John McNaughton’s Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is defined by both incredible suspense and graphic violence.
Combining a social psychological approach with a quasi-documentary technique, end result is a genuinely disturbing and scary horror tale.
Grade: A- (**** out of *****)
McNaughton’s hard-to-watch horror makes viewers confront the psychology of one serial killer.
Michael Rooker plays Henry in a brilliant performance. His Henry isn’t an approachable guy who goes dark when triggered, nor does he display any wildly disturbed tics. Henry is lacking any empathy and conscience; he never knows when he’s going past a barrier.
The director’s intelligent look at a murderer is profoundly upsetting, more so for the questions that it raises than for the mutilated bodies that it shows.
The fictionalized story is inspired by Henry Lee Lucas, a Texan drifter on Death Row who had confessed to numerous murders, but then recanted and said he had killed only his mother.
From those basic facts, McNaughton and co-writer Richard Fire construct a riveting story of Henry, an ex-convict and killer who lives with a former prison friend named Otis and with Otis’ sister, Becky.
Henry was made in 1987 for a video company that expected a mainstream horror film. A theatrical release fell through when the film was rated X, and the movie just kicked around for years.
It was only after its successful screening at the Telluride Film Fest that it was rescued by Greycat, a small, courageous company, which released it unrated.
McNaughton, who has worked in advertising in Chicago, shows strong command of the camera and control over his narrative.
As Henry (played by Michael Rooker with astonishing calm and control) drives along the road, the film flashes back to quick graphic visions of his victims: a woman sawed in half, another killed with a broken bottle still sticking in her eye.
McNaughton takes the audience into the sordid, claustrophobic life of a killer without explaining his psyche. When Henry teaches his friend Otis (Tom Towles) how to kill, the latter is as excited as a child.
Becky (Tracy Arnold), a former topless dancer, is the film’s only innocent character. A good-hearted woman, she can relate to Henry’s killing of his abusive mother, because she, too, has been abused by her father. The two acts of deviance are not on the same level, but the director manages to make an interesting parallel–and a note about abuse in general.
Spoiler Alert: Shocking, Uncompromised Ending
Henry and Becky dump trash bags containing Otis’s body parts into the river and leave town.
Henry suggests that they go to his sister’s ranch in San Bernardino, California, promising Becky to send for her daughter when they arrive.
In the car, Becky confesses her love for Henry. “I guess I love you too,” Henry replies. They book a motel room for the night.
The next morning, Henry leaves the motel alone, gets into the car and drives away without Becky. He stops at the side of the road to dump Becky’s blood-stained suitcase in a ditch, then drives away.
The film doesn’t try to understand, let alone explain, Henry’s motives or psyche, which, admittedly, are more complex than any director can handle. But McNaughton’s observations are so sharp and precise that they gain stature and achieve poignancy.
When Henry and Otis videotape and then play their murder of a family, McNaughton’s implicates his audience in the killers’ position, as they coolly watch themselves on television. But if McNaughton leads the audience into the lower depths of social pathology, he never addresses it from a position of moral authority.
As the noted film critic Andrew Sarris has suggested, the director’s formal and thematic achievement resides in imprisoning the audience in gruesome behavior without ever aestheticizing evil.
If you’re deeply troubled by the film and can’t shake it, you have a conscience.
Cast
Michael Rooker as Henry
Tom Towles as Otis
Tracy Arnold as Becky
David Katz as Henry’s Boss
Eric Young as Parole Officer
Kurt Naebig as High School Jock
Ray Atherton as The Fence
Erzsebet Sziky as The Hitchhiker
Denise Sullivan as Floating Woman
Monica Anne O’Malley as Mall Victim
Rick Paul as Shooting Victim
Ted Kaden as Husband, Dead Couple
Elizabeth Kaden as Wife, Dead Couple
Brian Graham as Husband, Murdered Family
Lisa Temple as Wife, Murdered Family
Sean Ores as Son, Murdered Family
Mary Demas as Hooker #1
Kristin Finger as Hooker #2
Augie The Dog as Delores The Dog
If you want to know more, please read my book, Cinema of Outsiders: The Rise of American Independent Film (NYU Press).
