Well Deserved Praise

Great Film overall

Best movie of this year hands down!

A Brilliant Conflict

Is this film scary? No. Is this film funny? Yes. Is this film stupid? Yes. Is this film a total waste of viewer's time? Yes. Duane and Belial still reside with their adoptive mother and rathe less fortunate humans who have some quite hideous facial deformities, one could confuse this one with a similar movie of it's time, Freaked. This third installment, you actually hope there's a fourth, like in apology for how horribly bad this one is. But there's a fear, that if a fourth one was made, there's a slight possibility it could be worse than this one, and that's a really frightening thought. Belial's girl, another freaks, is very much pregnant, and we do have a funny "Must seen to be believed" birth scene, when she pops a few baby Belial's, that are snatched by authorities. So, we know Belial is not one happy chappy, but neither will an audience be by this utter dreck. We have a kinky daughter of a sheriff, who clean cut looking Duane, gets it on with as she plays dominator, in one of her daddy's police cells. After viewing this one, one of my friends was grinning to himself, in a sort of embarrassment, at the birth scene, another one at one point, and said and I quote "But this is terrible". A true understatement if I heard one. I myself was left in total stupefaction. Even a couple of newborn Belials, and the freak mother buy it, so we have a nasty revenge in store, plus the old rock hit, 'Personality', played in a slower jazzed style, over the end credits, by freak accompaniment and now you've heard my opinion of this. This embarrassment of a movie, just plays as a comedy, it's hard to believe it's in the same franchise as the original, which was one of the scariest and effective horrors of 84, I was witness to. What the hell happened. Get your act together Duane.0.5

(Spoiler= this movie is a FART).Very big spoiler = there's action between 1'08 and 1'12. And some comedy too (between 1'13 and 1'14). But don't worry, there is nothing going on besides those six minutes of action, because this movie is total crap. I would like to thank Duane, the brother of the 10 minutes freaks, especially for his role which reminds me of E.T.In this "movie" you can see a lot of freaks. They dance, they drink Vodka, they eat pancakes and they like baby-sitting... That's all.Was that a direct-to-video? Unfortunately, no. But it could have been a direct-to-your-toilets.

Basket Case 3: The Progeny continues in much the same vein as Pt 2, with loads of twisted humour, some very silly freaks, and plenty of truly demented scenes, including a terrific musical number from Granny Ruth (Annie Ross) and her 'unique individuals', the birth of twelve mutant babies, Duane (Kevin Van Hentenryck) being dominated by Opal (Tina Louise Hilbert), the hot slutty daughter of a local sheriff, and Belial being transformed into a half-machine/half monster cyborg by Little Hal (Jim O'Doherty), a monstrous multi-limbed genius.In short, this movie is yet another bonkers effort from Frank Henenlotter that, although never reaching the level of brilliance displayed in his debut Basket Case or the marvellous Brain Damage, should appeal to those who enjoyed the director's previous outing for his deranged, separated Siamese twins. The comedy sometimes gets a tad puerile, and the childish behaviour of the freaks becomes irritating at times, but the level of insanity is way high, with a fair amount of inventive gore, and even some nudity courtesy of Playboy twins Carla and Carmen Morrell (who have the dubious pleasure of fondling Belial).It might not be Henenlotter at his best, but I'd much rather watch an enjoyably daft, low budget piece of campy trash such as this than much of today's bland and predictable mainstream horror.

The original BASKET CASE is one of my all-time favorite B-movies, and has been ever since I first saw it as a kid on cable over 20 years ago. It's grimy, low-budget style, the completely off-the-wall storyline, the cheezy but effective splatter FX- everything about the original screams underground classic. And luckily director Frank Henenlotter proved to not just be a one-trick-pony, by proving he had the skills to be a truly noteworthy cult-horror director-with other classics like BRAIN DAMAGE and FRANKENHOOKER. But unfortunately, the beloved Mr. H had to go and f!ck up his streak with retarded nonsense like the BASKET CASE sequels. I hadn't seen either of the sequels in many years- and I recall not liking either of them-but I had this one laying around and figured I'd give it another chance to see if my opinion had changed over the years. No such luck. In this third and (thank Christ) final installment in the trilogy-the action picks up directly after the events of the equally stupid second film-with Duane spending some time in a rubber-room after trying to sew him and his deformed Siamese twin brother Belial back together. The brothers are re- disconnected during Duane's incarceration-and he is eventually released. Granny Ruth (from part 2) takes Duane to a friend's house with the rest of the freak-show brood to await the birth of the spawn resulting from the union of Belial and his girlfriend Eve. When a duo of bumbling cops kill Belial's girlfriend and kidnap his 'kids'-he doesn't take it too kindly, and exacts some splattery revenge... Granted-there are a (very) few scenes in this entry that are mildly amusing-but not enough to call BASKET CASE 3 enjoyable on any level. Honestly-I found both sequels to be retarded, un-funny, and frankly, unnecessary. When the series moved into straight slap-stick territory-I completely lost interest. I still respect Henenlotter a great deal for his early contributions to the B-movie horror world-but both of these sequels just straight-up suck in my book...3/10