Basket Case 3: The Progeny (1992)

The Age of Commercialism

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

After the batsh*t crazy ending of the last one i don't think Basket Case 3 can get any more crazier but it prove me wrong right the way when deliver a fun cheesy horror movie with enough WTF moments to entertain any horror fan so believe me when i say this series is seriously underrated.The so bad it good acting is all over the place and the practical effect only make it better.Kevin Van Hentenryck as Duane Bradley still just as confuse as always and Annie Ross as Granny Ruth one again very entertaining in her role.I know i give so much credit for a B-movie but I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff.Check the series out if you love extreme family drama(LOL)

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

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

It helps to have seen Basket Case and Basket Case 2 before viewing the final entry of the trilogy, but it's definitely not necessary. As with most of these incredibly silly, monstrously cheesy gory 90's B-movies, the plot is of marginal importance. The inventive and bizarre character designs are at their most appealing in this final chapter, the script is at its most ridiculous, and the ideas are crazier and make much less sense. The acting is expectedly pitiful and the plot is pointless at best, but the increasingly more self-aware accidental humor is generous enough to warrant seeing this utter schlock for yourself. It's difficult not to laugh at film-making this absurd.Susan and her alien-like hand-puppet child Bernard are dead (in the second film she is the daughter of long-lost Aunt Ruth) and Duane (Kevin Van Hentenryck) has been locked up in a straight jacket and padded cell by freak caretaker Granny Ruth (Annie Ross). Despite her literal bus load of deformed underlings, she remains one of the most abnormal of the bunch. Duane plots an escape to reunite with his once-conjoined twin Belial, a disfigured fleshy blob who communicates telepathically. Belial's equally deformed girlfriend Eve is now pregnant (it happens during the opening scene and their coupling is a cinematic horror that must be seen to be believed), causing Ruth to pack up the crew and leave New York for the pleasantly rural Peachtree Valley to meet her husband Uncle Hal Rockwell (Dan Biggers), the doctor who can help with the delivery.When Belial witnesses the birth of his twelve mutant babies, a dredged-up recurring vision of his original surgical separation from Duane maddens him to the point of murder. Meanwhile, Duane gets himself imprisoned in the local jail where the cops get wind of a comically sizable reward for capturing the "Times Square" killers and journey to the Rockwell's mansion to kill Belial. Once there, the sight of so many freaks turns them hysterical, and they make off with the basket of one dozen growling ghastly babies, leading to an all-out war between the police and the army of miscreations.The bizarre mutants are the highlight of the film, showcasing a creative knack for oddities and outlandish blood effects. Belial always ends up being little more than a puppet with the occasional animatronic expressions, but Eve and every other monster adorns massive and elaborate prosthetics and makeup reminiscent of grotesquely metamorphosed Star Wars inhabitants. "That's not a pet, goddammit! That's my nephew!" screams Duane, who was thankfully portrayed in all three films by the same actor (an appropriately demented performance).In the same way that Sam Raimi embraced a comedic approach by the time he reached his third Evil Dead film, returning director Frank Henenlotter seems to have fully accepted taking Belial and his family of grotesqueries with only a grain of seriousness. There's still gruesome makeup effects, violent bloodshed and gratuitous nudity, but all of it is over-the-top and humorous. The character of Opal (Tina Louise Hilbert) adopts some disturbingly erotic fetishes as she toys with Duane in jail, Belial dreams of being fondled by busty naked girls (Playboy's Morrell Twins, in one of their only feature film roles) and Eve's malformed children are tossed around like jelly-filled donuts. At least everything in Basket Case 3 goes beyond the first two in extremes, even if it's all nonsensical; hilarity proceeds every line of dialogue, the plot becomes exponentially weirder by the minute, and no signs of a fourth film are anywhere on the horizon.Mike Massie