[Pride 2021] The Trans Subtext in Basket Case and Brain Damage

The body horror sub-genre is one of the most mixed bags from the horror genre, ranging from more mild disfigurations of the human body to a blood fest that leaves the viewer with a mangled, red mass that used to be a person less than 10 seconds ago. This genre is not for everyone…understandably so. but sometimes these stories can find an unexpected audience within the trans community. Trans people are mistakenly referred to as individuals who mutilate their body when they seek out medical transition because of transphobic stereotypes pushed by a cisnormative society who reject anything outside of their understanding of the human body. While these films contain literal, yet fictional, mutilation of bodies, sometimes these narratives can fall into subtext that can represent a trans person’s experience with their body and their transition. This brings me to Frank Hennenlotter’s Basket Case (1982), and his less-known but equally entertaining Brain Damage (1988). 

Starting with Basket Case, a really great time capsule of New York in the early 1980’s and an overall good time of a horror movie, we’re presented with two brothers; Duane and Belial Bradley, the latter being the famous, murderous lump of flesh that’s become the face of the franchise. Basket Case and its sequels could easily be dismissed as splatter exploitation films, but I find Duane and Belial’s characters to be two sides of the same coin in regards to being transgender in an environment where you’re not welcomed in. 

Looking at Belial first, his entire character arc in the first two films is that he deals with explosive rage due to the fact he can’t live his life as a “real” man, unlike his brother Duane. Belial spends his days hiding inside his basket, only brought out when he has to kill or when he’s completely alone in an apartment. Right from the bat, Belial’s rage and desperation to be seen as a real person despite his appearance and limitations strikes a personal cord. He yearns to live the life his brother lives, and the opportunity to be loved by others as well. 

Belial is seen as an abomination by his father, by the medical world and by anyone who isn’t Duane, and later in the series, by other individuals like himself. His father even attempts to get doctors to murder him in his childhood in favor of keeping Duane alive, refusing to even refer to Belial by his actual name and simply ignoring him, despite the fact he was stuck to Duane’s side. Personally, I couldn’t help seeing some of my own experience with rejection from my parents when I attempted to come out properly. To this day, they still don’t use my name, and they pretend like my transness doesn’t exist. 

Moving onto Duane, his character could be more easily dismissed as a simply meat-headed straight horror protagonist. But his character is tightly laced to Belial’s, and he carries quite a bit of trans subtext onto himself. From the more obvious aspects, like him having scars on his ribs he hides to everyone as to avoid answering questions about his identity, Duane can be seen as the picture of trying to live stealthily after transitioning. 

In comparison to Belial, Duane didn’t face the same rejection from his father as his sibling did, however he was still kept as an embarrassing family secret. He was homeschooled, with his only contact with the outside world being his aunt, who recognized both him and Belial as family. Duane, unlike his brother, is able to hide the characteristics that make him stand out, yet he still feels othered in many aspects. 

All throughout the Basket Case trilogy, but most notably in the first installment, Duane attempts to maintain a romantic relationship with Sharon, but he’s constantly stopped by his connection to Belial. When watching Duane try to kiss Sharon or be with her physically, only to see Belial freak out and cause Duane to pull away or frantically kick her out of their apartment before she can see either one of them, I was reminded of my own failed experiences with intimacy, especially when sharing said experience with a cis person. 

The vulnerability of exposing yourself to an outsider who might not understand you or your body is terrifying, and that’s without taking the crippling dysphoria into account too. Both Duane and Belial experience this in their respective attempts of engaging with others romantically, and it’s what kills any relationship Duane attempts to have and what stops Belial from being able to bask in his loneliness peacefully. 

Turning to look at Brain Damage now, the subtext in this film can be looked at specifically from a gay and transmasculine lens, to me, much like A Nightmare on Elm Street II: Freddy’s Revenge, except Freddy is replaced by a small, blue brain named Aylmer. Our main character this time around is Brian, who spends most of the movie very physically ill, at first out of a common cold and then because he develops a dependency to Aylmer’s “juice”. 

Textually speaking, Brain Damage is very much a story about addiction and the destructive effects it has on a person’s life; Brian is effectively a junkie, except instead of injecting himself with heroin or any other substances, he has a blue, sentient brain attached to the back of his neck. However, due to the imagery used when Aylmer is on Brian’s body and the situations he gets put in, I can’t help but read into it and also see aspects of my own queerness splattered in his character. 

Starting with the most obvious imagery that made me see his character as a trans man, very early into the movie we see him is waking up, dazed, and jumping out from his bed because it is covered in blood. He seems confused, as if this isn’t a normal occurrence anymore, before he lies down again. It feels like a scene of my very own mornings when I wake up and realize those days of the month have arrived, and I have to acknowledge the situation of my period once more, something as alien and odd to myself as it is to Brian. 

The imagery of periods disrupting Brian’s day to day life comes back in a later scene, where he leaves what can be interpreted as a leather bar, to stand in the middle of an alley and stare at his blood stained underwear, wondering what happened. This ties into an earlier scene, where Brian is high due to Aylmer’s juice and a woman attempts to perform oral sex on him, which leads to her getting her brains eaten by Aylmer. The blue brain’s role in these kinds of scenes, where Brian attempts to engage in romantically or sexually with a woman, are interesting since he takes the form of Brian’s tongue or his genitals. In regards to genitals, Brian always seems flat unless Aylmer is present and wandering around the lower half of his body. While it might just mean the blue brain is positioned to try and attack or lure someone out, it’s interesting to think that this might be one of the few times Brian performs in this manner, and it’s due to an external attachment to his body. 

Later in the film, there is also a scene in which Brian stands in a motel’s shower room, watching another man who has been cleaning himself for some time now. In this scene, Brian can be seen as both being envious of this man, more muscular and imposing than he is, and as well the element of him possibly feeling attraction to this man comes into play when Aylmer slides into the scene to feed on the man’s brain, since the movie has already established Aylmer is the stand-in for Brian’s sexual feelings or sexual performance.

The entire movie feels like a transgender man’s existence and the realization of his own attraction to men, and at the same time, his incapability to perform as a conventional man when in relationships with women; the more Aylmer is around Brian and their relationship develops, the more Brian’s relationship with his girlfriend Barbara crumbles at the realization they might just be incompatible. Both of them even find other romantic interests, Barbara being with Brian’s brother and Brian being tangled up, quite literally, with Aylmer. In the end, it’s about the changes in Brian’s life and the repercussions they have in his personal relationships, his own image and his interaction with the world. 

I want to end in the connection these two films have, both with each other and myself. Seeing myself in these characters and the multiple phases they go through in their respective films, it all helps feeling a hint of comfort in what would be consuming media without any real representation. Sometimes, you have to carve the space in these films to see yourself or someone who could be like you, whether that be through the creation of said media or analyzing the hell out of it. 

Not only I have these moments of recognition, but in a brief scene in Brain Damage, Brian and Duane share a glance of recognition in a subway train. Their eyes say it, that they know what each other is going through, since Duane has his basket sitting on his lap and Brian has Aylmer swimming around his throat and popping out of his mouth at every moment. It’s those brief interactions with someone like you, intentionally or not, that can make a moment feel less hopeless than it actually is. 

To finish up, it might not have been Frank Henenlotter’s intention to create these characters as metaphors for transness that I and many others can relate to, but it’s still a comforting thought to know these creatures and people are able to make it in their own respective hostile worlds, and it gives me the possibility to think that I can make it too. I simply hope a disembodied blue brain doesn’t follow me around, or that a small creature that lives in a basket abruptly ends my journey.

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