The Film (5/5)

    Duane Bradley (Kevin Vanhentenryck) has arrived in New York City for the very first time with this basket dwelling brother Belial. Belial is a blobby monster, that was formerly conjoined with Duane, but many years ago a team of surgeons (and a vet) separated the two, leaving Belial's monstrous form for dead. However, Duane would save him, murder their Father, and they would be raised by a kindly older woman. Now that they are older, they have arrived in the city with one thought on their minds, revenge. They plan to find and kill the doctors who separated them all those years ago, no matter what it takes.

    Basket Case was the debut film from director Frank Henenlotter, and unleashed his unique blend of horror, comedy, and weirdo monsters to the world.  The film's blend of comedy and horror is a bit more interesting in its approach than other films of the genre as it's more through bizarre performances and situations than truly over the jokes, and laugh out loud moments, and yet I have felt that this why the film still maintains the ability to illicit a laugh alongside a scare even after 30 years. The gore in the film isn't over the top, but it is effective, and still holds up quite a bit.

   Basket Case was one of the first films to be sold at a reduced price (around 10 to 20 bucks), at the beginning of the VHS boom of the early 80’s, and as such the film managed to make a huge impact beyond it’s simple 42nd street origins. The film Henenlotter thought might disappear after a short grindhouse run, ended up living on through home video because of frequent rentals who took to it’s bizarre blend of dark humor, splatter, and the unique monster at its core. The film now almost 40 years on is a timeless classic of horror cinema, which has now seen a release in almost every format since VHS. The restoration for this Blu-ray by Arrow Video was actually undertaken by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which has added Basket Case to its permanent collection, adding this piece of grindhouse horror to its pantheon of great art, how about that?

Audio/Video (4/5)

    Arrow Video presents Basket Case in a very solid 1:37:1 1080p AVC encoded transfer preserving the OAR of the film. Everything here looks quite better than it ever has before. We have a natural looking transfer with an organic well rendered grain structure, strong detail throughout, the muted-natural tones of the film are well reproduced and blacks are deep.

    Audio is handled by a very solid LPCM mono track in English with optional subtitles. The track sounds quite strong for the most part with the synth heavy soundtrack coming through nicely, and dialogue being mostly audible throughout the presentation.

Extras (5/5)

   I did not think Basket Case could come more stacked then it did before, but Arrow really out did themselves and created the definitive release of Basket Case.  There are multiple commentary tracks, Henenlotter's first short film Slash of the Knife, a new Basket Case sequel short film called Basket Case 3 1/2, interviews, documentaries, galleries, and more.

Overall

    Basket Case is one of the finest examples of 80's horror cinema we have. The Blu-ray from Arrow Video taken from the recent MoMA restoration is a true thing of beauty, and is loaded up with so many extras it would take days to go through them all, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.