Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is a 1986 film directed by John McNaughton about the random crime spree of a serial killer who seemingly operates with impunity. It stars Michael Rooker as the nomadic killer Henry, Tom Towles as Otis, a prison buddy with whom Henry is living, and Tracy Arnold as Becky, Otis’ sister. The character of Henry is loosely based on real life serial killer Henry Lee Lucas.
The film was shot on 16mm in less than a month with a budget of only $110,000. The film was ranked #2 on Bravo's 13 Scariest Movie Moments
Plot
The film opens with a shot of a naked woman, lying dead in a field. No explanation is given as to who killed her or why. We are then introduced to Henry (Michael Rooker), who is going about his business (finishing a greasy meal in a café, aimlessly driving around town, watching people leaving a shopping centre). Interspersed with this are shots of other murder victims. None of the actual murders are shown, but accompanying the shots of the bodies are the sounds of screaming and struggle. Among the victims are a man and a woman in a bar, both shot in the head, a half naked woman seated on a toilet with a broken bottle protruding from her mouth, and a naked woman dumped in a river. The obvious implication of this opening section is that Henry is responsible for these deaths. Henry is also shown following a woman home and watching her as she enters her house.
We are next introduced to Becky (Tracy Arnold), waiting in an airport. She is met by her brother Otis (Tom Towles), and it is subsequently revealed that she has split from her husband, Leroy. She has come to Chicago to make some money for herself and her daughter, who is living with Becky and Otis’ mother for the time being. Otis brings Becky back to the apartment he shares with Henry, and from the start there is sexual tension between Henry and Becky, with Henry awkwardly excusing himself to go to work (he works as a part-time exterminator). Later that day, Henry, in his work uniform and carrying his can of pesticide, knocks on the door of the woman he followed home. They talk for a moment (although what is said cannot be heard), and she lets him into the house. Soon after, the woman is shown dead in her living room, with a power cable wrapped around her throat, and cigarette burns on her chest and neck.
Otis is also shown at work, as a forecourt attendant in a gas station. Whilst working, Otis is approached by a young man (Kurt Naebig) wishing to purchase marijuana from him. Otis sets up a deal in two days time. Back at the apartment, Otis tells Becky that he met Henry in prison, where Henry was serving a sentence for killing his mother, but he warns her not to mention it. Later that night, as Henry and Becky play cards, they discover they have a common hatred for their parents, and Becky asks Henry about the murder of his mother. He tells her he stabbed his mother because she abused and humiliated him as a child. However, he then says he shot her, before correcting himself when Becky comments on his mistake. Becky, for her part, reveals that she was molested by her father as a teenager.
The next day, Becky gets a job in a hair salon. That evening, Henry and Otis go out and solicit two prostitutes. Without provocation, Henry kills both women. After dumping the bodies in an alleyway, Henry and Otis drive to a fast food restaurant, where they casually buy french fries. They discuss what happened and it becomes clear that Otis, although shocked, feels no remorse. He does however worry that the police might catch them. Henry assures him that everything will be okay. Back at the apartment, Henry asks Otis if he has ever killed before, and Otis confesses he has, but only because he didn’t have any choice. Henry points out that if you've killed once, any time you kill again, it always feels the same, and he explains his philosophy that the world they live in is “them or us.” Otis seems to agree, and the two men share a beer.
The following night, Otis loses his temper with the poor reception on the television, and kicks in the screen. He and Henry then go to a fence (Ray Atherton) who trades in stolen electrical goods. They discover they don't have enough money for anything other than a small black and white television, and are about to leave empty handed when the salesman begins to shout at them for wasting his time. Henry suddenly stabs the man with a soldering iron, and smashes a TV over his head, which Otis then plugs in. They take several items, including a video camera and a top-of-the-line television.
As previously arranged, Otis and the young man meet up to exchange drugs, meeting in Otis’ car. After lighting a joint, Otis places his hand on the man’s thigh, causing the man to punch him and flee the scene. Back at the apartment, an incensed Otis tells Henry he wants to kill the young man. Henry tells him that that would be a mistake, as people have seen them together. Otis acknowledges this but says he would still like to kill someone, so he and Henry go out looking for a random victim. They find one when they pull up in a tunnel layby, opening the hood of their car and hailing passing cars for help. After several cars drive past, one stops, and a man (Rick Paul) gets out and asks them if they need any help. Otis shoots the man several times, after which Henry asks him "Feel better?" Otis says he does, and they leave the scene.
Henry begins to teach Otis more about being a serial killer. He explains that every murder should have a different modus operandi, as that way the police won’t initially connect the different murders to one killer. He also explains that it’s important never to stay in the same place for too long, because that way, by the time police know they’re looking for a serial killer, you can be long gone. Henry also tells Otis that he will have to be leaving Chicago soon.
Henry and Otis then slaughter an entire family, recording the whole incident on their newly acquired video camera, and then watching it at the apartment for entertainment. Indeed, Otis enjoys it so much, he decides to watch it a second time.
Soon thereafter, Becky (still unaware of the murders perpetrated by Henry and Otis) decides that she is going to return home to her daughter, so she quits her job. Meanwhile, Otis smashes the camera by accident whilst filming pedestrians from the passenger seat window of Henry's car, whilst Henry drives. He and Henry argue about it, and Otis gets out of the car, going for a drink, whilst Henry returns to the apartment. Becky tells Henry her plans, and they decide to go out for a steak dinner. They return home to find Otis passed out on the couch with the TV on. Henry turns it off, and Becky directs him into her bedroom. She begins to undress herself and him, but he is unreceptive to her advances. A drunk Otis enters and asks if he's interrupting anything. Embarrassed, Henry leaves to buy cigarettes. When he returns, he finds Otis attempting to rape Becky. He drags him off her and a fight ensues, which ends when Becky stabs Otis in the eye with the handle of a metal rat-tail comb. Henry then kills Otis and hacks his body apart in the bathtub, telling Becky that calling the police would be a mistake, and that they need to deal with this situation themselves.
He convinces her that they should simply dump the body, which he does in a river. They then pack their bags and head off. Henry suggests that they go to his sister's ranch and lay low for a while, sending for Becky’s daughter when the time is right. In the car, Becky confesses that she loves Henry. "I guess I love you too," Henry replies, unemotionally.
They book into a motel for the night. The next morning, Henry leaves the motel alone, gets into the car and drives away. He stops at the side of the road a little later to dump a suitcase in a ditch before driving off again. The camera moves in towards the case, revealing blood stains all over it, and, as with the opening of the film, we hear the sounds of struggle and screaming; presumably Becky's dying moments.
Cast
Origins
In 1984, executive producers Malik B. Ali and Waleed B. Ali of Maljack Productions hired a former delivery man for their video equipment rental business, John McNaughton, to direct a documentary about gangsters in Chicago during the 1930s. Dealers in Death[1] was a moderate success, and was well received critically, so the Ali brothers kept McNaughton on as director for a second documentary, this time about the Chicago wrestling scene in the 1950s. A collection of vintage wrestling tapes had been discovered, and the owner was willing to sell them to the Ali brothers for use in the documentary. However, after financing was in place, the owner doubled his price and the brothers pulled out of the deal. With the documentary cancelled, Waleed and McNaughton, decided that the money for the documentary could instead be used to make a feature film. The Ali brothers gave McNaughton $110,000 to make the film, with the provisos being that it was to be a horror film with plenty of blood.
McNaughton knew that with the budget he was to be working, there would be no way he could make a horror movie about aliens or monsters, and he found himself stumped for a subject matter until he saw an episode of the TV show 20/20 about the serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. It was then that McNaughton decided the subject for the film would be a flesh and blood human.
In the meantime, the Ali brothers brought Steven A. Jones onto the project as a producer, and Jones hired Richard Fire to work as McNaughton's co-writer. With producer, writer and director in place and with the subject matter decided upon, the film went into production.[2]
Truth from fiction
With the film's influence derived from the real life case of Henry Lee Lucas, the character of Henry shares many biographical concurrences with Lucas himself. However, as the opening statement makes clear, the film is based more on Lucas' violent fantasies rather than the crimes he was convicted of. Similarities include:
- Henry Lee Lucas became acquainted with a drifter and male prostitute named Ottis Toole, whom he had met in a soup kitchen in Jacksonville, Florida. In the film, the character's name is "Otis" and the two met in prison.
- Henry Lee Lucas became the lover of Toole's 12-year-old niece, Frieda Powell, who lived with Lucas and her uncle for many years. As in the film, Frieda Powell preferred to be addressed as "Becky" rather than her given name. However, in the film Becky is Otis' younger sister and is considerably older than the 12-year-old Frieda Powell.
- As in the film, Lucas' mother was a violent prostitute who often forced him to watch her whilst she had sex, and occasionally dressed him in girl's clothing. Also in the film, Lucas' father also lost both his legs after being struck by a freight train.
In prison, Lucas confessed to over 600 murders, claiming he committed roughly one murder a week from 1975 to 1983. The vast majority of these claims turned out to be false as Lucas was simply confessing to every unsolved murder brought before him. Doing so ensured better conditions for him, as law enforcement officers would offer him incentives to confess to crimes he did not commit. Such confessions also increased his fame with the public.[citation needed]
In the end, Lucas was convicted of eleven murders and sentenced to death for the murder of Frieda Powell. His death sentence was later commuted to life in prison by the then Governor of Texas George W. Bush in 1998. Lucas died in prison of heart failure on March 13, 2001.
Production
Henry was shot on 16mm in only 28 days for $110,000. During filmmaking, costs were cut by employing family and friends wherever possible, and participants utilized their own possessions. For example, the dead couple in the bar at the start of the film are the parents of director John McNaughton’s best friend, whilst the bar itself is where McNaughton once worked. Actress Mary Demas, a close friend of McNaughton’s, plays three different murder victims: the woman in the ditch in the opening shot, the woman with the bottle in her mouth in the toilet, and the first of the two murdered prostitutes. The four women Henry encounters outside the shopping mall were all played by close friends of McNaughton. The woman hitchhiking was a woman with whom McNaughton used to work. The clothes Michael Rooker wears throughout the film were his own (apart from the shoes and socks). The car driven by Henry belonged to one of the electricians on the film. Art director Rick Paul plays the man shot in the layby; storyboard artist Frank Coronado plays the smaller of the attacking bums; grip Brian Graham plays the husband in the family-massacre scene; and executive producer Waleed B. Ali plays the clerk serving Henry towards the end of the film.[3]
Actor Michael Rooker remained in character for the duration of the shoot, even off set, not socializing with any of the cast or crew during the month long shoot. According to the costume designer Patricia Hart, she and Rooker would travel to the set together each day, and she never knew from one minute to the next if she was talking to Michael or to Henry as sometimes he would speak about his childhood and background not as Michael Rooker but as Henry. Indeed, so in-character did Rooker remain, that during the shoot, his wife discovered she was pregnant, but she waited until filming had stopped before she told him.[4]
Because the production had so little money, they could not afford extras, so all of the people in the exterior shots of the streets of Chicago are simply pedestrians going about their business. For example, in the scene where Becky emerges from the subway, two men can be seen standing at the top of the stairs having a heated discussion. These men were really having an argument, and when the film crew arrived to shoot, they refused to move, so John McNaughton decided to include them in the shot.
After filming was finished, there was so little money left that the film had to be edited on a rented 16 mm flatbed which was set up in editor Elena Maganini's living room.
Henry and the censors
Although the film was made in 1986, it was not released until 1989 partly due to repeated disagreements with the MPAA over the movie's violent content, partly due to the executive producers not knowing how to market it, and partly their not thinking it was a very good film. The film was given an X rating by the MPAA but ultimately released in the United States without a rating.
In the United Kingdom, the film has had a long and complex relationship with the BBFC. In 1990, distributor Electric Pictures submitted the film for classification with 38 seconds already removed (the pan across the hotel room and into the bathroom, revealing the semi-naked woman on the toilet with a broken bottle stuck in her mouth). Electric Pictures had performed this edit themselves without the approval of director John McNaughton because they feared it was such an extreme image so early in the film, it would turn the board against them. The film was classified 18 for theatrical release in April 1991, but only if 24 seconds were cut from the family massacre scene (primarily involving the shots where Otis gropes the mother’s breasts both prior to killing her and after she is dead). Total time cut from the film: 62 seconds.
In 1992, Electric Pictures again submitted the film to the BBFC for home video classification, again with the initial 38-second edit. In January 1993, the BBFC again classified the film 18, waiving the 24 seconds they had cut from the theatrical release. Instead however, they cut four seconds from the scene where the TV salesman is murdered, meaning a total of 42 seconds were supposed to be removed from the home video release. However, BBFC director James Ferman overruled his own team and demanded that the family massacre scene be trimmed down to almost nothing, removing 71 seconds of footage. Additionally, Ferman re-edited the scene so that the reaction shot of Henry and Otis watching TV now occurred midway through the scene rather than at the end. Total time cut from the film: 113 seconds.
In 2001, Universal Home Entertainment submitted a completely uncut version of the film for classification for home video release. The BBFC waived the four seconds cut from the murder of the TV salesman, and 61 of the 71 seconds from the family massacre scene (they refused to reinstate the 10 seconds of the scene where Otis molests the mother after she is dead). Additionally, they partly approved the 38 second shot of the dead woman on the toilet, but they demanded that the last 17 seconds of the shot be removed. Based upon this, Universal decided to remove the shot entirely. Total time cut from the film: 48 seconds.
In 2003, Optimum Releasing again submitted a fully uncut version of the film for classification for home video release. In February 2003, the BBFC passed the film completely uncut, and in March 2003, the uncut version of the film was officially released in the UK for the first time.[5]
Response
Henry turned a profit, making over $600,000 during its initial 1989 theatrical run. The film has a 'Fresh' certification from Rotten Tomatoes with an approval rating of 88% based on 42 reviews.[6] Rooker's performance received generally high marks.
Critics who liked the film tended to focus on the sense of newness it brought to the saturated horror genre. Roger Ebert, for example, called Henry "a very good film," a "low-budget tour de force," and wrote that the film attempts to deal "honestly with its subject matter, instead of trying to sugar-coat violence as most 'slasher' films do."[7] Elliott Stein of The Village Voice called it "the best film of the year...recalls the best work of Cassavetes." Siskel & Ebert called it "a powerful and important film, brilliantly acted and directed." Dave Kehr of the Chicago Tribune said it was "one of the ten best films of the year...combines Fritz Lang's sense of predetermination with the freshness of John Cassavetes."[8]
DVD release
In the UK, the film was first released in its uncut form in 2003 by Optimum Releasing. The DVD contained a commentary from director John McNaughton (recorded in 1999), a censorship timeline, comparisons of the scenes edited by the BBFC with their original uncut statis, two interviews with McNaughton (one from 1999, one from 2003), a stills gallery and a biography of Henry Lee Lucas (text).
In the United States, in 2005 a special 20th Anniversary Edition two-disc DVD was released by Dark Sky Films. This DVD included a newly recorded commentary from McNaughton, a 50-minute making-of documentary, a 23-minute documentary about Henry Lee Lucas, 21 minutes of deleted scenes with commentary from McNaughton, a stills gallery, and the original storyboards. This DVD also featured a reversible cover featuring the banned original poster art by Joe Coleman.
References
External links
