Creator of cult monster movie at Celluioid Screams

New Yorker Henenlotter is the man who created Basket Case, the story of a meek boy who carries his malevolent deformed twin around the teeming streets of the Big Apple in a basket. The film’s tagline: “The tenant in Room 7 is very small, very twisted and very mad.”

The film is playing in a double-bill along with its sequel. Other Henenlotter delights are also scheduled including Frankenhooker, and Braindead. The man himself calls the invitation to visit the north of England “very surreal”. Thirty years after the film came out he’s still being asked to talk about it.

“I’m seriously delighted that so many people like the film. At the same time I’m also embarrassed by it. I was very self-indulgent when I made it because I thought it would never be seen.

“Everything about Basket Case kind of confuses me – the reaction to it, that it still exists and it still gets watched and people like it. I am the one guy sitting in the theatre with the big question mark over his head going ‘What the hell is this thing?’”

Henenlotter was in his early 30s when he conceived and shot the film. His budget was $35,000, his actress girlfriend cast it with friends from drama school and Henenlotter himself acted as cameraman, stop-motion animator and monster.

The concept came from the notion that a horror film might just be a safe bet commercially.

“I was sitting around playing with titles in my head. When I came up with Basket Case right away I had such an irresistible concept: this stupid image of a malignant jack-in-the-box and whenever you open it this thing leaps out. It was a very simple visual: monster in a basket equals monster movie.”

Henenlotter and his tiny cast and crew filmed in ad-hoc fashion all over New York. They neither sought nor received permission and were once chased away from an adult emporium when the owner thought he was being secretly filmed for a TV documentary.

“That’s when you know you’re doing it real guerrilla style,” says Henenlotter.

Basket Case is a cult movie that shouldn’t have happened. The fact that it did is down to Henenlotter’s perseverance and bloody mindedness. One anecdote sums up his approach.

“Back then I was so thin that I was inside the dresser drawers that are in the brothers’ hotel room. They were hollow drawers and I’m in there with the monster’s glove on my hand sticking out of the top. I’m squinting out from the holes of the drawers themselves at a mirror across the room that I had put there. It’s not exactly glamorous but how else could we have done it? We only had two monsters made. One was a large puppet that opens its mouth. If he doesn’t open his mouth, it’s the other one. It’s just a matter of trying to do the best in any circumstances.”

Henenlotter will be appearing at Celluloid Screams next Friday. Among the other films playing over the weekend are Motivational Growth, an American indie about a talking fungus; Big Bad Wolves, the tale of a cop, a serial killer and a vengeful parent.

Celluloid Screams: www.celluloidscreams.co.uk