Saw Basket Case, a strange and low-budget horror film about a pair of conjoined twins. One of them looks like a normal lanky dude (apart from a big scar and a giant-ass white-guy 'fro) but the other is just a head with flipper-like arms. They were separated against their will at a young age and now they hunt the doctors who performed the operation, the normal-looking guy carrying his deformed brother in a wicker basket at his side.
The film is firmly rooted in camp and shlock - it's not making any grand statements, it just wants to shock you with the ghastly deformed brother and for you to be repulsed by the kill scenes. It's more in the vein of Driller Killer or Studio Troma films - schlock first, but as a second thought, it's also weirdly a kind of subversion as well. It takes the main characters surprisingly seriously. It's not actually enlightened (the deformed brother is just a monster) but it's believable, how the normal-looking brother does kind of want a normal life and although he feels bad for the deformed brother, he doesn't share his rage and blood-lust.
It's billed as a horror/comedy but I found nothing to laugh at. Most of the memorable scenes are shockingly gory or strange or even Cronenberg-ishly fascinating/repulsive (the last scenes of that one doctor's secretary - yuck.) The mounting exasperation of the brothers' landlord is pretty funny, but it feels like set-dressing for the lawless land of 1970s New York.
I liked the film alright - I was happily surprised by the depth of emotion displayed by the characters, when they're not murdering doctors, but mostly they are just murdering doctors. It got fairly tedious by the end for me. It never really overcomes its premise, although it does do that premise justice. This isn't just craziness for craziness's sake, it's craziness taken seriously and explored. Net negative for me still, but it had bits of value in there too.
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