Frère de sang 2

Basket Case 2 is...well, it's something else. Joe Bob Briggs said "It's perfect!" and that was enough for me. I don't like it, but, at the same time, I don't hate it. It lacks the grittiness of the original Basket Case. The film is more polished but the sets aren't. They're clearly sets and the movie suffers for it. It lacks the realism that the first film depended on. The acting is better, Ted Sorel (From Beyond) is great. The movie is a just a bit too comedic for my tastes. The freaks are mostly stupid, but Belial still kicks ass though. He gets an upgrade in this film, from stopmotion to animatronics. All in all, the film still has that great stomach-turning quality, and the sex scene you never wanted to see. And it does have a great climax, the ending alone is worth watching the entire movie for. It just can't live up to the original.

Note for genre buffs: Two of the freaks include Ron Fazio (he was the second Toxic Avenger) and David Emge (Dawn of the Dead).

Duane and his deformed Siamese twin brother Belial survived the fall from their hotel window in the original, to wake up in a hospital. While trying to escape from the hospital, they're helped out by a doctor who's called Dr. Freak by her peers. She takes them back to her place but Belial is not alone as Belial finds companionship with the other freaks that live there too. To make matters worse is that their hideaway is put at risk a by reporter who is after a story about the twins.

After being surprised by how good the original was, I was a bit disappointed with this sequel as it felt like a dumb down comic adventure. It's not awful but the charm of the original is lost in this film, with a comedy element (trying too much to be funny) and a bigger budget replacing the raw and gritty feel which made the original a grind house treat. The special effects and acting are a tad better this time around, though I miss the originals funny over the top performances. The plot is really lame and there's hardly any gore to be found. Though there is a lot more freaks this time- but they seem to take back seat to Beliel, as he orchestrates most of the violence while they spectate. In doing so you hope they would get into the action- but they seem harmless and play more towards the comedy side of things. Towards the end there are some comical scenes that you think what the??? Or why am I seeing this??? Its alright I guess, but you could say it's a pretty pointless sequel.

3/5

My review was written in February 1990 after watching the movie at a Manhattan screening room.

Belated sequel to the 1982 cult horror film, "Basket Case 2' is a hilarious genre spoof. With its imaginative makeup effects and cockeyed point of view, pic stands a chance of attracting a wider audience than just diehard monster fans.

With only four films under his belt (including "Frankenhooker", shot before "Basket Case 2" but yet to be released), Frank Henenlotter shows considerable knowledge and affection for the horror genre. Here he's paying homage to Tod Browning's 1932 classic "Freaks", updated and modernized.

Effective and funny exposition (opening reel is a riot satirizing cliches such as the evening newscast) fills in the viewer on what happened in the first film: Siamese twins Kevin Van Hentenryck and Belial are nabbed on a murder rampage in Manhattan. Separated at the hip, Van Hentenryck is normal-looking except for a hideous scar and Belial is little more than a head with some gruesome flesh attached -carried around in a wicker basket by his brother.

Annie Ross as Granny Ruth is a crusader for the rights of "unique individuals' ' (i.e., freaks) and welcomes the brothers into her home in Staten Island. Weird menagerie of youngsters, mostly crazy variants on the Elephant Man by makeup whiz Gabe Bartalos, are treated very sympathetically at first, but as in Browning's film (which primarily utilized real sideshow freaks as well as actors Wallace Ford and Roscoe Ates), their potential for scaring the audience also is exploited.

Pic climaxes with Belial's ultraviolent attacks on foes of the freaks, namely tabloid reporter Kahryn Meisle, her shutterbug assistant Matt Mitler and cop Ted Sorel. En route is one of the oddest scenes in recent horror pics, Belial making love to Eve, a similarly grotesque Siamese twin whose better half, Heather Rattray, is not coincidentally Van Hentenryck's girlfriend. The Siamese Twins sex gambit was handled in extremely poor taste in the recent porno video "Joined" , but Henenlotter overcomes that inherent problem with a wild sense of humor.

Van Hentenryck, who's styled to resemble Dwayne Hickman's Dobie Gillis on screen, is effective as the self-divided hero and Rattray offers a strange beauty that builds suspense re: her hidden deformity. Wide-eyed Meisle is fun to hate as the exploitative journalist and Jason Evers (of "The Beast That Wouldn't Die") is a fun, nostalgic choice to play her editor.

Casting coup is Annie Ros, the legendary jazz singer of Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, who is a lot of fun as the demened granny who goads her freakish charges to fight back.

Tech credits are impressive down the line, demonstrating that an underground filmmaker can do with an ample budget.

Duane and his mutant brother Belial are back in this first sequel to the ever-classic tongue-in-cheek series.

For this go-round, Duane and Belial escape from a hospital (after Belial makes sure a few of the staff members are missing their faces)and find refuge in the house of Granny Ruth (Annie Ross), who lives in a spacious house which cares for "differently abled" um, "persons." Some of the "people" in Granny Ruth's house have animal like features, such as claws and gills (even Belial, in a masterfully done puppeteering and make-up venue, is simply a hideous head with evil eyes, very sharp teeth, and two arms with claw-like fingernails extending from the hands).

Belial never really speaks. He just sort of grunts. He does this louder when he gruesomely massacres the snoopy tabloid reporter. Basically, he "jumps" at people, locking his sharp teeth onto their face, sometimes eating certain facial features off. However evil he may seem, he is, in an extremely morbid way, like Freddy Krueger or the Leprechaun. His therapy session with Granny Ruth is a blast (I laughed my a** off(!), and his, um, engaging in an attempt at pro-creation with a female member of his genus at the end is so disgusting and putrid it's downright hilarious).

While at Granny Ruth's house, Duane meets her lovely daughter, Susan. Susan appears, shall we say, "normal," but at the end, we find she just as much qualifies for the attic just as much as the rest of Granny's tenets.

The ending ends with the evil winning (personally I don't think of Belial as THAT evil, just a little "delinquent" mayble),I will tell you that, but in a way, it should. Of course, director Hennenlotter probably intended this, sense it sets up room for another sequel.

"Basket Case 2" is wicked fun! Some may find it hard to understand how some of the downright evil things that happen are funny, but they are, and they are intended to be, especially in the campy context in which they happen. Overall, this is highly recommended. Belial is, in a way, this viewer's new horror hero!

Rating: *** out of ****.

Belial and Duane are together again. Somehow they survived the heavy fall in the first episode. This time they get shelter in Granny Ruths place. She is a pro-freak-activist which helps and protects all of the "unique" creatures she can find. This time there are no doctors to mangle, but a bunch of evil journalists who are looking for fame by finding them. The rest is obvious. I liked this one just as much as the first one. The difference is that it´s a more humouristic and less scary sequel. It also has a twisted ending which makes it even more fun to watch. Enjoy!