Cheap Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (DVD) (Michael Rooker, Tracy Arnold, Tom Towles) (John McNaughton) Price

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Customer Reviews of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

Whoa. It really is that good.

John McNaughton (Homicide: Life on the Street) really ripped it up with his first fictional feature film. His previous offering, a documentary, put him in the perfect frame of mind to direct this rather loose biopic, and the documentary quality of the photography is one of the many, many things about this movie that works on every possible level.

The casting of the film is absolutely perfect. Henry Lee Lucas is played my Michael Rooker in his big screen debut; eighteen years later, Rooker (nominated for Best Actor by three different film societies for his portrayal of Lucas) is a household name in Hollywood and has filled bills for many of the A-list directors. Ottis Toole is played by Tom Towles (who sounds more articulate than the real Toole ever did, a benefit to the film, to be sure), making his second big screen appearance. Towles has also gone on to a modicum of big-screen success, mostly in horror films (House of 1000 Corpses, the 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead). Toole's fourteen-year-old cousin Becky is made a twenty-five-year-old sister, possibly to stop from alienating both the audience and the MPAA, and is similarly well-played by Tracy Arnold, who then all but vanished from Hollywood. The three of them, living together in a small apartment, interact in the most ominous of ways throughout the movie, as McNaughton delves into the character of his somewhat fictionalized serial killer.

And what a character it is. Henry is the ultimate sociopath, a man who leads his life for the sole purpose of depriving other living things of theirs. Simply put, killing, for Henry, is fun. As the movie opens, he is living with Toole (a former cellmate), and we are treated to a montage of some of Henry's former victims. Toole has not yet progressed to killing, but is nothing more than a keg of dynamite with a very short fuse Henry is itching to light. Then Becky moves out of her house and into Toole's, and the whole situation explodes.

Those expecting your standard horror film are not going to get it. Despite the movie's original X rating (which was surrendered the year after its release, and the film is now listed as unrated), don't expect the gore factor of the films that usually make it to America unrated (Fulci, Lenzi, you know the drill). The MPAA rated Henry X in no small part because of the disturbing nature of the subject matter and the way in which that subject matter is presented; you can't make a film about a guy who hates women and spends his free time killing them without being a tad politically incorrect, of course. That the viewer comes to identify with Henry, thanks to Rooker's brilliant portrayal, makes this all the more disturbing. (And makes the movie's last scene, despite its complete absence of gore, the movie's biggest and most emotional sucker punch.) Simply put, this is a supremely disturbing film; as close to onscreen poetry as one is likely to find. I cannot recommend it highly enough; it made my all-time 100 best films list in very short order. **** ½

Henry: The True Face of Horror
Most horror films are like roller coaster rides--we get thrills and chills, but we also laugh; we know we're safe. It's only an illusion of fear, not fear itself. John McNaughton's Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is fear itself. We cannot laugh after this movie, cannot recount its most famous scenes with pleasure, because this film stands as one of the bleakest, most relentless depictions of a murderer ever put to celluloid. It's practically a documentary. I rank it with "Psycho" as one of the greatest of all-time horror films.

This film is light years from Hollywood treatments of serial killers. Sure, Se7en was really good, but come ON people, when did you EVER hear of a murderer with such an apocalyptic, clever, and convenient M.O.? Henry, as played by Michael Rooker, is an emotional blank, a human cipher. He's not sympathetic at all--no wisecracks, no catch-phrases, nothing that we can latch on to to understand him.

Therein lies the power of the movie. If Henry revelled in his bloodshed, we could despise him. If he suffered crippling feelings of guilt afterwards, we could pity him. But you can't do either. You just kind of watch him, hoping he won't go too far... that he'll stop soon... that some tough detective would track him down... But none of these things happen.

"It's always the same, and it's always different," Henry tells his friend Otis (Tom Towles), who eventually ventures out with Henry on his killing sprees. Why? Because he's stupid, restless, filled with unfocused loathing. What more of an explanation do you need? "It's either you or them, one way or another." That's all the rationale you'll get for Henry's compulsion, and it's as good an explanation as any.

The plot, such as it is, takes a twist for the worst when Otis' sister Becky (Tracy Arnold) comes to stay with him and Henry in Chicago. Lonely and destitute after the break-up of her marriage, she finds Henry someone she can talk to because he's not "judgmental." Read: he's a blank slate upon whom she can project whatever she wants, and right now she wants someone to understand her. In one subtly chilling scene, she tells Henry how she had been beaten and raped repeatedly by her father as a teen. Henry says to her in his deadend rasp, "Didn't get along with your Daddy, huh?"

Henry's normally placid demeanor dissolves only when he talks about his abusive mother. I like how he misremembers how he murdered her. That strikes me as really true and accurate; serial killers are like THIS. "It ain't what she done," he says, "it's how she done it." We see how brutality breeds brutality, how violence and despair and rage are almost a genetic code. But the director, John McNaughton, isn't making a message movie--you gotta pick up on this stuff yourself. Go watch an Oliver Stone movie if you want socially redeemable violence (which is an oxymoron).

While certain watchdogs of morality in film howl that the realistic depiction of violence in movies ultimately desensitizes the viewer, nothing could be further from the truth in Henry. Can anyone watch the videotape sequence herein, where Henry and Otis slaughter an entirely family and not be left feeling disturbed, violated, empty? The murders are virtually bloodless, and yet it may be the most unsettling screen violence I have ever seen (well, up until I saw Mr. Orange's torture bit in 1992). I wanted it to... go away... But then, real violence makes you feel that way. That's what makes Henry brilliant--no cheap thrills. McNaughton is playing for real. Like many people, I cringe when I see violence in a film, but unlike many, I can't turn away. We need films this raw and immediate and rough to explore such foul things--you can't expect Hollywood to do it.

"But if you strangle one, and stab another, and one you cut up and one you don't, then the police don't know what to," Henry explains. And there's the moral center of this movie. Sorry. This is not about good and evil, because there is no such thing in the serial killer's world. Don't pretend that there is. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is a horror film in which the truly horrified is not the character on the screen, as it too often is, but the audience itself. This is not an enjoyable film, but it is one you must see.

Brutally Candid Horror..
Body after body is depicted together with murdering agonizing screams as a background sound. This is the beginning of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, which instills a nightmarish vision of the mind of a serial killer. The film is loosely based on Henry Lee Lucas who was emotionally, physically, and sexually abused as child by his mother while living with his handicapped father who had lost his legs in an train accident. Henry had been forced to wear dresses and watch his mother having sex with strangers, which has created internal enraged emotions toward women. In addition, Henry shows an emotional numbness whenever he has killed someone as if he had just finished the last of his coffee.

The story takes place in the Chicago area where Henry lives with Otis and Becky. Otis spent time in jail with Henry where the two became friends. His sister Becky has recently escaped an abusive relationship while Henry goes about trying to find odd jobs and killing women in random ways as it will not leave a trail back to him. However, when living in close quarters with others it is does not take long before Otis finds out about Henry's secret, but instead of going to the police they partner up. Henry teaches him the secret of killing for pleasure and together they begin to find ways of sharing these grotesque moments with each other.

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer has some interesting cinematic moments where a camera is use for the main point-of-view, which later is transferred into the living room. This brings a morbidly surreal experience to the audience as the fetish of the disturbed characters is brought to the eyes of the audience in a revolting manner. Yet, it is a subtle transition, which most people have experienced through their own home video moments. The story is filmed with highly grained film stock, which enhances the realistic acuity of the environment as it brings further horror to the minds of the audience. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is a highly disturbing film that experiments with audience participation in the film in a most clever way, which leaves the audience with a truly horrific cinematic experience.