I have to agree with zooeyhall! There WAS something disturbing about this movie that, well, I really can't put my finger one. Maybe it was every aspect to it, coming together, that made the experience a little unsettling.
And for the record, Cannibal Holocaust, Henry, Audition, Dead Alive, and also movies like Salo, Irréversible and August Underground.... not even a flinch from me. A lot of those are good movies too, but I don't know, maybe the things that make you cringe has no effect on me and the stuff that creeps me out has no effect on you!
Regarding modern horror, I think zooeyhall nailed it, as well. I go to see movies people call "disturbing and ultra-violent" and all the kiddies there are flinching and closing their eyes to movies like Hostel, Saw and such. It must be me, cause a LOT of those movies are very damn weak. Maybe I'm just desensitized to violence and horror, but really, I do go back and watch older movies and they still creep me out to this day.
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zooeyhall
16 years ago
Thanks for the nice comment! I have to agree with your final paragraph especially.
Posters to my comment have sneered at me, saying the Hannibal movies and movies such as "Saw" and "Hostel" were better/more scary, etc. etc. I disagree. Because, like you say, they are damn weak and rapidly lose their effect. You know why? Because they are big budget productions filmed in 70mm with Dolby Surround Sound with popular actors and all the modern technique that can go into movies.
What makes "Basket Case" so disturbing is that it was a low budget production darkly filmed in sometimes grainy resolution and with a rather tinny echoey soundtrack. The actors were unknown, and all of this had the effect of making it very much like a PERSONAL nightmare. It is a movie that you try to look away from, but cannot look away from. Like watching an accident in progress.
So--spare me your modern horror movies! I have seen them and it's like, "Yeah, so what?" to me. I don't care how many decapitations and axes buried in heads and buckets of blood you throw at the audience over the (70mm) screen! These movies are no more then big-budget cartoons! TRUE horror is the kind that touches the primal fear that lies in the depths of the human sub-conscious.
There is a great scene in the movie "Ed Wood". Bela Lugosi (played by Martin Landau) is telling Ed Wood about why modern movies are not true horror movies:
"Today it's all giant spiders, giant grasshoppers, giant bugs...who could believe such nonsense? The [older horror films] were mythic, they had a poetry to them! ...pure horror both repels and attracts!"
And I think this is what distinguishes "Basket Case" from the other so-called "horror movies".
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Eveningstarlight
15 years ago
I agree with alot of what your saying zooeyhall, the modern day
horror movies just don't hack it so to speak. The big glossy production
right from the start make them make believe adult fairytales in a way.
They have no grounds in any of our reality as a viewer.
The low budget movies such as basket case and the like seem more like video
diaries even though we know their not but the low budget makes them seem
more real in a sense. Probably would explain the popularity in blair witch,
people needing to get back to basics and some sense of real life for scares.
I haven't actually saw this movie for several years but i agree at the
time i remember the low budget grittyness of it. I laughed at some of
it but there were some sequences which at the time, i hadn't saw quite so
much gore or violence on screen before. I'll have to get a copy and view
again.
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zooeyhall
15 years ago
Thanks for your great comments. And I think you really nailed-it with your observations on The Blair Witch project. When you look at Blair Witch, there is almost NO blood and very little violence, yet it is considered one of the best horror films in recent years and did very well at the box office and with the critics.
A good horror movie should get the viewer actually involved in the nightmare on the screen, with a disturbing feeling that YOU are part of it also. I remember when Blair Witch came out, there was some directory or writer--either Wes Craven or Stephen King-- who said that the movie really disturbed them because at certain times it made them feel actually vulnerable.
Another example is "The Amityville Horror". The first movie had minimal effects and only implied gore. Yet it was a super hit. However the remake--for all it's lavish CGI and explicitness--flopped.
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