13 Nights of Shocktober: Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

 by A.J 

This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month-long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some horror movie recommendations to help you celebrate Shocktober.

Night 4: Serial Killer Night

“You can use a gun. I'm not saying you can't use a gun. Just don't use the same gun twice.” Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

To call the controversial film Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer a horror movie almost feels misleading because on one level or another every horror film provides excitement and thrills, or at least they should. This is not a slasher movie or an exploitation film or even really a thriller. It is an uncompromising, unglamourous, but fascinating and gripping look at the day-to-day life of a murderous psychopath. If this isn’t a horror movie, I don’t know what is.

Director John McNaughton and co-writer with Richard Fire loosely based their film on the confessions of the serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, who later recanted some, but not all, of his confessions. The film was produced independently on a low budget in 1986 but the MPAA refused under any circumstances, no matter what cuts were made, to grant Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer an R rating. This meant that it could not be shown in many theaters or even advertised in certain newspapers. It ended up playing unrated at midnight showings and then at film festivals where it garnered enough serious critical praise that it finally received a proper theatrical release four years later in 1990. It earned even more critical praise, including 2 Thumbs Up from Siskel and Ebert and has become something of a cult film, but it has never shed its dangerous, controversial aura.

Michael Rooker stars as Henry, an unassuming, average, working-class man. He’s also a drifter, ex-con, and cold-blooded killer. He lives with Otis (Tom Towles), a fellow ex-con and drug dealer. It doesn’t take much for Henry to convince Otis to join him on a killing spree. Otis’s sister, Becky (Tracy Arnold), comes to live with them and is fascinated and drawn to Henry’s unapologetic persona and dark past. In a scene where they are alone, she asks him if he really killed his mother. We get an insight not just into Henry’s past but also his detached, contemptuous view other people, especially women. In this and many of the dialogue scenes, there is the threat of violence just beneath the surface.

Nearly all of Henry and Otis’s victims are female and the film doesn’t shy away from showing how casual and disturbing their crimes are. The most infamous and disturbing scene has Henry and Otis watching a videotape of a home invasion they committed. Otis watches with glee and rewinds the tape to watch again. Henry watches calmly. Henry is intelligent; he knows to avoid patterns because police look for patterns. He knows to not stay in one city or town for too long. The murder scenes are not especially graphic but they are presented like the film presents Henry: cold, cruelly casual, detached. These scenes do not sensationalize murder, nor do the dialogue scenes attempt to build sympathy for Henry. We’re not meant to understand why Henry kills. I think what we’re meant to take away from the film is that horrible crimes are done average seeming people, not monsters or the undead or masked slashers with agendas. Psychotic killers wear normal clothes and live fairly normal day to day lives and that's how they get away with what they do for as long as they do.

The film begins with a montage of bodies in different locations intercut with Henry driving into town. The film ends with Henry driving away. If this film is so disturbing, so unforgiving, so without the excitement and thrills of other horror movies why should anyone watch it? Well, exactly because it is so unlike every other horror movie. In a way it is like an antidote to all the mindless, flippant killing in movies, horror or otherwise. In a Friday the 13^th movie we look forward to the kills; they are meant to be entertaining, and they are. In this film, there are no kills, only murder. Even when we don’t see the actual murder, just a nude corpse or Henry leaving a house or apartment the scene is chilling. It’s hard to describe this film as entertaining but I was captivated and never bored. I wouldn’t say this movie is dour or grim. Dark for sure. Uncomfortable, yes, but not dour or grim or hateful. It is not a side show of death and mayhem. It is as advertised, a portrait of a serial killer; a brief look at how they can and do function in society. The film’s financiers were expecting an exploitation slasher film they could cash in on the 80’s slasher craze with, instead they got something much more chilling and substantial and memorable.