Ok so 1982's Basket Case is one of my all time favourite horror movies and was the first film I ever dared to try and review, and as a kid I loved this sequel as well, then as I got older I grew to dislike it because of how drastically different it was aesthetically and tone-wise...and now lately for whatever reason it's grown on me again and I've come to appreciate it for what it is and what it does right. It was always a very needless sequel, the first movie was so perfectly tragic and poetically macabre in how it ended and it was perfect just the way it was...but since a sequel was made, a suppose it could have been a whole lot worse, I.E. part 3! It mostly just feels like a completely different movie, you go from the intimate gritty creepiness and sleazy charm and excellent atmosphere of the grungy old Hotel Broslin to this off-its-rocker schlocky monsterfest with its barrage of cartoonish freaks, and I'm not saying it isn't fun, but when you've got a giant head singing opera, a frogman and a giggling gargoyle eating cake I'm pretty sure it's not meant to be taken too seriously! But the first movie did take itself so seriously, and that's one of the reasons it's a classic and I loved it so much, it was weird and grim and scary and just very different, and this thing seems to scrap any attempts at real atmospherics and genuinely scary sequences in favour of the outlandish spectacle of the admittedly impressive array of freaks. It obviously had a bigger budget, and feels like an overall bigger endeavour in comparison to the first one, but to me it was certainly smaller in terms of real horror and creepiness.. It wasn't a completely scare-free effort though, I find the opening image of Belial floating and the following scene in the hospital to be quite spooky, as is the aftermath of the attack on the gross old phone freakmaker Mr Barker, and I for one find Belial's reaction to Duane's(to be fair )pretty sappy hopes for the future to be downright mortifying! I'm afraid I really don't like the 'update' they gave to Belial though, yeah sure he could be more expressive and move more but I don't think it had anything on the bone white, roaring twisted abomination from the first flick, that thing was legit terrifying and the thought of it clinging to my wall in the dark haunted many of my childhood nights! For me the movie's highlight is the bar scene where the chief journalist is given a little surprise lesson in the concept of what normality and freakishness really mean, shortly before his brutal death, I think it's very well orchestrated and drives home an interesting point in a fairly clever way, and the scene is creepier on a second viewing if you take a closer look at some of those shifty bar patrons in the background! Kevin Van Hentenryck was great in that scene, and he's actually my favourite thing about this movie, his character of Duane had a bit more development this time, and I like how he becomes subtly more dark and unhinged until he finally cracks at the end in a brilliantly done twist that to me is actually worthy of how the original film ended, he becomes a human monster and the freakish monster becomes the helpless one as Duane takes control of the crazy nightmare his life has become in the only way he sees how, by becoming the 'freak' he once was, in an insane sequence that's sick, bloody, and strangely very apt and fitting! Also I must mention Annie Ross's whacked-out performance which was a lot of fun, in the bizarre scene where she's rallying the freaks like a reverend, she's surrounded by them but your attention is totally on her the whole time because she just filled the room, Granny Ruth was a great addition! In closing it might not hold a candle to the 1982 classic, but again as sequels go it's not a bad one, at least Henenlotter tried out something new instead of just retreading the same story. It doesn't completely work but it has its own merits, and does make for a freakishly fun and demented horror romp in its own right and to me is a worthwhile sequel. X