Basket Case 3 – the final instalment in Frank Henenlotter’s cult trilogy – abandons the gritty horror of the original and the sequel for extreme campiness and comedy, and opinions are sharply divided on whether it works.
The movie opens several months after the events of Basket Case 2 (1990).
Duane Bradley (Kevin Van Hentenryck returning again) has spent months tied up in a straitjacket after violently sewing his brother Belial back onto his side.
Granny Ruth and the mutant family have surgically separated the brothers once again, but Duane is now completely unhinged and kept locked in a padded room.
Belial’s girlfriend, Eve, is heavily pregnant. But because local hospitals are not an option for mutated torso creatures, Granny Ruth packs the entire family into a multi-passenger school bus for a road trip to Peachtree County, Georgia, to visit a sympathetic ex-doctor (Uncle Hall, played by Dan Biggers) – who can safely deliver the children.
In one of the most infamously bizarre scenes in horror history, Granny Ruth leads the entire bus full of grotesque monsters in an upbeat, harmonious sing-along of the song Personality while driving down the highway.
Eve successfully gives birth to a litter of 12 identical mutant baby torsos.
Chaos erupts when two local, corrupt sheriff’s deputies – Bailey (Jackson Faw) and Baxter (Jim Grimshaw) – break into the house, shoot and kill Eve, and kidnap the mutant babies, intending to sell them to a freak show.
Belial goes on a hyper-violent rampage to rescue his offspring, while an escaped Duane tries to navigate the local town.
For the film’s chaotic climax, mutant inventor Little Hal (Jim O’Doherty) builds Belial a giant, weaponised, robotic exo-suit which Belial uses to smash through the local police station, tearing deputies apart to reclaim his children.
With Duane’s sanity completely gone – and in a twisted parallel to the original film – he tries to force a local woman named Opal (Tina Louise Hilbert) to become part of his “family.”
A final, messy showdown permanently seals the tragic, absurd fate of the Bradley brothers.
Duane Bradley
Kevin Van Hentenryck Granny Ruth
Annie Ross Sheriff
Gil Roper Uncle Hal
Dan Biggers Little Hal
Jim O’Doherty Opal
Tina Louise Hilbert Twin #1
Carla Morrell Twin #2
Carmen Morrell Bailey
Jackson Faw Baxter
Jim Grimshaw Brody
David Milford Officer Brennan
Tim Ware Banner
Jerry G. White Fast Food Manager
Beverly Bonner Elmo
Rick Smailes Renaldo
Jeff Winter David
Berle Bowken Eve
Denise Coop Basil
James Derrick Mage Arthur
Donna Mage Mouse Face
Dean Hines Tellaster
Larry Hurd Cedrick
Cedrick Manuck Pearl
Diane Oxford Brainiac
Wendy Parker Simon
Pierre Perea Half Moon
Fernando Gonzales Mackeral
Benny Phipps Ellice
Heather Place Toothy
Marty Polack Pinhead
Charles Portney Frederick
James Scott Leon
Bill Scully
Director
Frank Henenlotter
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Duane Bradley (Kevin Van Hentenryck returning again) has spent months tied up in a straitjacket after violently sewing his brother Belial back onto his side.
For the film’s chaotic climax, mutant inventor Little Hal (Jim O’Doherty) builds Belial a giant, weaponised, robotic exo-suit which Belial uses to smash through the local police station, tearing deputies apart to reclaim his children.
