Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. (18.)
Directed by John McNaughton. 1986
Starring Michael Rooker, Tom Towles, Tracy Arnold. Out on limited edition two-disc UHK/ Blu-ray from Arrow Video.
Except it isn’t. A portrait of a serial killer. Not really. The original film poster when it came out announced “He Isn’t Freddy, He Isn’t Jason, He’s Real.” but he isn’t. Serial killers are known to be creatures of habit, notoriously picky. Every murder has to be just so. Our Henry – like most film serial killers – is a gadfly killer, never killing the same way twice. The film gives him a rationale for this – that it makes him harder to track and help him to operate under the radar of law enforcement if he doesn’t have a signature MO – but it is still a way of glamorising him because it is making him more interesting.
Another reason Henry the on-screen serial killer isn't real is because he's based on a real-life serial killer who wasn’t real. He is loosely inspired by the case of Henry Lee Lucas who at one point had confessed to 600 murders. Lucas though took an in-for-a-penny, in-for-a-pound approach to the criminal justice system and would confess to anything if there was a milkshake or juicy steak in it for him. The film was made before Lucas’s confession spree had been discredited.
McNaughton sets his debut film in Chicago where Henry (Rooker) is an ex-con living with a former prison mate Otis (Towles.) At the start, they are joined by Otis's sister, Becky (Arnold) who is escaping from an abusive husband. Initially, murder is Henry’s own personal pursuit but halfway through he brings Otis into his activities. To some degree, the film is a black comedy and a character study of a group of underclass social failures. Mainly though it is deeply disturbing.
Which is reassuring. In this time of turmoil and tumult, it’s a relief to find something that you can rely on, that puts some solid ground beneath your feet. So thank God that Henry is still an 18, is still considered something that cannot be passively consumed, might bring you up short. When it came out in this country in the early nineties, some five years after it had been made, this was a very culty, dare-you-watch film, the classy end of the video nasty spectrum. It's definitely strong stuff, but in some ways, quite tame.
For the first half, Henry’s horrors are only detailed through their aftermath, a series of tableau images of dead bodies. Some of these are quite graphic but the emphasis is on the victims, on what has been taken away rather than the power of taking it. Only when Henry brings in Otis does the film show the murders. Initially, these are swift and/or jokey, the kind of exaggerated screen violence we are accustomed to. Then, having gotten you to lower your defences, the film pulls you up short with a sequence that is almost unbearable to watch - a home invasion in which Henry and Otis massacre a whole family in their suburban home.
What is striking about this sequence is that it is seen through the video recording Henry makes of it and the sequence ends with the film cutting to Henry and Otis on the couch watching themselves, Otis indulging the rewind and slo-mo function. Watching again, what is striking about the scene is that it is incredibly disturbing, but actually not at all graphic; certainly not compared to similar scenes in either of Haneke's Funny Games or even A Clockwork Orange. There is certainly a degree of gleeful sadism in the way those scenes were executed, but McNaughton does the bare minimum: no blood and minimal violence, just a total concentration on how these people are being demeaned and traumatised, prior to being slaughtered.
It’s a very decent film, in both senses of the word and a real one-off. Director McNaughton didn’t really go on to become anything special. He directed De Niro and Bill Murray in Mad Dog and Glory and made the enjoyably lurid thriller Wild Things (also out on Arrow Video in May.) The film though did launch Rooker into a long and successful career as a supporting player. He's rarely the lead, but he's never too far down the cast list. Watching this again though, the case could be made for him being the least impressive of the main three actors. Rooker's Henry uses quite a limited range of expressions. While Towles is a skin-crawlingly ghastly degenerate, Henry is a scowling, taciturn loner, who you could even go so far as to describe as misunderstood. So although the film tries hard not to add to the glamorising of serial killers, it still shapes him from the standard Hollywood action hero mould.
Arrow has, as ever, done a spiffing job on this, packing the discs with informative features.
Brand new audio commentary by John McNaughton & Steven A. Jones
• Two archive commentaries by John McNaughton
• Scene specific commentaries with John McNaughton and critic Nigel Floyd
• Deleted scenes and outtakes
• Original script
• Original theatrical and 30th-anniversary trailers
• Image gallery
Portrait: The Making of Henry, a 50-minute behind-the-scenes documentary
• In Defense of Henry, an appreciation by Joe Swanberg, Kim Morgan, Jeffrey Sconce, Joe Bob Briggs and Errol Morris
• Twisting the Lens: The Diegetic Camera and Voyeurism in Henry, exclusive new documentary with John McNaughton, Adam Rockoff, Anna Bogutskaya and Jonathan Rigby discussing killers behind cameras
• Henry vs. MPAA: A Visual History, the story of the struggle to get Henry into North American theatres
• Henry at the BBFC with Stephen Thrower, discussing Henry's troubled history at the hands of the British censors
• John McNaughton on Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, exclusive new interview with John McNaughton and Stephen A. Jones, conducted at the time of Henry's UK premiere in February 1990
• Interview with John McNaughton, from 1998
• It's Either You... Or Them: An Interview with Joe Coleman, the artist behind Henry's legendary original theatrical release poster
• John McNaughton in conversation with Nigel Floyd, interview from 2003
• In the Round: A Conversation with John McNaughton, conducted by Spencer Parsons in 2016.
Directed by John McNaughton. 1986
Starring Michael Rooker, Tom Towles, Tracy Arnold. Out on limited edition two-disc UHK/ Blu-ray from Arrow Video.
Except it isn’t. A portrait of a serial killer. Not really. The original film poster when it came out announced “He Isn’t Freddy, He Isn’t Jason, He’s Real.” but he isn’t. Serial killers are known to be creatures of habit, notoriously picky. Every murder has to be just so. Our Henry – like most film serial killers – is a gadfly killer, never killing the same way twice. The film gives him a rationale for this – that it makes him harder to track and help him to operate under the radar of law enforcement if he doesn’t have a signature MO – but it is still a way of glamorising him because it is making him more interesting.
Another reason Henry the on-screen serial killer isn't real is because he's based on a real-life serial killer who wasn’t real. He is loosely inspired by the case of Henry Lee Lucas who at one point had confessed to 600 murders. Lucas though took an in-for-a-penny, in-for-a-pound approach to the criminal justice system and would confess to anything if there was a milkshake or juicy steak in it for him. The film was made before Lucas’s confession spree had been discredited.
McNaughton sets his debut film in Chicago where Henry (Rooker) is an ex-con living with a former prison mate Otis (Towles.) At the start, they are joined by Otis's sister, Becky (Arnold) who is escaping from an abusive husband. Initially, murder is Henry’s own personal pursuit but halfway through he brings Otis into his activities. To some degree, the film is a black comedy and a character study of a group of underclass social failures. Mainly though it is deeply disturbing.
Which is reassuring. In this time of turmoil and tumult, it’s a relief to find something that you can rely on, that puts some solid ground beneath your feet. So thank God that Henry is still an 18, is still considered something that cannot be passively consumed, might bring you up short. When it came out in this country in the early nineties, some five years after it had been made, this was a very culty, dare-you-watch film, the classy end of the video nasty spectrum. It's definitely strong stuff, but in some ways, quite tame.
For the first half, Henry’s horrors are only detailed through their aftermath, a series of tableau images of dead bodies. Some of these are quite graphic but the emphasis is on the victims, on what has been taken away rather than the power of taking it. Only when Henry brings in Otis does the film show the murders. Initially, these are swift and/or jokey, the kind of exaggerated screen violence we are accustomed to. Then, having gotten you to lower your defences, the film pulls you up short with a sequence that is almost unbearable to watch - a home invasion in which Henry and Otis massacre a whole family in their suburban home.
What is striking about this sequence is that it is seen through the video recording Henry makes of it and the sequence ends with the film cutting to Henry and Otis on the couch watching themselves, Otis indulging the rewind and slo-mo function. Watching again, what is striking about the scene is that it is incredibly disturbing, but actually not at all graphic; certainly not compared to similar scenes in either of Haneke's Funny Games or even A Clockwork Orange. There is certainly a degree of gleeful sadism in the way those scenes were executed, but McNaughton does the bare minimum: no blood and minimal violence, just a total concentration on how these people are being demeaned and traumatised, prior to being slaughtered.
It’s a very decent film, in both senses of the word and a real one-off. Director McNaughton didn’t really go on to become anything special. He directed De Niro and Bill Murray in Mad Dog and Glory and made the enjoyably lurid thriller Wild Things (also out on Arrow Video in May.) The film though did launch Rooker into a long and successful career as a supporting player. He's rarely the lead, but he's never too far down the cast list. Watching this again though, the case could be made for him being the least impressive of the main three actors. Rooker's Henry uses quite a limited range of expressions. While Towles is a skin-crawlingly ghastly degenerate, Henry is a scowling, taciturn loner, who you could even go so far as to describe as misunderstood. So although the film tries hard not to add to the glamorising of serial killers, it still shapes him from the standard Hollywood action hero mould.
Arrow has, as ever, done a spiffing job on this, packing the discs with informative features.
Brand new audio commentary by John McNaughton & Steven A. Jones
• Two archive commentaries by John McNaughton
• Scene specific commentaries with John McNaughton and critic Nigel Floyd
• Deleted scenes and outtakes
• Original script
• Original theatrical and 30th-anniversary trailers
• Image gallery
Portrait: The Making of Henry, a 50-minute behind-the-scenes documentary
• In Defense of Henry, an appreciation by Joe Swanberg, Kim Morgan, Jeffrey Sconce, Joe Bob Briggs and Errol Morris
• Twisting the Lens: The Diegetic Camera and Voyeurism in Henry, exclusive new documentary with John McNaughton, Adam Rockoff, Anna Bogutskaya and Jonathan Rigby discussing killers behind cameras
• Henry vs. MPAA: A Visual History, the story of the struggle to get Henry into North American theatres
• Henry at the BBFC with Stephen Thrower, discussing Henry's troubled history at the hands of the British censors
• John McNaughton on Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, exclusive new interview with John McNaughton and Stephen A. Jones, conducted at the time of Henry's UK premiere in February 1990
• Interview with John McNaughton, from 1998
• It's Either You... Or Them: An Interview with Joe Coleman, the artist behind Henry's legendary original theatrical release poster
• John McNaughton in conversation with Nigel Floyd, interview from 2003
• In the Round: A Conversation with John McNaughton, conducted by Spencer Parsons in 2016.
