Powered Exoskeletons in Cinema – Basket Case 3

When you think about it, isn’t there something just a bit sinister about a powered exoskeleton? Doesn’t it call to mind the skeleton inside you? Remind you that your skeleton might one day want to try being on the outside? Tear itself from your meat and imprison you in its unyielding, externally powered bones?

“NOW,” it will rattle.

“NOW WE WILL SEE WHO IS THE SKELETON.”

Powered Exo–HELL–eton #5 – Basket Case 3: The Progeny (1991)

I’d never heard of the Basket Case trilogy until it was added to the list, so for me this just proves that powered exoskeletons are the gift that keeps on giving. If you’re in the mood for something gross and weird this Halloween, I can’t recommend these films enough. They are consistently baffling, and made – I think – with a surprising amount of care and affection.

The first film sets up a familiar premise. Faintly unsettling dweeb Duane Bradley (Kevin Van Hentenryck, above) checks into a New York hotel carrying a basket. A basket containing his conjoined twin brother, from whom he was surgically removed as a child against his will. Also the brother is a murderous ball of sinew with arms and teeth named Belial. We are just getting started.

Anyway Duane helps Belial kill a bunch of people and there’s some weird creepy sex stuff. I don’t want to dance around this in any way: towards the end Basket Case (1982) features a fair bit of sexual violence, general camera-leeriness and then to top it all off there’s a rape scene. All solely for shock value, these elements could not be more tacked on to the end of the plot. It’s an ugly final note for what was until that point a pretty fun movie.

The second film felt kind of like an apology for these shortcomings, but then Basket Case 3 goes straight back to fan-service. The director of all three films – Frank Henenlotter – has situated them very much within the ‘exploitation’ genre, and they bring in the bad elements along with the good in that respect. If you’re a fan of horror/exploitation movies from that era I think you’ll probably manage, but yeah. Just wanted to flag that. It’s a shame, because if it weren’t for the trilogy’s treatment of women and people of colour, it would at times come close to perfect, I think.

Anyway in Basket Case 2 they move in with Granny Ruth (Annie Roth) who is delightful and completely steals the show for the rest of the series.

From that point on it’s Ruth and her family of ‘unique individuals’ – rendered in some spectacular prostheses, by the way – murdering their way through all the ‘normal’ people who want to exploit / exterminate them.

From Basket Case 2 onward, the series is two parts goofy comedic caper to every part ‘horror.’ We’re not here to be frightened, we’re here to marvel at the prosthetics, wince at the squishy sound effects, and enjoy Roth and Hentenryck’s performances. Granny Ruth is knowing and charismatic, occasionally pausing to chew some scenery, while Duane is… difficult to describe. There’s a whole range of Duanes.

Also there’s this one really amazing weird sex thing that is disgusting in all the right ways and completely subverts the expectations of the genre and it’s… yeah. Basket Case 2. Probably the one I’d recommend.

SO BASKET CASE 3 THE PROGENY, THEN: 

I’m sorry this has become such an overview of the whole trilogy, but I do think these movies – particularly the 2nd and 3rd – demand to be read as one text. In Basket Case 3 we witness the birth of Belial’s children, who are the results of the aforementioned amazing sex thing. Henenlotter dives enthusiastically into the creation of some oozy pregnancy horror, and then the babies get stolen and we’re back to the traditional mutant revenge rampage.

Basket Case 3 suffers a bit from following Basket Case 2, and doesn’t do enough new things with the formula to really stand out. Mostly it seems concerned with wrapping up the story of 2, which ended on kind of a cliffhanger? I guess?

That said, while I wouldn’t say it’s the best Basket Case film, it’s still my personal favourite because a) there’s an exoskeleton, and b) it features my favourite scene in the entire trilogy. I don’t want to overhype it (it’s nothing mind-blowing, probably just something that caught me in the right mood) but I also don’t want to spoil what was for me a really great moment; so, if what you’ve seen so far has interested you, go watch Basket Case 3 and I’ll see you after the break.

OR you could just watch the first 20 minutes, because that’s when Basket Case 3 stops whatever else it was doing and decides it’s a musical now! I know we’ve seen some weird shit in this trilogy, but somehow Annie Roth singing Lloyd Price’s Personality is the one thing that really surprised me. And what a delightful surprise!

I feel like the comparison to American Horror Story is both obvious and apt. Both series trade in gore, comedy and outrage. They also share a penchant for terrible dialogue and a plot that nobody cares about. I will say that Basket Case has twice as much fun in about a fifth of the running time, and that while Jessica Lange and the Name Game sequence continue to be great… Basket Case 3 did it first. Just saying.

Anyway enough being contemporary. I laughed so hard at this scene I teared up a little. I love how every time you think the film’s going to cut away and get back to the story, the song just keeps going. This is what paracinema is all about. You get to the third movie in your low-budget cult exploitation franchise, no one’s pressuring you to take yourself seriously, and you make something that nobody else could make. Something stupid and insane and beautiful.

Unfortunately, nothing in the film’s second half can really match this scene, but at the same time… can you really blame it?

FINALLY, SOME ESCAPED SKELETONS:

Anyway it’s a long story but at some point Duane decides it’d be a good idea to get Belial a powered exoskeleton. It’s hard to capture in stills, so I’ll try to describe it a little bit.

Belial’s exoframe has a buzz-saw arm and a claw arm, two big lights for eyes, and two sets of jagged ‘teeth’ that can swing shut over his face to protect him from gunfire. It walks on two legs, and as you can see on the top there’s a fairly accurate model of Duane’s head mounted to the front. Maybe it’s a little on the nose, but I really appreciate that head. It makes the exoframe thematically appropriate. It’s a surrogate Duane! The Basket Case films and exoskeletal cinema are both about symbiosis, and Robo-Duane here really hits that point home.

There’s also a set of fuzzy dice in the cockpit, which I like to think suggests that for Belial there’s little distinction between Duane and a car. It’s just how he gets around!

Also of interest is the power source, which seems to be some kind of big gas-guzzling engine connected to Robo-Duane by a series of tubes. We see Meat Duane tending to it during the climactic fight scene, which gives a sense that Belial’s not entirely independent. The brothers are still umbilically linked… Maybe I’m over-thinking this.

That said, it’s just occurred to me that the square cockpit with interwoven chains and two little doors that swing shut over the opening bares some resemblance to a basket, Belial’s nesting place of choice. Maybe the basket was his original surrogate for Duane, and now the two of them are blending together in some kind of improvised, mechanical manifestation of Belial’s mental state. The internal becoming the external. The external skeleton.

God. It’s an ugly thing, but tell me it hasn’t got layers.

Eventually the police chief manages to break off the Exo-Basket’s buzz-saw arm, and proceeds to try and murder Belial with it. This is the first we’ve seen of this kind of behaviour – probably because none of the other exoskeletons were this fragile – and I like the idea of a character having their ‘limbs’ torn off and used against them. It also plays into the idea that exoskeletons can be dangerous in the wrong hands, which is actually a first for the subgenre because this movie predates The Wrong Trousers!

Truly, skele-cinema is a dynamic and ever-changing field of study.

ANYWAY:

I know I spent a lot of time fawning over the “cultural importance” of Aliens in the history of exoskeletal cinema (and I stand by that, it’s a really good movie) but having seen Basket Case 3, I find myself thinking… maybe the dumb cult shit is more important.

Like I’m sure Edge of Tomorrow is going to be great, I’m looking forward to it, but if this list wasn’t brimming with terrible spy comedies and mutant musical numbers and… whatever the hell Star Kid is… I wouldn’t be nearly as interested in the subgenre. As it stands, a journey into exoskeletal cinema is a journey into the weird, dark corners of film history, and that’s what makes it special. In other words, it’s got:

♫ PER-SON-AL-ITY ♬

(Walk)

♫ PER-SON-AL-ITY ♬

(Talk)

♫ PER-SON-AL-ITY ♬

(Smile)

Happy Halloween everybody.

Powered Exoskeletons in Cinema: The Wrong Trousers (1993)

‘There is a body of live action feature films featuring powered exoskeletons,’ says Wikipedia.* It proceeds to list all of them, and four entries in mentions a film that is neither live action, nor a feature. Part of me thinks of this as an error in need of correction, but then the rest of me tells that part to shut the hell up because Wallace and Gromit are above the law.

EXO-FEATURE #4: THE WRONG TROUSERS (1993)

HERE’S THE DEAL:

Wallace is an inventor and ravenous cheese addict. His dog, Gromit, is kind of a genius but no one knows that because he can’t talk. They’ve got sort of a Penn and Teller thing going on I guess.

In every episode, Wallace will invent some miraculous piece of technology, only for that technology to fall immediately into the wrong hands. In the case of The Wrong Trousers, the invention is a pair of giant robot pants – dubbed ‘Techno Trousers’ – that can take Gromit for walks so that Wallace doesn’t have to. It’s actually Wallace’s birthday gift to Gromit. Wallace is… kind of an asshole? That’s something I missed, as a kid.

 ANYWAY, THE EXOSKELETON:

One of the reasons I think this film should stay on the list is that it features such a unique exoskeleton. So far in this series we’ve seen mostly either a) big, bulky metallic frames or b) roughly human-shaped suits of armour. I love the fact that this early in the history of exoskeletal cinema, we’re already branching out into the weird sub-genre of mechanised pants.

Not to mention the fact that the Techno Trousers look so useful and fun. They let you walk on walls and ceilings, they allow you to run crazy fast and jump higher than buildings… They’re fantastic. Probably the best exoskeleton we’ve seen so far. Except, well… okay maybe there’s one design flaw.

A couple of times in the past I’ve referenced exosuits as requiring their pilots. They don’t move around on their own, they just amplify the actions of the person wearing them. The Techno Trousers break with this tradition, operating independently of and in charge of the wearer’s actual legs. This design choice comes back to haunt Wallace when a penguin hijacks the controls, welds him inside the trousers and forces him to rob a museum.

The dangers of technology are a core theme in Wallace and Gromit movies, and Wrong Trousers is touching on a big concern here that’s usually applied to discussions of transhumanism (basically the concept of people becoming cyborgs in real life). The idea is that if you replaced your legs with mechanical legs, or your brain with a computer, someone might be able to hack your body, taking control of your movements or even your thoughts. Ordinarily we don’t see these problems in stories about powered exoskeletons because – as we saw in Aliens – you can climb out of them.

All Wallace would have to do is map the controls to the wearer’s physical legs, maybe add a manual eject button, and he would have been a millionaire. The world would have been forever changed. Instead, once the penguin has been imprisoned in the local zoo (another element of Wallace and Gromit’s social commentary) we see the Techno Trousers tossed in the bin, never to be seen again.

OR WILL THEY?

Occasionally in this series I’ve compared the exoskeletons we’ve been looking at to some contemporary real-life examples. At this early stage, the films we’re watching are all predicting a futuristic technology; and I never thought I’d be able to say this, but The Wrong Trousers is by far the most accurate prediction we’ve seen. It’s almost non-fiction at this point.

The REX – from Rex Bionics – is a robotic exoskeleton designed to grant freedom of movement to non-ambulatory wheelchair users. This is a set of robot legs that are real and exist right now. I mean, for me that’s the true sign that we live in the future.

From what I’ve seen of their promotional videos, the REX isn’t exactly Techno Trousers. It’s less ‘upside-down diamond heist’ and more ‘walking slowly across your living room.’ But that’s still pretty amazing. And it does stairs! Stairs!

There’s still all the usual problems to do with charging the batteries, and the REX website implies you need to have a certain “hip width” to use it… but the way I see it, this technology’s only going to get better. That’s what I’m excited about.

OBLIGATORY TANGENT:

Now, over the course of this blog, I’ve had this running gag about a scene from The Ambushers that’s eerily similar to the famous Queen/Loader fight at the end of Aliens. Unfortunately, The Wrong Trousers doesn’t feature that scene, so I don’t get to make the joke.

Enter 2008’s A Matter of Loaf and Death.

In the climactic battle of this episode, Wallace plays the helpless invalid (Newt / Matt Helm), trapped in an industrial environment by a female serial killer (Piella Bakewell / the Alien Queen.) He gets saved at the last minute by Fluffles (Ellen Ripley / Sheila Sommers) a poodle piloting a modified forklift. It’s a lovingly detailed homage, with Wallace hiding under a grate in the floor, POV shots of Piella all but gnashing her teeth through the forklift bars, and I suspect the liquid dough Gromit falls into – rendering him unable to help – might even be a child-friendly analogue to Bishop’s android blood.

I’d love to argue that the recurrence of this scene is the result of some ancient myth, some exoskeletal Ur narrative, but I’m pretty sure Aardman just felt like throwing in a treat for Aliens fans. Nevertheless, I thought it was worth mentioning that this franchise – fifteen years and a feature film after its brief tryst with exoframe cinema – took a moment to stop, and throw a respectful nod to the subgenre it had unwittingly helped to build.

A Matter of Loaf and Death acknowledges the fact that powered exoskeletons, while only appearing once in the series, are woven inextricably into its DNA. Linked through their passion for marvellous, nonsensical contraptions, Wallace and Gromit will forever be a part of exoframe cinema, and vice versa.* This has since been amended. Wallace and Gromit’s position on the list is secured.