There are directors who have defined what we – as horror
fans, truly love about horror films.
John Carpenter, Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper, Tom Holland, Roger Corman, William
Castle, William Malone, Peter Jackson, Sam Raimi, Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci,
George A. Romero, Clive Barker, David Cronenberg, Todd Browning, Mario Bava,
Shinya Tsukamoto, Stuart Gordon, Terence Fisher, and Takashi Shimizu, to name
just a small few, are some of the biggest names for us fans. These are some of the names that we all know,
love, and adore. On a smaller scale is the name Frank Henenlotter whose claim
to fame will forever be associated with his Basket
Case trilogy. But he directed so
many other great films. I’ve loved his
films ever since his film Brain Damage
(1988) forever warped my fragile little mind.
I was twelve years old when I first saw Brain Damage. This parable
about drug addiction and a little alien creature was one of the coolest films I
had ever seen whether I knew what the film was really about or not. I made this film a constant fixture in my
re-watching cue year-to-year. The
creature Aylmer was disturbing in its creation yet influential in its
simplicity and execution. This film
helped to define my love of weird and unusual horror films.
The name Henenlotter still meant nothing to me at this
time. I still knew nothing of the name
when I next saw Basket Case 2
(1990). I saw this film on a whim based
on the VHS cover artwork. I had never seen
the original film at the time but that cover art was a fantastic way of
introducing me to the franchise. I loved
the film because it had monsters, was funny, and had lots of gore. The fact that the entire film was bat-shit
crazy also helped. It didn’t even matter
that I had never seen the original film.
When Basket Case 3 (1991) came
out I was the first one to rent it from the neighborhood video store (I had it
on reserve because the store owners knew me by name). I loved monster movies and this film was a
god-send for me.
At this point I still hadn’t seen the original Basket Case (1982) and skipped over Frankenhooker (1990), mostly because of
fear that my parents would never rent me a film with that title despite the
fact that I loved the cover art for the VHS.
Unfortunately, for me, the original Basket
Case at my video store had become damaged and never been replaced so I wasn’t
able to see it until much later.
1990 was a big year for me as Clive Barker released probably
one of my favorite films of all time – Nightbreed
(1990), which redefined my love of monsters and set me on a path where I would
always be more sympathetic to the monsters.
Basket Case 2 & 3 would
create a trilogy of films that I would watch constantly and despite having not
seen the original film I didn’t think I was really missing much.
By 1995, I finally knew the name Frank Henenlotter. I had seen these three films so many times I
knew them by heart. I was graduating
from high school and decided that I wanted to be a writer and film maker and my
first lesson was to learn the names of all my favorite writers and directors of
which Henenlotter was one of the very first.
Others in this elite club included Alfred Hitchcock, James Whale,
Richard Donner, Stanley Kubrick, Brian De Palma, Robert Wise, F.W. Murnau, Tod
Browning, Carl Dreyer, and most of the horror directors that I described
earlier.
It was at this time that DVD had taken over the world and
even though I still had a ton of films on VHS it became easier to find some of
those films that I had lost track of. I devoured
horror films from all decades and countries when I went to college. If it was a horror film that had any impact
on the genre I searched it out. No
horror film was too big or too small. I
loved the obscure and the strange. The
stranger, the better. I even made the
horror genre one of my focus’ at college writing papers on the films of George
Melies and George A. Romero and even one on The
X-Files (all of which I made “A”s on by the way). Maybe one day I’ll publish those so people
can read what I was thinking back then.
Due to the unavailability of Henenlotter’s films on DVD it
was a long time before I finally got around to finally seeing both the original
Basket Case and Frankenhooker, two films that had eluded me for so many years. At this point I was a DVD horror film collector
and adding these to my collection was a great moment for me. I was finally able to see the film Frankenhooker which I was so afraid to
see as a child but more importantly I was finally able to see the entire Basket Case trilogy in one night! I was in Henenlotter heaven!
In 2008, Henelotter would finally break his 17 year silence
and release his latest masterpiece Bad
Biology. It didn’t matter whether
the film was any good or not, it was the first Henenlotter film in which I knew
was a Henenlotter film. I couldn’t even,
honestly, tell you whether the film is any good or not because like all of his
films, I loved it because it was something new and fresh and something no one
else could have conceived. A Henenlotter
film is un-mistakenly a Henenlotter film.
He is a one of a kind genius.
Now, there have been many directors that have defined what
the horror genre is and with each decade it gets re-defined and twisted by the
latest cinematic genius. Eli Roth, M.
Night Shyamalan, Rob Zombie, Takashi Miike, James Wan, Lucky McKee, Alexandre
Aja, Tommy Wirkola, Jason Eisener, Jake West, Fede Alvarez, Gareth Evans, Adam
Wingard, and Jim Mickle, are but a few
of the rising stars trying to make their mark in the horror genre today. With each new film, Henenlotter turns the
genre on its head and out shines them all.
His films may not be as refined as Shyamalan or a throwback to a bygone
decade like Roth or bat-shit gore-tastic like Wirkola but they remain undeniably,
undefinably, and unmistakably horror films that rip the fabric of the genre to
shreds and leaves you wondering just what the f*&k you just saw.
I will continue to watch and love his films and I’m standing
in line waiting for the next one to see release (even if it takes another 17
years). And so should you.
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