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.
