Encore plus de jeux dans le Humble THQ Bundle

Depuis le 30 novembre dernier, l'éditeur THQ, dont on ne présente plus les difficultés financières, nous a concoctés un Humble THQ Bundle plutôt alléchant puisqu'il contient pas moins de sept jeux (voir notre news d'annonce ici).

Je devrais plutôt dire "contenait" puisque THQ vient d'ajouter du contenu supplémentaire à ce pack. Fort de près de 600 000 copies écoulées en début de semaine, voilà que les chiffres de vente ne vont plus tarder à passer le cap des 700 000. De quoi redonner des couleurs à THQ mais, visiblement, ça ne leur suffit pas. Du coup, ils ont tout simplement décidé d'ajouter Titan Quest à l'offre ainsi que le DLC Path to War destiné à Red Faction : Armageddon. Notez qu'il faut proposer un prix supérieur à 5,61 dollars pour bénéficier des ces deux jeux en plus des sept titres de base inclus dans le bundle.

Il ne reste plus que 5 jours pour s'offrir ce pack conséquent contenant des titres de qualité.

E3 La next-gen est aussi à l'E3 avec l'Unreal Engine 4

Teasé en début d'E3, l'Unreal Engine 4 nous avait montré une petite seconde de vidéo et de rares images. On y apercevait rapidement, un chevalier démoniaque jouant avec une grosse masse. Aujourd'hui, le site Gametrailersno nous montre enfin la vidéo complète. On y voit le réveil de ce même monsieur, plutôt grincheux, et en parallèle celui d'un volcan. Cette petite séquence est l'occasion de montrer ce que le moteur a dans le ventre, que ce soit sur la profondeur de plan, les jeux de lumière ou la gestion des particules.



L'E3 est l'occasion pour les studios d’étaler leurs prouesses technologiques et de les promouvoir envers de hypothétiques futurs acheteurs. Square-Enix en avait fait de même il y a quelques jours avec une très jolie vidéo de son Luminous Engine. La course au photo-réalisme continue donc, même si les bonds technologiques se font de moins en moins impressionnants. Tout de même, ces moteurs ne seront exploitables que sur la prochaine génération de consoles. La WiiU en étant déjà exclue, car pas assez puissante, comme l'ont rappelé les responsables d'Epic. C'est donc sur PlayStation 3 et Xbox 360 que s'exprimera l'Unreal Engine 4, et on espère qu'en plus d'apporter de beaux graphismes, il permettra surtout de vraies innovations en terme de gameplay. Mais ça, c'est une autre histoire...

· Voir la vidéo de l'Unreal Engine
· Voir la vidéo du Luminous Engine

E3 le nouveau Star Wars sera le 1313

Avec l'E3 approchant, les annonces se font de plus en plus nombreuses. Lucas Arts en profite donc pour officialiser une rumeur concernant un nouveau jeu Star Wars en préparation. Il s'agit de Star Wars 1313, qui se dévoile timidement au travers d'une petite image.

1313 fait référence à une société secrète nommée Level 1313 et se situant dans les profondeurs de la planète Coruscant. C'est dans cette ambiance que le héros, chasseur de prime de métier, devra y accomplir diverses missions. Jeu d'action/aventure à la troisième personne, Star Wars 1313 ne donne pas plus d'informations à son sujet. Il faudra attendre l'E3 pour connaitre les plateformes qui l'accueilleront et espérer obtenir une date de sortie.



· Voir l'artwork
· Forum Star Wars 1313

ST2012 - GC Un nouveau trailer pour Star Trek

Quand on aime le space opera, on connait sur le bout des doigts tous les épisodes de Star Trek ainsi que les répliques cultes de Monsieur Spock et du Capitaine Kirk. On attend également avec impatience le prochain jeu Star Trek, sobrement nommé... Star Trek. Pour les faire patienter, Namco Bandai les calme avec un tout nouveau trailer dévoilé à l'occasion de la Gamescom.



Star Trek devrait sortir dans les premiers mois de 2013 sur PC, PS3 et Xbox 360.

· Voir et télécharger le trailer de Star Trek (24 Mo)
· Forum Star Trek

“maniac” goes to cannes “the last horror film”

It’s said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but when you’re imitating yourself, what should that be called? Resting on your laurels? Beating a dead horse? In the case of the 1982 reworking of “Maniac” known as “The Last Horror Film” such pejoratives are probably undeserved, and we’ll settle, I think, on calling it a transplant—more specifically, a rather successful transatlantic transplant of a damn good slasher film. Not so much a sequel or even a rip-off as maybe a companion piece. Read on and all will be explained—

Most slasher fans will acknowledge that William Lustig’s “Maniac” was undoubtedly one of the genre’s finest early-80s offerings(a time period with an embarrassment of riches to choose from, so that’s no small feat), featuring as it did two standout elements, the first being the late Joe Spinell’s absolute tour-de-force performance in the lead role. He absolutely oozed creepiness and patheticness at the same time, and delivered one of the signature performances in horror movie history. Spinell didn’t even seem like he was acting, truth be told—he absolutely inhabited his character, to the point where I’m not sure I’d want to be the guy’s neighbor in real life. He wasn’t playing a lonely, pathetic psycho—I’ll be goddamned if it didn’t seem like he was a lonely, pathetic psycho. Chillingly believable stuff from start to finish, and in a sane and just world he probably would have won an Oscar for it.

The other star of the film was Tom Savini’s outstanding gore effects, limited as they were—particularly the classic ending scene. This was the era when Savini was really coming into his own and earning his legendary reputation with every project he worked on.? Gut-wrenching stuff—-literally. What this guy could do with “real” effects and a shoestring budget still puts today’s CGI “wizards” with millions of dollar as their disposal to shame.

Sadly, Savini wasn’t a part of “The Last Horror Film” (aka “Fanatic,” a title that tied it in even closer with its—ahem!—”source material,” probably even a bit too close as it was little more than a glaringly obvious attempt to paint the film as a type of “Maniac 2″—which, okay, in many respects it is, but since the original “Maniac” died, it’s rather ridiculous to paint this as a “pure” sequel — not that death ever stopped the Jasons, Michaels, and Freddies of the world), nor, unfortunately, was director William Lustig, who wove an atmosphere of tension and inner psychic decay with his expert helmsmanship, in truth TLHF is more dependent than ever on Spinell to carry the show himself, teamed as he was with relative newcomer David Winters in the director’s chair and, generally speaking, less-experienced folks behind the camera in all respects. Without Lustig and Savini around, then, “The Last Horror Film” gives Spinell a chance to prove how much of the success of “Maniac” was down to him alone and how much was due to Lustig, Savini, et. al.

As it turns out, Spinell answers that question forcefully and with supreme confidence, turning in another fine performance as, for all intents and purposes, the same character, albeit with a couple of fun twists.

This time around, Spinells’ non-”Maniac” maniac is a New York cabbie named Vinny Durand, a mama’s boy who still lives at home (go figure) and is the sole inhabitant of the absolute bottom of his own social barrel, a guy who’s such a loner and a putz that even the other geeks at the local comic book store give him shit. Vinny’s a bit of a dreamer, you see, and his mind is always at the movies. He lives, eats, breathes and sleeps celluloid, and has big dreams of making his own films a reality. And the star of all his filmic fantasies is the lovely Jenna Bates? (Carlone Munro, Spinell’s co-star from “Maniac,” providing another strong tie to Lustig’s , errrmmmm, let’s call it “original,” even if this isn’t a sequel, strictly speaking). Vinny’s bout to prove all those doubters and finger-pointers wrong, however—he’s been saving his pennies (living at home is cheap, after all) and is headed to the Cannes film festival, where he intends to win the attentions, and the heart, of the woman of his dreams and cast her as the leading lady in the horror film he’s got swirling around in his head (no evidence of an actual plot on paper on Vinny’s part is ever offered).

Once at Cannes, Vinny is summarily rebuffed in all his attempts to get at Ms. Bates or even any of her handlers, and decides that if he can’t get her to work with him by using conventional means, he’ll simply eliminate anyone and everyone else around her to the point where she’ll have no one else to work with — call it process of elimination, if you will — elimination of the permanent sort.

The sights and sounds of the festival are on full display here, including a guerrilla-lensed (I’m assuming) take or two of contemporary sort-of stars like Cathy Lee Crosby making their entrances into various festival venues.? Vinny’s staying in a fleabag hotel adjacent to, of course, a movie theater (that’s playing “Cannibal Holocaust”!) and quickly decks out his room to look much like his—err, not his— hovel in “Maniac,” with pin-ups on the walls of Ms. Bates, dim lighting, and sparser-than-sparse actual furnishings. The room’s got “nutcase” written all over it.

When Vinny goes into action murdering Bates’ handlers (including her love interest)and anyone else around whose work rubs him the wrong way, the killings are inevitably brutal and bloody, and while lacking the sheer panache of Savini’s “Maniac” work, they remain nonetheless effective and even semi-memorable in their own way. Needless to say, some of Vinny’s attempts to get at his leading lady border on the absurd, and when he does eventually get at her the border is even crossed, but Vinny’s not one to let an army of hangers-on and middlemen stop him, and the shots of him scaling hotel rooftops and performing various other feats of physical dexterity that would be well beyond a guy of his challenged physique are well and truly ridiculous, sure, but Spinell’s performance is so effective that he gets you to literally believe that our guy Vinny is compelled to do the near-impossible by sheer force of his demented will alone.

Vinny’s a good boy and calls home every day, of course, and he even seems to have his mom believing that he’s on the way to becoming a superstar director who has attained the services of the film industry’s most-desired starlet for his film.? It’s classic stuff, and while the live-at-home loser who will kill to fulfill his sick fantasies has been done a million times over, nobody does it quite like Spinell and it’s also, to my knowledge at least, never been done in a setting quite this exotic.

To be sure, “The Last Horror Film” lacks some of the dramatic tension and raw impact of “Maniac,” but that’s only to be expected—after all, Cannes setting aside, we’ve seen this all before. Still, everything here is done well enough that you certainly won’t mind seeing it again, and if for some reason Joe Spinell didn’t convince you the first time around that he was one of the best actors ever at playing lonely, pathetic psychopaths, seeing him do it just as well a second time should cement his argument.

“The Last Horror Film” has recently been re-released on DVD by Troma (it had been available earlier under the “Fanatic” title) as part of its fledgling “Tromasterpiece” collection. In addition to the usual nonsensical Lloyd Kaufman introduction, it features an interview with “Maniac” director William Lustig, the Buddy Giovinazzo-directed, short film “Mr. Robbie” (aka “Maniac 2″—which I guess sort of makes this “Maniac 3″),the original theatrical trailer and a collection of TV spots, an interview with the late, great Joe Spinell’s best friend, Luke Walter, and a full-length(and highly engaging) audio commentary by Walter, as well as the usual semi-absurd Troma-themed extra stuff.? Well worth your time and money, it’s a pretty impressive package to go along with what is a pretty impressive slasher flick — one that by all rights should feel a lot more redundant than it actually does.

2012-12-21-141

[Rumour] Nvidia developing x86 CPU?

This is a rumour that has surfaced and died several times, and it hasresurfaced again. However, this time, there is more evidence than usual.Over the last year or two, Nvidia have spent a lot of time and effortinto marketing stream computing. GPUs, or parallel processors, aresignificantly more powerful than their CPU counterparts. However,parallel processors can only process specific instructions, and a CPU isstill required for general processing. So, as much as Nvidia wouldconvince consumers about the benefits of GPU, there is no doubt a GPUwould be useless were it not run together with a CPU.

Recently,Nvidia reportedly presented a CPU+GPU which would make up an "Exascale machine" for 2017. AMD Fusion is all aboutthe same central idea - a GPU and a CPU on one die. Though Intel will bethe first with a GPU and a CPU on one package, they will be ondifferent dies, and the GPU will be a weak Intel IGP anyway. Now,rumours are suggesting Nvidia are keen to not be left behind by theCPU+GPU revolution, and are developing x86 CPUs.

In addition to the rumoured presentation for 2017, Doug Freedman, analyst of research firm Broadpoint AmTech, reports Nvidia has been quietly hiring former employees of Transmeta, a now defunct x86 CPU supplier.

Previously, an Nvidia acquisition of third largest x86 chipmaker, VIA, was heavily rumoured. However, Mr. Freedman now feels an internally developed solution is more likely.

"We believe Nvidia could enter the x86 business," says Doug Freedman.

Of course, designing a CPU could take years, and using the x86 architecture requires a license from giants Intel, who are not quite on the best terms with Nvidia at the moment.

The possibility of an Nvidia CPU on the market is interesting - though it would be likely that Nvidia would sell the CPU only as a CPU+GPU package on one die, rather than an individual CPU. Co-processing power of CPU+GPU being something Nvidia have talked a lot about for the future.

Reference: EETimes

“quiet nights of blood and pain” updates a classic grindhouse premise for the 21st century

The “psycho vet” story is an old staple in grindhouse and exploitation filmmaking, and we’ve covered a few of the classics in this genre on this page very blog in the year-and-change we (okay, I)’ve been at it — The Executioner Part II, Combat Shock and Deathdream spring immediately to mind.

Of course, these films and literally dozens of others were about disturbed Viet Nam vets, but given that we’re now involved in not one, but two no-end-in-sight-and-no-way-to-really-win conflicts, and have been mired down in them for a hell of a long time, it’s a wonder that more enterprising young filmmakers haven’t returned to “psycho vet” territory since it seems like it would be pretty fertile ground for them. The “theater” of war may have changed, but the basic premise really hasn’t, sadly, all that much — we’re still fighting for dubious (at best) reasons, our “volunteer” force is composed mostly of people with little or no other economic opportunity, our definition of “victory” seems to be constantly changing, the local populace wants us to get the hell out and had become the primary “enemy” we’re fighting, and the government seems to want to put the whole thing on the backburner and just have all of us out here in medialand forget about it while they keep shoveling more of our tax dollars into the bottomless pit these wars have become.

Oh, and a lot of the men and women who are fortunate enough to get out of the war(s) alive come back severely, and quite understandably, traumatized, if not outright psychologically (and sometimes even physically) broken.

Yes, friends, the United States never fucking learns, and something tells me that in 5 or 10 years’ time we’ll be having this same conversation, only then? the unlucky “winner” of our imperialistic —- uhhmmmm — “attentions” will be Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, or some combination thereof. The future’s so bright I gotta wear shades and all that.

Now, we’ve had our fair share of Afghanistan and Iraq war documentaries, to be sure, and a bunch of dramas, from the exceptional (Brian DePalma’s criminally underrated and nearly-unseen Redacted) to the drearily preachy (In The Valley Of Elah) to the insanely- fetishized -yet-disgustingly-apolitical (The Hurt Locker — wouldn’t you know it won Best Picture). But to date, we haven’t had an Iraq or Afghanistan-themed exploitation picture.

Enter Ohio-based microbudget veteran writer-director Andrew Copp, who’s given us some truly groundbreaking ultra-independent horror flicks like 1998′s The Mutilation Man and 2005′s The Atrocity Circle, to fill this glaring void.

While Copp’s earlier work has been at times almost dizzingly experimental, with Quiet Night of Blood and Pain he (apart from a couple of scenes that diverge into crazed video psychedelia) he pursues a pretty straightforward narrative — William (Loren S. Goins) is a recently-returned Iraq war vet with a severe case of PTSD due to the atrocities he’s committed (while Abu Ghraib isn’t mentioned specifically, it’s hard not to draw the conclusion that he was either there or at a similar facility due to his predilection for the kind of zip-tie “handcuffs” we’ve seen in so many of the photos from that testament to the war’s ultimate, and repulsively inhuman, folly), and now that he’s home, he’s continuing his “mission” by taking out the “traitors” and “enemies” in his hometown — anti-war activists, hippies, and other peaceniks of various stripes. He’s egged on in his crusade by his psycho brother (played by Copp himself), a veteran of the first Gulf War (you know, the one we were told “went well”).

Across town, fellow veteran Adrienne (Amanda DeLotelle, the film’s co-producer) is struggling with her own readjustment to civilian life and finds support from Viet Nam vet Ray (played by Ray Freeland) and his Veterans for Peace-type group. One night after a meeting of this support group, Adrienne is set upon by two assailants in an alley, and William, who’s “monitoring” the meeting place of the “subversive” group fends off the attackers before fleeing off into the night himself. He begins to stalk Adrienne and her friends, though, as part of his “bring the war home” pseudo-mission.

They’re not the only folks to get his attention, though — one evening he breaks into the home of some people who have a John Kerry bumpersticker on their car and gives ‘em the kind of “special treatment” he became so skilled at administering to “enemy combatants” in Iraq, and dispatches a couple of guys selling antiwar titles at their bookstore, as well. ? But the more he? keeps tabs on Adrienne and her group, the more he becomes obsessed with wiping out this supposed “fifth column” that’s right in his midst. Needless to say, what follows ain’t gonna be pretty.

If you’re new to microbudget moviemaking, Quiet Nights of Blood and Pain may not, in all honesty, be the best place to begin your education. The acting is a mixed bag — Goins is generally superb as William and elicits a sense of controlled-but-seething menace throughout, while Freeland’s characterization of Ray is pretty much rote script-reading. Somewhere in between the two polarities is? DeLotelle’s portrayal of Amanda — she has such an unaffected and minimalist approach to her “acting” (I’m guessing more due to sheer inexperience than any conscious decision-making on her part, but I suppose I could be wrong) that it’s hard to tell whether to call her performance completely unprofessional or amazingly naturalistic. Whatever the reason and whatever the cause, though, it works, so whether that’s by choice or by dint of sheer accident really doesn’t matter much in the end.

Copp is a skilled director who’s worked with 8mm, 16mm, and video before (this is SOV using a Panasonic DV-30 with a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, so it’s presented full-frame), and knows both how to compose shots and stage some pretty sold gore effects. In addition, since he wrote the script himself, he has a keen understanding of its pacing, and he does a pretty damn masterful job of alternating scenes of profoundly alienated evenings at home doing nothing with good old fashioned splatterfest-style ultraviolence — and the makeup and effects work is quite good. Not up to Hollywood standards, of course, but? part of the fun of watching this type of movie comes from seeing what the filmmakers are able to do with severely limited resources.

Needless to say, Quiet Nights of Blood and Pain never played theaters, nor was it ever going to, but it’s available on DVD either directly from coppfilms.com or at most major retailers like Amazon. It’s distributed under the auspices the good folks at Tempe Video and picture and sound quality are both pretty much perfect (again, given the inherent limitations of the flick’s production values).? For extras, there’s a look at a gallery showing of some of Copp’s artwork, and a well-made and highly informative “making-of” featurette.

Copp has stated that his goal was to make a film with a grindhouse-style sensibility updated to apply to the modern sociopolitical landscape. In that he’s succeeded quite admirably. Sure, it’s show on video instead of low-grade film stock, but the spirit of the exploitation independents is definitely alive and well here — and while it’s a bit of a tightrope act he’s set for himself in combining a “message movie” with a psycho slasher flick, he pulls it off pretty well. At times it feels a bit preachy, but as it’s antiwar message is one this reviewer agrees with, I never found the political content to be grating, nor to detract from the character-driven story that lies at the movie’s core.

Like its tagline (“He’s Back From The War,? But He Can’t Stop Killing!”), Quiet Nights of Blood and Pain is anything but flashy or terribly original, but certainly direct and earnest enough to be worthy of respect. It’s a labor of love with its birth pains in full view for all to see, and what it lacks in polish it more than makes up for in heart and integrity.

halloween horrors 2012 “paranormal activity 4″

If it’s Halloween, it must be?Saw.

Or so the saying went for the better part part of, believe it or not, a?decade. But the?Saw series is, for the time being at least, over with, and the new Halloween horror franchise is, of course, Oren Peli’s surprisingly resilient?Paranormal Activity. And why not? These things are relatively cheap to make, since no established stars are required (heck, any face you’d recognize from elsewhere would diminish the faux-reality effect these flicks are aiming for), special effects are limited to a few “big moments,” and the number of sets required are minimal, to say the least. The latest installment,?Paranormal Activity 4, is expected to gross $31 million in its opening frame, and while that represents a fairly significant decline from the $52 million opening of part three last year, it’s still enough to secure first place at the box office and pretty much guarantee a green light for part five next year, given that this thing only cost a few million bucks to get “in the can,” as the saying goes.

As for how part four fares in comparison to previous entries in the series from a non-commercial standpoint, I’d say it’s certainly not as strong as two and three were, but still delivers the goods pretty well, and most importantly it actually moves the story forward by, well — moving the story?forward, rather than embellishing upon our understanding of just what the hell is exactly going on by delving ever deeper into the past. And, as with last time around, Micah Sloat is nowhere in sight, so that’s a big plus, too.

After giving us some cursory flashback information to refresh our memories, the story gets rolling in the present day (well, okay, 2011), in the appropriately soul-dead suburban environs of Henderson, Nevada, where a bland upper-middle-class family is trying to figure out just what to make of their new neighbors across the street, a single mom (who we know to be Katie, played as always by Katie Featherston, from the previous films) and her creepy kid, Robbie ( Brady Allen —who we assume to be kidnapped baby Hunter, now grown up just a little bit). The “action,” as it were here, is transmitted via the conceit of several computer webcams, thus keeping the whole “hand-held horror” thing going, and the characters — standard teenage daughter Alex (Kathryn Newton), her standard horndog boyfriend Ben (Matt Shively), standard younger brother Wyatt (Aiden Lovekamp), and standard marriage-hanging-by-a-thread parents Holly (Alexondra Lee) and Daniel (Brian Boland) — are all, well, frighteningly standard (as if you couldn’t guess that much), but what the hell : they’re more here to serve a function than to actually be unique or at all memorable in their own right, and as far as that goes, they all acquit themselves just fine.

Look, let’s not kid ourselves — the directorial team of Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, veteran hold-overs from the last film, aren’t out to reinvent the wheel here, they’re just out to deliver the goods as we’ve come to expect them, and maybe provide at least one nice little plot twist to keep us on our toes and let ?us that all know that we’re not as smart as we might think are, which is certainly the case here when it’s revealed that one of the key assumptions we’ve been making from the outset of the film is completely wrong. A few cheap jump-outta-yer-seat scares are, of course, a necessary ingredient in the mix, as well, and we get those, too, so there’s really nothing to complain about here.

Oh, sure,?Paranormal Activity has become a formulaic, largely predictable thing at this point, but it’s a franchise now — what do you expect? Truth be told even the first one was never really as innovative as it presented itself as being. But if the formula keeps working, and the story keeps moving in at least a quasi-interesting direction, then count me as being one who’s happy to stick along for the ride. There’s nothing particularly exciting or groundbreaking about a Big Mac at this point, either, but every once in awhile, when you’re in just the right mood, ?they hit the spot like nothing else.

the films of frank henenlotter basket case

The work of cult film auteur Frank Henenlotter holds a special place in my twisted heart, as his films were staples of the late-night second-tier “premium” cable channels (Cinemax, The Movie Channel) during my misspent “formative” years, and as such I wasted far too many hours watching them repeatedly and finding my fondness for them grow with each successive viewing. While his strange blend of gross-out horror and slapstick-style comedy is admittedly an acquired taste, his sizable semi-legion of fans is testament to the fact that many people are indeed tuned into his particular warped wavelength, and as such, I thought it might be fun to pay homage to what are unquestionably his three best efforts (to date, that is—I have yet to see his long-awaited new release, “Bad Biology”), the “unholy trinity” comprised of “Basket Case,” “Brain Damage,” and “Frankenhooker.”? Let’s begin this nostalgic look back at Henenlotter’s career at its inception, his feature-film debut, the 1982 classic “Basket Case.”

The set-up is simple enough : a doctor is murdered in over-the-top gruesome fashion in his home by an unseen assailant. Cut to a 20-something young man with a big wicker basket and even bigger hair (our “hero,” Duane Bradley, played—if that’s the word we really want to use because very few of the performances in this film resemble anything traditiononally defined as acting—by Kevin Van Hentenryck) from upstate New York arriving at a fleabag 42nd street “hotel,” checking in, showing off a fat wad of cash that attracts the attention of the establishment’s unsavory residents—excuse me, “customers”—and asking where he can get something to eat. After procuring a sizable quantity of hamburgers, Duane heads for his room and there we see that the food isn’t for him,? as he feeds it to whoever or whatever is in his wicker basket. Duane then holds what appears to be a one-way conversation with his basket-dwelling friend, goes to sleep, and the next day begins to embark on a series of visits to other doctors, saying he’s an “old friend” who wants to pay a surprise visit.

Over the course of his brief “scouting mission” to say hello to his “old friends,” Duane manages to pick up (through zero effort on his own part) and start a semblance of a romance with one of the doctor’s receptionists, get acquainted with the truly varied yet deliciously stereotypical cast of characters who reside in the hotel (including getting drunk for the first time in his life with a hooker who lives across the hall played by Beverly Bonner), and withstand further telepathic assaults from his “pet” in the basket.

Along the way, we learn the film’s not-so-secret— that his wicker-dwelling companion is actually his horribly deformed twin brother, Belial, who was attached to Duane in conjoined fashion until they were teens, when some unsavory paid-in-cash doctors agreed to separate the two so Duane could lead a “normal life.” As for Belial, he was surreptitiously dumped in the trash, presumed dead, or soon to be so. Belial quickly summons Duane via telepathy to rescue him, and then the two creatively and grotesquely kill their father, who was the brains behind the operation of—errr—-the operation and are raised from that point on by the kindly aunt who had looked after them during their early years. When she passes away, they have no remaining relatives (their mother died giving birth to them), and set out to avenge themselves on those who separted them.

I won’t tell you (if there is a “you” out there reading this) how it all ends up in case you haven’t seen the flick, but I will say that there are some solid cheap gore effects, a fun, cheesy extended stop-motion animation scene of Belial trashing the hotel room, some sick chuckles thrown in for good measure, and an authentic vibe of Times Square griminess to the proceedings that makes this demented zero-budgeter an absolute joy to watch and sets the tone for all of Henenlotter’s subsequent work—outrageous premises, lovably bizarre monsters, New York sleazepit locations, and biological absurdities of the David-Cronenberg-on-crack variety are constant running themes in his films.

There are a couple of different DVD versions of “Basket Case” out there, but the best is easily the 20th Anniversary edition released in 2002 from Something Weird Video. Featuring a plethora of extras including a commentary by Henelotter, producer Edgar Ievins, and actress Beverly Bonner, a raft of outtakes and behind-the-scenes footage, a documentary short featuring Henelotter and rapper R.A. “the Rugged Man” touring the movie’s? original filiming locations, an extensive selection of trailers, TV spots, radio spots, promotional posters and artwork and still photos, and radio interviews with actress Susan Smith (who played Duane’s love interest) among other delights-for-the-completist, this is definitely the version of this disc to own and can be found at bargain-basement prices most anywhere.

Followed by two sequels, the first of which is pretty damn clever and the second of which doesn’t quite reach the same level of twisted-yet-fun depravity of the first two (but which isn’t nearly as bad as many folks seem to think), “Basket Case” is definitely one of the better efforts of the low-budget horror-comedy genre and has earned its esteemed reputation in B-movie history. If you haven’t seen it, then I highly recommend checking it out ASAP, and if you have seen but it’s been a few years, it’s well worth another look, as it holds up surprisingly well given its budgetary and technical limitations, and it has an air of authenticity that most shlock filmmakers often spend their entire careers striving to find but never quite achieving.

Next up I’ll be taking a look at Henenlotter’s second feature, the remarkably twisted “Brain Damage.” Until then, thanks for reading,? and remember, when it comes to moviemaking, money is no substitute for brains and imagination!