TALES OF THE EASILY DISTRACTED
&
SILVER SCREENINGS
Hope you’ll come on by and join the gang when they show the great MARY ASTOR some love!
Joey
The Night God Screamed (1971) – Leave Your Faith, Fear and Sanity at the Water’s Edge. Part II
“Scream – So they’ll know where to find your body!”
THE NIGHT GOD SCREAMED (1971)
Directed by Lee Madden (Angel Unchained 1970, The Manhandlers 1975), he offers us another cult hippie psycho drama feeding off the unsettling vibe and turbulence of the Charles Manson hysteria.
No matter how often I think I’ve uncovered the most obscure cult thriller, there’s always another lurking under a rock somewhere for me to feast my wide-eyed stare upon, mouth agape, and mind working over time to integrate the confluence of cultural debris that emerges like the dregs when you roil the sediment secretly settled on the bottom of the cinematic barrel. This is one such obscure film.
Starring screen beauty Jeanne Crain (Leave Her To Heaven (1945), Pinky (1949), A Letter to Three Wives (1949). The Tattered Dress (1957).
Who probably would have rather been given a better role and script, plays the frail and persecuted Fanny Pierce. Alex Nicol plays Fanny’s husband, the man in search of his own prosperous church in a better neighborhood. Preacher Willis Pierce (How could we ever forget Nicol’s wonderfully grimy, pathetic, and bizarre character Mickey in 1958s The Screaming Skull, or his dizzying performance as the drunken loser husband Jay Fowler in Look in Any Window 1961) No… he’s gotten to play a man’s man plenty, but he is sort of a victim magnet.
Dan Spelling plays the bourgeois Judge Coogan’s son and the irritatingly preppy Peter. Barbara Hancock plays sister Nancy Coogan, Dawn Cleary plays sister Sharon, and very busy actor and stuntman Gary Morgan plays little brother Jimmy.
The Night God Screamed opens with a foreboding shape floating as if gliding on top of water, through the eerie sylvan landscape wearing a monk’s robe, his large, draped cowl-like hood obscuring the man’s face altogether. He grips an arcane cruciform staff. He approaches a small pond inhabited by the frolicking free love rejects, society’s much-reviled flower children of the ’60s & ’70s sub-subculture. In other words, as South Park’s irreverent and outrageous Eric Cartman would say, ‘dirty hippies’ have lots of random sex and get high.
The pervasive cut-off tone reveals that they belong to a Manson-esque cult, which is led by the vitriolic Billy Joe Harlan, a fanatical cult leader who baptizes a few followers and then proceeds to spout a trippy fire and brimstone rant, his own distorted anti-socially virulent version of the Gospel. Much like Manson, his rhetoric engenders a lot of animosity toward the establishment, law enforcement, or, if you will, ‘pigs’, citizens, squares, and anybody who doesn’t see the world through Billy Joe’s lens.
Billy Joe is a violent sociopath who commands his fledgling minions to destroy any phony preachers, combat pigs, and try to bring his new version of the Gospel to the youth of America.
Hung up on how Christ was betrayed, he riles his flock of murderous flower children to manifest the power to punish those who do not follow his gospel. To make an example of the dangers of dissension and betrayal, he chooses a young girl who has refused to be baptized. And so he gives the word to his faceless, hooded angel of death named ‘The Atoner’ to drown her in front of the flock.
“They was all just a bunch of sinners, Lord, fighting and bothering each other…But I saved them, Lord! I showed them that using dope was the way to turn on to You!”
“We got trouble! The Heat won’t leave us alone! They want to bust us for being hooked on you! Them pigs is watching us, Lord…they don’t dig our kinda thing!”
As this soldier of God, known as THE ATONER, executes the young girl in front of the mindless youth, the rest of the nasty flock watches without doing a single thing to help the poor girl as she is submerged under the baptismal waters, causing her to drown.
The film cuts away to a scene where the wife and good Christian Fanny Pierce (Jeanne Crain) is bringing groceries to the mission where her preacher husband (Alex Nicol) is feeding a hungry collection of bums and down-and-outers. Right before she can make it inside with her bag of groceries, a very unsavory bum with quite an unattractive tongue, mugs her for the brown paper bag of food, leaving her standing ironically empty-handed and assaulted right outside the very soup kitchen where she and her husband have been trying to bring the good works of Jesus to these poor destitute men.
Fanny starts to have her own crisis of faith and becomes disillusioned with her husband and his mission. Preacher Willis Pierce appears more worried about the loss of the groceries than concerned for his own wife’s safety. He possesses a resolute patriarchal hubris with his grandiose dreams of bringing the gospel to his people, much like Billy Joe, yet not imbued with vengeful and malevolent fortitude.
Willis wants to build a sizable church in ‘better areas of town’, which would mean more money, more offerings, and more notoriety to his name. This is the kind of man Billy Joe despises and is on a crusade to annihilate with his cult of venomous sycophants.
Fanny tells Willis, “God isn’t going to make our house payment!”
In a ridiculous gesture, Willis’s scheme is to erect his new mammoth wooden cross at the revival meeting he plans on holding later that night. He believes that this will help bring in enough cash for ‘offerings’ to start up his new church. So, without consulting Fanny, Willis spends an enormous amount of money on the large, ludicrously enormous artifact that symbolizes Jesus’ sacrifice but smacks of Preacher Willis’ own egoism. He has used all their savings on this religious ‘manstrosity’, that he will erect in the revival hall, which he has rented in a more affluent part of town.
As they haul the large wooden totem across the countryside on top of their old truck, the tension between Fanny and Willis grows. Fanny tells Willis that she’s sacrificed over twenty-five years of her life in service to his cause. Willis tries to convince her that the giant cross will be their ‘meal ticket.’
While stopping at a gas station, Billy Joe and one of his religious biker culties Izzy (Richard Smedley Brain of Blood, The Abductors 1972, The Naughty Stewardesses 1975 ) espy the Pierces and their truck with the cross-tied on top and pull in alongside them with their motorcycle. It’s here that sets forth the moment of confrontation with fate, and the narrative’s tragic and violent relinquishment of faith sparks.
Billy Joe begins to question Preacher Willis, fascinated with his sizable wooden cross, and wants to know what he plans to do with it, asking about the plans for the revival meeting.
It is a moment that points out the deliberate contrary notions of religion while simultaneously forging an ironic relationship between the extreme zeal and the unfettered fanaticism of the two self-styled evangelists.
Willis is prideful and enthusiastically offers his fund-raising motivations for his ‘mission’. Billy Joe begins to formulate his vexation and sets out to dispense Willis with his wrath for being a false and ‘plastic prophet’. As the Pierces continue on their road trip to the revival meeting, Billy Joe summons his nefarious apostles and unleashes his craving to destroy Preacher Willis.
“We’re going to a revival meeting tonight… We’re going on a crusade! Just you, and me, Izzy… And the Atoner!”
Preacher Willis gives his sermon at the College Lecture Hall. Unfortunately, the congregation does not bestow upon him the funds needed for his plans to build his church in a ‘good’ neighborhood. After the sermon, Fanny and Willis’ assistant Paul go outside, leaving Willis alone in the revival hall.
In a scene that is quite disturbing, as the events happen mostly in an utter bluish darkness or diverted to the realm off camera, the cult attacks Willis. They are draped in shadow. Billy Joe begins to persecute Willis, pronouncing him a ‘ false prophet’ and demanding that he be put to death. And so while Billy Joe’s followers restrain and torture poor Willis, the Atoner slowly and painfully nails Willis to his own mundanely magnificent cross.
Fanny is startled by the screams of her husband, who is crying out in agony. She comes back inside the hall, but shrouds herself in the darkness, afraid for her own life, as he cries, “Fanny, Help me, For God’s sake, Help me.” She remains motionless, doing nothing to help him; he is left to die alone, now a Christ-figure of the film.
The scene switches to a courtroom, where Billy Joe and his cult followers are all on trial for the murder of Willis Pierce. Judge Coogan pronounces a death sentence on the hippie messiah. Billy Joe explodes into a tirade.
“You son of a bitch! You DUMB son of a bitch! YOU’RE MAKING ME A MARTYR! AHAHAHAHAHA!”
While Billy Joe is convicted and sentenced to death, the remaining cult members encircle and besiege Fanny, vowing revenge for Billy Joe. Fanny, who was already starting to devolve in her encumbered world, now anguished with guilt for not having helped her husband Willis in his moment of horrific need, wanders away in a somnolent haze.
She remains in this state of dissociation for the rest of the film. The judge hires Fanny as a sort of matron to help with his two sons and teenage daughters, who need to be kept in line, shown morals, and keep from acting too wild while their parents go away on a weekend vacation. The Judge grounds the kids and makes them stay in the house with Fanny, who is still wholly uptight and out of her mind with guilt over her husband’s brutal death.
This breathes even more agitation into the film, which is saturated with male hubris and female hysteria. The archetypal hysterical woman lives once again in the embodiment of Fanny Pierce.
On the way to bringing Fanny to his house for the weekend, the Judge dismisses her worries about the two hippies on motorcycles who seem to be following them and then goes on to instill some social relevance in the bigger picture. “Those kids, like the ones who murdered your husband… they come from broken homes… poor education… they’re just dropouts! Not like ‘my’ kids!”
Of course, we are to understand that this is a cue of foreboding irony, reflexive and dilating, as Fanny is charged to take care of the Judges adult teens, who inadvertently become mixed up in the nightmare, as the Atoner and remaining worshipers take siege of the household and terrorize Fanny and the teenagers. Fanny becomes even more unhinged, amidst an ensemble of entitled youths who are the binary figures of the film’s contemporary youth culture. One set of outliers rebelling against a system that reviles them, and the other is just as combative and anti-social, yet given the opportunities to reflect their personal freedoms because of affluence and social capital. Dan Spelling as Peter Coogan, the judge’s eldest son, is a bit of a social superior, a quiet sociopathic teen whose poison is brewing under the surface of his perfectly pressed pants and yuppie tennis sweater.
From The Vault: Lonelyhearts (1958)
“SOME WIVES CHEAT BECAUSE THEIR HUSBANDS DO…AND SOME BECAUSE THEY’RE JUST NO GOOD!”
LONELYHEARTS (1958)
Directed by Vincent J. Donehue Lonelyhearts is a compelling look at loneliness, human frailty often ugly and pathetic, infused with a wry cynicism yet underpinned with an air of redemption. Considered to be a bit of Noir, the milieu of the Newspaper room, the darkened city with it’s sordid inhabitants mulling about, and a man who is not quite what he appears to be has many of the tidings of a good noir, but I would say this film falls more into the genre of psychological melodrama. Based on Nathanael West’s (Day of the Locust) novel ‘Miss Lonelyhearts.’ and penned for the screen by producer/writer Dore Schary.
Montgomery Clift  plays Adam White, a young writer hiding the truth about his childhood in the orphanage from his devoted girl Justy Sargeant played by the lovely (Dolores Hart).
Adam is hired by The Chronicle’s harshly cynical Editor William Shrike played as only the gruff and unceremoniously sexy Robert Ryan can pull off , to be the exacting voice and conscience behind the “Miss Lonelyhearts”column for the paper. Myrna Loy plays a sympathetic and sad character as Shrike’s wife Florence who has fallen from grace in her husbands eyes, due to a prior indiscretion, something that Shrike continues to punish her for years later. The scenes between Loy and Ryan are captivating.
The film’s dialogue is outstanding, as it plunges you into a dark night of the soul, while Shrike maliciously tries to teach his moral apprentice the bitter truth about life and what really lies behind the assortment of needy folk who reach out for advice. The wonderful stage actress Maureen Stapleton received a nomination for an Academy Award for her dramatic portrayal of the very desperate and troubled Fay Doyle, in her first screen role. Equally commanding is character actor Frank Maxwell as Fay’s frustrated, crippled husband who loves his wife but hasn’t been able to make love to her in years.
Shrike’s relentless determination to wear away the selfless and compassionate exterior of young Adam White and lay bare his failings as well as disarm him is like watching two boxers fight with their wits as Montgomery Clift’s Adam is so deft at maneuvering with his vastly layered, always intelligent and sensitively nuanced performance as an imperfect man struggling to be a good man. His altruistic ideals are blown to bits as he delves into the lives of the people who write in for help only to discover that he too a tortured soul in need of saving and self reflection.
West’s novel reveals Adam White’s character as even more of a Christ like Archetype who suffers and must bear the weight of everyone else’s sins. Montgomery Clift, one of the finest actors tragically taken away from us way too soon, is always so compelling to watch, and while others are huge fans and rightfully so, of James Dean, I myself remain a die hard Monty Clift worshiper.
I do feel that the film leans too heavily toward demonizing woman as ‘tramps’ a word that comes up several times during the course of the film. But the performances, dialogue and mood of the piece are just too good to miss.
Also co-starring Onslow Stevens (Angel On My Shoulder 1946, Them 1954) as Mr. Lassiter, Adams’ father now in jail for murdering his adulterous wife. Mike Kellin and Jackie Coogan (Uncle Fester) as fellow newspaper men Frank Goldsmith and the jaded Ned Gates. And Frank Overton who plays Justy’s kindly father.
Florence Shrike: Stop making fun of me
William: I’m not making fun of you I speak truth are your delicate ears grown cold"¦ You my love I see my youth, so I cherish you.
Florence: You want some milk?
William: For the stomach dissolving in alcohol (he touches her face) how tender of you.
Florence: Stop talking to me that way! Stop humiliating me"¦ (screeches)STOP!!!! Why don’t you finish it off. In gods name tell me it’s over, don’t do this to me.
William: May I speak"¦ you haven’t answered my question
Florence: If you can’t forgive me why do we go on"¦ why?
William: Cause I too am a mourner, an incorrigible mourner who sits at the grave. You mourn too Florence, You’re my wife but also the widow of our early romance. You wear your gay plumage hoping one day for the resurrection that you may greet it with the freshness of a bride.
Florence: And what do you hope for?
William: Peace. For just one day when I forget the picture of a young wife
Florence: That was ten years ago, ten years"¦.
William: What’s a normal sentence for adultery?
Florence: I was alone, I was drunk, You had betrayed me so many times
William: Ah, evening the score.
Florence: It wasn’t that
You can always reach out to me if you’re ever lonely dear hearts- Yours forever MonsterGirl
Coming Soon to The Last Drive-In
Coming very soon – The Night God Screamed (1971) Part II of ‘Leave Your Faith, Fear and Sanity at the Water’s Edge’ Starring Jeanne Crain.
The Electrical Secrets of Kenneth Strickfaden: or as Harry Goldman’s book title goes-“Dr. Frankenstein’s Electrician”
Bunny Lake is Missing (1965) & Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964): Otto Preminger/Bryan Forbes – ‘A Conspiracy of Madness.’
No Way To Treat a Lady 1968 & Man On a Swing 1974: All the World’s a Stage: ‘Of Madness, Lipstick and ESP.’
And much much more from the clip joint, Hysterical Woman of the Week, Trailers to keep the Boogeyman away, Postcards From Shadowland and From The Vault!!!!
See ya soon-MonsterGirl
A Trailer a Day Keeps the Boogeyman Away! Dracula’s Daughter (1936)
“She gives you that weird feeling!”
DRACULA’S DAUGHTER 1936
One of the truly great classic horror films packed with atmosphere and a Gothic undercurrent of sensuality Dracula’s Daughter directed by Lambert Hillyer (The Invisible Ray 1936, Convict’s Code 1939) stars Gloria Holden as the imposing Contessa Marya Zeleska and Edward Van Sloan who reprises his role as Professor Van Helsing. Irving Pichel plays the menacing Sandor and Otto Kruger is Doctor Jeffrey Garth, Marguerite Churchill is Janet Blake, and Nan Grey is the bewildered Lili, also co-starring Hedda Hopper as Lady Esme Hammond. Jack P. Pierce did the special make up effects and Vera West was responsible for the fabulous wardrobe.
Based on Bram Stoker’s story, ‘Dracula’s Guest’ this film is an unsung sequel to the 1931 Universal classic starring Bela Lugosi.
Dracula’s Daughter takes up where Dracula ends off, opening within the walls of the dark and somber mansion.
The mysterious Countess Marya Zaleska is indeed Dracula’s daughter, she is faithfully accompanied by her attendant Sandor. They burn her vampiric father’s body during a Black Mass. Though Dracula has been reduced to ashes, Zaleska is is still not free of her father’s curse. She is still bewitched with his blood lust, and a sexual longing, which is only hinted at as an artistic murmur, yet the story never quite rhapsodizes the true nature of her sapphic proclivities.
At first her gaze is set on the beautiful blonde streetwalker Lily, who is hired as a model, but soon after Lili discovers the secret of this curious and enigmatic woman who wants the young girl to do more than merely pose for her. The scene where Zaleska hypnotizes Lili is enthralling. ‘Do you like jewels Lili? These are very old and very beautiful.’
Zaleska reaches out for help from a psychoanalyst Doctor Jeffrey Garth who she feels might be able to help with her unholy cravings. Zaleska becomes obsessed with Garth, and she eventually kidnaps his assistant and fiancée Janet Blake who is taken to Dracula’s Castle in Transylvania where she is held hostage as bait to get Garth to come to her.
Holden who has a dark, unearthly and stunningly swarthy looks, works well as the believable bloodline to Lugosi’s eastern European mannerisms that imbued the classic character of Universal’s Dracula. Dracula’s Daughter is quite an unsung classic, and should be seen by all fans of the genre, it’s a jewel, very old and very beautiful!
Your very old and very beautiful-MonsterGirl
the clip joint: Sunset Boulevard (1950)”I am big… It’s the pictures’ that got small”
SUNSET BOULEVARD 1950
Joe Gillis: You’re Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big.
Norma Desmond: I ‘am’ big. It’s the ‘pictures’ that got small.
Director Billy Wilder’s gritty and gothic noir starring Gloria Swanson as the iconic faded starlet, Norma Desmond and William Holden as Joe Gillis. Co-starring Erich Von Stroheim as the faithful Max Von Mayerling.
Set in 1950s Hollywood the story surrounds the outrageously batty recluse Norma Desmond, goddess of the silent-screen living in a world of self-delusion within the walls of her decaying Sunset Boulevard mansion. Her only companion is her ex-husband turned butler Max who idolizes her, once having been her director when she was a star.
Norma’s mania creates the grand dreams of a comeback to pictures. One day Joe Gillis stumbles onto her property needing a mechanic Norma first mistakes Joe as an employee of the funeral home who’ve been sent to take care of her old chimpanzee who has just passed away. Joe a hack-writer becomes Norma’s lover, but soon gets entangled in a web of madness and murder.
See you round the Boulevard-MonsterGirl
the clip joint: Olga’s House of Shame (1964)
“Only a fiend could do what Olga did to twelve young girls!”
“An unspeakable nightmare of eroticism!”
OLGA’S HOUSE OF SHAME (1964)
Brought to you by the fabulous folks at Something Weird Video, Directed by Joseph P. Mawra or as he’s also known
José M. González-Prieto | J. P. Mawra | J.P. Mawra | Joseph A. Mawra | J. Prieto | Jose G. Prieto | Joseph G. Prieto | Jose Prieto | José Prieto | Carlo Scappine ????? Geesh!
Olga’s House of Shame tells the story of a brothel matron Olga (Audrey Campbell) who gets runs out of New York City so she takes her show on the road to a deserted ore mine where she can run her criminal empire and prostitution ring in peace.
Followed up by Olga’s Dance Hall Girls
Hey how’d this poster get in here? ⇧
Here’s the scene where the girl just ‘doesn’t know!‘
Never shameful but always playfully yours-MonsterGirl
Postcards From Shadowland no. 9
MonsterGirl Asks Frank Henenlotter: ⤠A Valentine Homage To An Un-Conjoined Aberration, the Little Impish Wicker Man, ‘Belial’
MONSTERGIRL ASKS: FRANK HENENLOTTER
The Writer/Director who brought us the body as ‘Other.’
Book: Marco Polo, The Travels of Marco Polo: With 25 Illustrations from a Fourteenth-century Manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris (New York: The Orion Press, 1958)Written and illuminated in Paris, ca. 1410"“12
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 2810, fols. 29v, 194v, 195v
MONSTERGIRL’S QUESTION-
Frank, this is a simple question that I’ve been very curious about for a long time, what is truly at the root of your choosing the name Belial for your most iconic monstrous personification of body horror in your classic film Basket Case from 1982. What tripped the wires in your head to name Duane Bradley’s brother in a wicker basket – Belial ?
Is it founded in the Hebrew proverb adam beli-yaal meaning ‘a worthless man’, because Belial was discarded by the doctors and his father as a non entity with no legitimatized form, also the name is based in Jewish and Christian texts referring to a demon?
Though Belial was more a product of physiological anomaly, rather than spawn from hell nor mutant. You can’t blame a guy for trying to get a little nookie"¦
He’s almost analogous to the mythic Blemmyae who’s heads were in their chests.
Or were you inspired by John Milton’s Paradise Lost"¦? Was he, yet a metaphor for the insatiable vice of desire?
John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I
BELIAL came last, than whom a Spirit more lewd
Fell not from Heaven, or more gross to love
Vice for it self: To him no Temple stood
Or Altar smoak’d; yet who more oft then hee
In Temples and at Altars, when the Priest
Turns Atheist, as did ELY’S Sons, who fill’d
With lust and violence the house of God.
In Courts and Palaces he also Reigns
And in luxurious Cities, where the noyse
Of riot ascends above their loftiest Towers,
And injury and outrage: And when Night
Darkens the Streets, then wander forth the Sons
Of BELIAL, flown with insolence and wine.
Witness the Streets of SODOM, and that night
In GIBEAH, when hospitable Dores
Yielded their Matrons to prevent worse rape.
FRANK HENENLOTTER’S ANSWER-
That’s an easy one. The father, appalled by the creature and full of hatred after his wife died giving birth, named him after the devil. Or one of Satan's demons. I've heard Belial used as a synonym for Satan, and also as one of the many fallen angels. Either or, doesn't matter to me. And I didn't want something too obvious. I mean, calling him Beelzebub would've just been silly. Also, way back when, I looked up Belial in some reference book and it said the name translated as "ungodly." Which certainly fit the look of the creature. More than that, however, I like the SOUND of the name. If you didn’t know the Biblical reference, the name sounds rather friendly: “Hi, Mr. Bradley! Can Belial come out and play today?” And though grotesque, I've always thought Belial looked friendly. At least when his mouth is closed.
Writer/ Director/ Historian/ Film Preservationist Frank Henenlotter is a New Yorker like me. He spent his youth absorbing the low-budget exploitation gems that were offered for those of us who wanted something beyond the mainstream. He frequented the soiled seated grindhouse theaters on 42nd Street, now over run with the dis-associative glitz of Disney. 42nd Street used to showcase the wonderful underbelly of cinema, the cheap and psychotronic films that created a whole new landscape to wander around, while the artistic self is just beginning to emerge and the hormones are raging. So Frank Henenlotter grabbed some 8mm film and went off to find himself.
In 1972 his 16mm B&W short called Slash of the Knife played at the same 42nd Street midnight show with John Water’s Pink Flamingos 1972.
Henenlotter had a brief sojourn in advertising as a graphic designer and commercial artist before he immersed himself in his fantastical film career, known for his outrageously unconventional, outré quirky,darkly humorous, seamy atmospheres, and literally bloody good fun with his off center story lines.
It’s what make his films so unique. I discovered him in 1982 when I went to my local video store looking for something different to watch and stumbled upon a peculiar and intriguing VHS cover called Basket Case. So I rented it and went home ready to invest myself in the emergence of the 80s horror genre. Of course I purchase my own copy and still have the original VHS treasure.
I had been weened on Universal classic horrors, Creature Features, Fright Night on WOR Channel 9, campy sci-fi gems of the 50s with giant bugs and shrinking men, mad scientists, Boris and Bela, and then the 70s came and the cinematic sky darkened, the atmosphere closed inward with a collection of starkly creepy low budget films that left my imagination and my tender psyche altered.
But here it was the early 80s and I wanted to embrace the new horrors. So when I sat quietly in my room and witnessed something so creative, so brutally funny and honest in it’s inventiveness, that I fell in love. Call it sleazy, call it gory, splatter, scuzzy, violent, tasteless, grotesque, excessively tacky, twisted in it’s vision, genres are so inter- textually linked that labeling them at this point is futile. Ultimately Henenlotter’s work has a splendidly unsettling lacquer and spirit.
What I experienced was a modern day fairytale about two outsiders. Conjoined Siamese Twin brothers Duane (Kevin Van Hentenryck) and Belial Bradley who take up residence in room number 7 at a seedy 42nd Street Hotel in NYC. Like the pathos evoked from Frankenstein’s monster and his ‘otherness’ The Siamese Twins, whose at times tumultuous brotherly bond set them off on a mission to punish the hack doctors who surgically annihilated their physical bond. The film made me laugh, shiver, empathize and adore that little guy in the wicker basket named Belial. Who wasn’t a demon or devil or mutant, just a little guy with authentic separation anxiety.
The film co-starred Terri Susan Smith as Sharon, Beverly Bonner as Casey, Robert Vogel as the Hotel Manager and Diane Browne, Lloyd Pace and Bill Freeman as Doctors-Judith Kutter, Harold Needleman and Julius Lifflander. Ruth Neuman plays the boys’ aunt. Richard Pierce plays their father, their mother having died in child birth.
The low key cinematography was done by Bruce Torbet, who also worked on Brain Damage. Frank Henenlotter was responsible for the film editing himself. Editing is key. And the very special Makeup department staff was John Caglione Jr, Kevin Haney, and Ugis Nigals as special makeup effects artists, Ken Clark did hair and make up.
VHS WASTELAND
Quote from Basket Case (1982)
Aunt: [Reading to young Duane and Belial] “Art thou afraid? No monster, not I. Be not afraid, for the isle is full of sights, sounds, and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments will humm about mine ears. And sometimes voices, that if I then had waked after long sleep would let me sleep again. And then in dreaming, the clouds we thought would open and show riches ready to drop upon me, that when I waked, I cried to dream again…”
It’s no wonder the film has attained such cult status. I wound up renting Brain Damage which was released in 1988. Again the premise was so unique and freaky that it made me a fan of Frank Henenlotter for life. Brain Damage I think is the more queasy, darker and provocatively satirical film with it’s skid row orientation, but I’ll always love best, the gory fable that is Basket Case.
Brain Damage, again working almost as a modern fairytale is an allegory about addiction. With it’s young protagonist who becomes the host to an arcane and shiftily phallic parasite that feeds on human brains.
Frank went on to release Frankenhooker in 1990 ‘A terrifying tale of sluts and bolts’, and a two sequels to Basket Case, the last being 1992’s Basket Case 3: The Progeny. This last film revolves around Belial’s romance with female freak Eve, and the Bradley boys taking a trip to Georgia in the company of other freaks and freaks rights activist Granny Ruth (jazz nightclub singer Annie Ross) to seek the help of kindly doctor Uncle Hal (Dan Biggers) who assists with Eve’s pregnancy.
In addition to his writing and directing, Henenlotter’s been a fierce advocate and film preservationist, the force behind the rescuing and re-issuing of obscure vintage 60s and 70s horror, softcore and exploitation film relics from VHS and DVD through the fabulously valuable Something Weird Video. He also has added his witty commentary to several of the releases for the company. Henenlotter was featured in the documentary film Herschell Gordon Lewis "“ The Godfather of Gore and narrated the film on the 2010 FanTasia. In issue #304 of Fangoria Magazine Frank and comic artist Joshua Emerick started a Basket Case comic strip which offers a three panel piece in each issue.
Personal Quote:
[on being labeled a horror film director] –
“I never felt that I made “horror films.” I always felt that I made exploitation films. Exploitation films have an attitude more than anything else — an attitude that you don’t find with mainstream Hollywood productions. They’re a little ruder, a little raunchier, they deal with material people don’t usually touch on, whether it’s sex or drugs or rock and roll.” – Frank Henenlotter
“I think eccentrically and I’m a strange little person.” –Frank Henenlotter
From VideoHounds Cult Flicks and Trash Picks -edited by Carol Schwartz on Page 234 The Hound Salutes Frank Henenlotter-
“Since then, Frank Henenlotter has come to be know mainly as a film historian and curator of sorts- but as you may expect, he’s done it in a rather odd fashion. Henenlotter was an expert on cult flicks and trash pick long before books were being written about them. He was rightfully chosen as the premiere interview presented in the landmark volume Incredibly Strange Films, despite the fact that he’d only made one official feature at the time, base solely on the depth of his knowledge. During the 1990s he began helping Mike Vraney of Something Weird Video unearth and release dozens of mind -bending exploitation films-many of them thought long lost-for a series that became known as “Frank Henenlotter’s Sexy Shockers from the Vault” Thanks to preservationists Frank and Mike generations to come will be able to enjoy vintage sleaze like Monster of Camp Sunshine, Bloody Pit of Horror, The Curious Dr. Hump and Olga’s House of Shame. In addition, Henenlotter has brought some interesting new films by young directors to the label”. – Brian Thomas
Frank Henenlotter is beloved by his fans, gracious, accessible, funny, engaged, playful and thought provokingly outrageous. And thanks to his preservation of these lost cult films, I’ve gotten to see Aroused 1966, and Rent A Girl, Satan in High Heels (1962) and so much more!
I still wish he should commission Think Geek to make a Belial plushy. If they don’t I’m just going have to run myself over to Michael’s craft store and design my own friggin puppet already… I think Belial is cute as hell. So many people agree it would be a great iconic novelty.
In closing, special thanks to you Frank. You’re a lovely, eccentrically personable guy-It’s been so wonderful to hear your thoughts on Belial’s inception. I’m with you. I never thought he looked like a monster, even with his mouth open. That’s the point right… the way we ‘otherize’ those who are different. Grotesque is in the eye of the beholder. Look how pin heads are all the rage again since American Horror Story Asylum so successfully paid it’s endearing and intensely nuanced homage to Schlitze from Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932)
A Special Happy Valentine’s Day To Frank Henenlotter, to Belial, to brother & sisterhood and to all of you genre fans, freaks and all of us ‘others’- Love Joey (Your MonsterGirl)
