Sunday, September 14, 2008

Beloved Belial

One of the hands-down, most amazing movies I have ever seen in my life is Basket Case.
Basket Case

Maybe because I have a soft spot for it because it was released the year of my birth: 1982.

There's so much to say about this movie. For starters, the "monster" in it, Belial, is one of the most horrible looking, yet outrageously awesome characters in a horror movie that I have ever seen in my life. My parents actually loved this movie, and they had an endearing nickname for Belial-"Russel the Brussel Sprout".
Basket case

The way he kills people is just by screaming this horrible scream and touching people to death:

basket case


Watch the trailer:




And here's a clip of how he sounds when he's killing people:




Basically, the movie is about two brothers, Duane and Belial, whose births kill their mother. The father hates them because of what happened to his wife, and when they are born, they are born as conjoined twins (Duane was "normal" and Belial was severely deformed). The only person that even cared about them was their grandmother.
So anyways, The father finds 3 doctors who are willing to separate Duane and Belial and they end up throwing Belial into a trash bag. Belial, who everyone thinks is dead, is actually alive and talks to Duane through telepathy.
Duane and Belial kill the father and proceed to live in harmony with the grandmother until her death. It is at this point that Duane and Belial decide to travel to NYC to find and seek revenge on the doctors that had separated them.

It is also important to note that Belial gets extremely jealous when Duane finds a girlfriend, and FREAKS the hell out and destroys the hotel room.

This movie somehow spawned 2 sequels: Basket Case 2 in 1990 and Basket Case 3: The Progeny in 1992. Basket Case 2 is absolutely wretched. I fell asleep in the middle of it it was so bad. It's something about this gang of misfits that live in this retirement home kind of thing (which is more like a circus freakshow) and all live together mutated.
Granny Ruth Basket Case 2 Annie Ross Photobucket
Belial also finds a girlfriend in this home. The only plus is that it picks up right where the original left off and many of the characters remain the same.
Basket Case 3 is about Belial becoming a father and the whole clan of mutants visiting the South. I haven't seen it and apparently it's such a huge treasure that it's extremely expensive to buy if you can find it used online.

The biggest downside in all of these movies is the deteriorating awesomeness in the physical appearance of Belial.

In the first one, the graphics were so horrible that he was amazing looking. He looked like a moving latex mask. (see above)
In the second one, he kind of looks like a Sam Kinison mask and there's alot of silly CG effects.
Photobucket
And in Basket Case 3...forget it...he starts wearing some kind of contraption that allows him to walk? here's the trailer for it:



Basket Case is just one of those movies that you have to watch. I can't tell you enough about how insane it is.

1 comments:

Jim said...

I sat here for a few minutes trying to figure out how to accurately spell Belial's scream....here goes....

OoOOOOAaAaAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaahhhhhh