Basket Case

press release: Katie Trainor in Person!

USA | 1982 | DCP | 91 min.

Director: Frank Henenlotter; Cast: Kevin Van Hentenryck, Terri Susan Smith, Beverly Bonner 

Young Duane arrives in NYC with a basket containing his twisted, demented waist-high brother Belial. Communicating telepathically, the formerly conjoined twins are out for revenge on the quack doctors who screwed up the operation that separated them. A low-budget horror-comedy cult classic, this new 4K restoration of Basket Case will be introduced by Katie Trainor, Film Collections Manager at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Restored by The Museum of Modern Art with support from The Celeste Bartos Fund for Film Preservation.

Our numerous and diverse Fall 2018 special presentations include a screening of an excellent vintage print of Roger Corman’s low-budget The Little Shop of Horrors; Douglas Sirk’s masterful melodrama All That Heaven Allows and Todd Hayne’s reworking of Sirk, Far from Heaven; rare 35mm prints of Antonioni’s counter-culture classic Zabriskie Point and Claire Denis sibling saga Nenette and Boni; a screening of the popular recent documentary The Eagle Huntress with producer Stacey Reiss in person; plus new digital restorations of two cult horror comedies from the early 1980s: Basket Case and Strange Behavior, as well as George Sluizer’s great thriller The Vanishing, Powell and Pressburger’s repressed nuns classic Black Narcissus, and the landmark independent Buddies, the first movie to depict the AIDS crisis.

All Cinematheque screenings are free and open to the public.