking into a seedy hotel in Times Square, he plots a series of visits to doctor’s offices, searching for those who had a hand in their separation, and seeking bloody revenge. Duane and Belial have a history of murder: they killed their mother in childbirth, then later killed their father after finding out that he made the call to separate them.
Basket Case has several “jump out” moments, but ultimately, the character of Belial is so silly that he’s not scary. (Plus, the film has aged.) The murders and the gore in this film are plentiful and excellently executed. It’s always nice to see a horror film without the CGI tricks of the modern trade. Belial is essentially a lump of scar tissue, cartilage, and deformed flesh. When he’s moving around during the stop-motion animation sequences, he looks ridiculous – but otherwise, his twisted skin is grotesque and very life-like. Basket Case is one of the pioneers of exploitation horror with nudity, gratuitous blood, a gross-out sex scene, and absurd dialogue. It’s very clear that Henenlotter was a fan of the genre before he started making films himself. Basket Case definitely conveys a strong sense of horror-love. Henenlotter also loves Belial and occasionally the camera aligns us with the creature’s point of view: close to the ground, with jerky movements.
Basket Case has laughs aplenty, especially when Belial steals Casey’s (Beverly Bonner) underwear. It has become a cult classic, and is so well loved (by horror fans and Henenlotter himself) that it spawned two sequels (which were recently rereleased on DVD and Blu-Ray by Synapse).
I collected a few interesting and comical stories about the making of Basket Case and Basket Case2 from actors Beverly Bonner and Kevin VanHentenryck
How did you get involved in the first Basket Case film? How did you meet Frank?
Beverly: Frank Henenlotter came to see the production Women Behind Bars with the late Divine. He gave me his card after the show and told me he was doing a movie and would like me to be in it. I thanked him politely but expected nothing to come of it. After all, men gave me their cards all the time! [Laughs.] So all these years later, I have been in EVERY ONE of Frank’s films, including the one he is editing now, which we shot this summer.
Kevin: I was studying acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and Ilze Balodis, who plays the social worker in the film, was the assistant registrar at the school. She knew Frank and she wanted me to meet him. I went and met him and even then, he was a walking encyclopedia of the genre. He seemed interested in me as an actor, so he gave me three bit parts in his film Slash of the Knife. Frank had been using his friends up until that point in his film – he wasn’t getting the really good results he wanted. I talked him into using student actors to get better results and performances. Frank and I worked well together; we got along really well. So months later, he called me up and told me about Basket Case. He told me the entire plot, and he was very detailed and of course I was interested.
What was it like working with Frank Henenlotter and his unique vision and ideas?
Kevin: For me, the idea that Duane and Belial are Siamese twins was fascinating to me. I thought that their telepathic way of communication post-separation was really cool. Frank was really great to work with, and we all helped out on the set doing different things. He had a really great vision for the film. Frank is so knowledgeable about the genre, so when a problem came up, and someone would make a suggestion – he knew whether or not that had been used in a horror film in the past before.
Beverly: Well, I worked on ALL of Frank’s films, Basket Case, Basket Case 2 & 3, Frankenhooker, Brain Damage, Bad Biology, and his latest this summer although I’m not at liberty to reveal any info on Frank’s latest. When I first met Frank he reminded me of Opie from Andy Griffith’s show in Mayberry. Rosy full cheeks, freckles, clear blue eyes. He was a cutie and so nice! He is a professional, passionate about movies - very very passionate about movie. He is a walking authority on many. He is smart, funny, loyal and we communicate very well and laugh a lot. I’m proud he’s my friend and he has been so supportive of Casey --- 30 Years Later!, the comedy play I wrote based upon my character from Basket Case.
I have this old issue of FANGORIA where Frank was interviewed just before Basket Case came out, and you can feel his love for the genre in the article – it comes through, and I think that’s why the film has aged so well and why it has a cult status; it’s because Frank created something he loved, as a horror fan, and that translates to new audiences today.
Kevin: Yeah, absolutely. It was a labor of love for all of us.
Do you have any good stories to tell about working so closely with Belial? Did you find it difficult to work with a monster?
Kevin: [laughs] Well, for me, it’s not that different from any acting situation. You’re onscreen and you’re supposed to be talking to another person – so in this case, it was just a rubber monster! It’s all for pretend, and that’s acting. When we shot it, I really loved all the scenes where I was interacting with Belial and the basket. I spent a lot of time working on that, trying to flesh out that relationship and make it as natural and real as possible. I also really enjoyed the scene at the end where we are fighting in the hotel room, and he lifts me up and throws me out the window. That was a lot of fun; I was hanging from the hotel sign.
Beverly: My experience with him was different because I wasn’t his Siamese twin and Belial is a mass of rubber and plastic, so we never hung at the bar! [Laughs.] The scene with me in bed where Belial runs his hand over my breast was difficult. It was about 100 degrees on the set and it was a complicated shot. They had to cut a hole in the mattress for access, Frank and the FX guys were under the bed making it all work and it did. Difficult, but fun. Of course, Belial steals my panties. Interesting story: those red panties are famous and they disappeared, someone on the set stole them and they were my very own “personal” panties!
Kevin, you also played Belial in a few scenes – especially some of the more interesting ones, like his sex scene with Eve in Basket Case 2.
Kevin: Yes, I helped in that – I only actually played Belial in one scene. My face was superimposed on his in the scene where he and Duane are talking and Duane is trying to convince him of this miraculous new life. I was filmed wearing the Belial hat. If we ever made a fourth film, I’d like to play Belial a lot more. I have been thinking a lot about that, actually! The sex scene, I can’t remember what I was doing specifically, but I do know that Frank was working with Belial’s hands. We all helped out with moving the monsters and everything else on the set, because it was a small film with a small budget, and we were just all hanging out, so we all took part and helped.
Kevin, I’m assuming you did your own stunts on the film – what was it like being grabbed by Belial in the hotel room?
Kevin: It was fun. Frank and [producer] Edgar Levins figured this stuff out. A behind-the-scenes secret: every time someone lifts up the basket and Belial jumps out at them into their face, it was filmed with the camera hung upside down from an A-frame ladder and Belial was filmed starting at the finish position, then going back into the basket. So when it’s flopped and run backward, it looks like he’s jumping out of the basket. It’s such a simple, low-tech and hands-on way to solve that problem, and Frank knew exactly how to make it work. When Belial and I are hanging from the sign, the sign was on the fire escape. We drove Edgar’s van under the fire escape and he had built this platform that we attached to the top of the van. I stood on top of the van, on top of the platform. I had a harness on under my clothes, so I was hung up from the sign, and then Edgar would drive away, so I’d be left hanging and we’d shoot the scene. It was really fun stuff.
Belial looks so great. The monsters look awesome.
Kevin: Yeah, that’s all Gabe Bartalos. He did the effects in the second film – and the third as well. His stuff is incredible.
Beverly: We just had lots of fun. And to still be close with all these people so many years later is a real gift.
Do you know why the hotel was called Broslin? I always wondered why the hotel was named that, if there was a story behind that.
Kevin: Oh, I don’t know, to be honest. That would be a question for Frank. I do remember that we tried to shoot hotel exteriors next to Madison Square Garden and in that era, the late 70s, it was a sketchy neighborhood and we actually had a homeless person tell us that if we paid him $50, then he wouldn’t steal our cables. So we knew that wouldn’t work out.
Tell me more about finding locations for the first film.
Kevin: Fans often ask me, “Where is the hotel Broslin”? It was several sites, actually. The exteriors and the manager’s desk were a freight elevator from a building on Franklin Street in New York. One of the trips up and down the stairs case, the middle landing where a man in a pink bathrobe comes out – that was a teacher at the Academy, and now he’s the dean. The rooms themselves were built in a loft that belonged to one of the actors’ husbands in the film and if you look closely, Casey’s room and Duane’s room are the same, just redecorated.
Beverly, you’re a popular comedian now – where can FEARnet readers see you perform?
Beverly: Yes, I am a stand-up comic, playwright, director and producer. My show, Casey---30 Years Later! is currently running two Tuesday nights a month at Broadway Comedy Club in New York City. Casey goes to Tamarac Theater in Tamarac, Florida May 17th and 18th. In the fall we will begin shooting a Casey web series.