Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) and the Genesis and Execution of Evil

Genesis 

John McNaugton was many things before he became a filmmaker. He was a carnival worker, a construction worker, a deliveryman, a factory worker, a ship builder and a silversmith. He also studied fine arts achieving a degree in television production with a minor in still photography. Having always loved art, movies and television since childhood McNaugton would go on to develop an admiration for Martin Scorsese and John Carpenter seeing in their work their own passionate love for cinema.

During his bicycling deliveryman days in the late 70s just before videocassettes, John McNaugton worked for the Ali brothers Waleed B. Ali & Malik B. Ali for their video equipment rental business. The two brothers were operating out of their parents’ basement with McNaugton getting out wherever needed A. V. equipment - 8 mm, 16 mm and slide projectors. Before leaving their employment, he told Waleed of his dream of making a feature film someday. The two brothers would eventually get into the videocassette business as MPI Home Video and were among the first to do so selling loads of units and making an absolute fortune from buying the video rights to horror movies. They saw the huge potential in making their own original horror film because they could own all of the rights to that title rather than having to license the video rights to other movies for a specific amount of time.

In 1984, the Ali brothers knowing of his background in television production and his desire to become a filmmaker hired John McNaugton to direct a documentary about gangsters in their native Chicago during the 1930s. Marketed on videocassette two were made both under the title of ‘Dealers in Death’ using public domain film footage and still photographs. They became a small financial success and enjoyed critical acclaim. Due to this, the two brothers asked him to make a few more about the city’s pre-WWF pro wrestling scene in the 1950s. A discovery was made of lost vintage tapes of the sport and their owner was willing to sell them for footage in the documentary. The owner decided to double on the initial agreed price so the brothers pulled out cancelling the production.

However, this turned out to be a blessing in disguise as the Ali brothers saw the opportunity they were looking for to make that horror movie as Maljack Productions. Not only was McNaugton fulfilling his lifetime wish to direct a feature film luckily for the two brothers he also loved horror and had been a die-hard fan of the genre since he was a child. With the money set aside, originally for the wrestling documentary $110,000 he set himself the challenge of making the most terrifying movie possible with such a small budget. Knowing the financial limitations he knew he could not make a horror with loads of SFX featuring aliens, demons, monsters or whatever creatures. Struggling to come up with an idea by chance he came across on TV an edition of the show '20/20' with a human-interest story on the serial killer Henry Lee Lucas and with that he had found the subject matter he was looking for - a cold blooded murdering human being. With the idea of the film in place, the two brothers brought in Steven A. Jones as producer and Richard Fire as John McNaugton’s co-writer. On completion of the screenplay, casting and production commenced.

Execution

Shot over just 28 days on 16 mm McNaughton actually wanted to make the entire movie with a hand-held camera in order to capture a realistic fly-on-the-wall documentary depiction. With the originally intended vision of his, the filmmaker had hired for his director of photography Jean de Seqonzac a wizard with the hand-held. For reasons that could not be helped, he had to drop out of the production. Replacing him with Charlie Lieberman whose previous work was filming programs about the misery of substance abuse the director discussed with Lieberman the idea of dropping the hand-held approach. However, employed is a flat rigid framing that still encapsulates a look and feel of realism in a docu-drama style of a character study portrayal in the week of a life of a serial killer.

Made was all manner of cost cutting to meet the demands of what was required for the film on such a meagre budget. Friends, family and crew filled up the small roles using their own possessions for props. There were no extras used at all in the scenes filmed on the streets of the windy city of Chicago with everybody in the background being actual pedestrians. In one of my favourite scenes of the movie Ray Atherton, the writer of ‘Dealers in Death’ plays a rude TV salesman victim who actually performed very well by doing some improvisation in insulting Henry (Michael Rooker) and Otis (Tom Towles). When Henry smashes a Television over Atherton’s head after stabbing him repeatedly John Mcnaugton actually filmed it in reverse with Rooker pulling off the prop of the broken TV set away from the head of Atherton. In what is a bleak, disturbing and graphically violent movie McNaugton and Fire sprinkle very subtle touches of dark humour throughout here and there. Here as Atherton sits in his chair dead with the TV still on his head Henry passes its plug to Otis and calmly and coldly tells him “Otis, plug it in.” Otis does so with a smile on his face and the television blows up. See the scene below...

This scene illustrates that the title character is indeed the protagonist of the film but just so happens to be a serial killer. It is his story seen entirely from his point of view. We the audience obviously know by this point in the movie that Henry and Otis are murderers and there is this ignorant arsehole antagonizing them. It does not take a genius to work out what the result of this is going to be; we are just waiting for this prick to get what is coming to him and more so we really want it to happen. The director forces us to relate to the evil doers. We have all experienced confrontations with idiots in the stresses of our day-to-day lives - we have all been there. Most of us wish that we could kill them and get away with it. Obviously, I hope none of you would see it through and neither would I but here we get to see our fantasies lived out. Just imagine if this was your shitbag boss at work. John Mcnaugton cleverly flips the script, as just in a previous scene we were disgusted when we saw Henry dispatch with brutal efficiency two prostitutes.

On his 2005 commentary for the 20^th Anniversary Edition DVD release of the film this is what McNaugton said of this scene after setting up the TV salesman as a deeply unlikable character “This is a normal cinematic way to allow violence. So by the time we get to the murder, the audience is rooting to see him get what he's got coming, and there's a certain amount of humour in the scene, it's played for, not laughs per se, but just to set the audience up in one direction only to reverse the direction later when they see the family slaughtered. This is silly and it's funny, smash a TV over his head; this is how usually violence and mayhem is presented to us, it's deserved by a despicable character so it's okay."

That other aforementioned pivotal scene of the family massacre is one of the most disturbingly prolonged examples of what evil humans can conflict on one another that I have ever endured in cinema. Whereas that previous scene was depicting violence as cinematic entertainment, here we have the grim reality of it again. In his 1999 commentary for the 2003 Full Uncut Edition region 2 DVD juxtaposing the two scenes John McNaugton said  “Let's have these two guys walk into a home full of completely innocent people, a family, and just brutally slaughter them, and let's shoot it from this little video camera. Then they play it back while they're sitting on their couch, watching it as if it were home entertainment. Something is being said there. The way it was filmed, you see the setup, then you see the camera, then you start to witness the act, but you're witnessing it on video tape, and you assume you're witnessing it through the eyepiece as it's happening, but then you realize it's not the eyepiece, it's the playback later. Then you see Henry and Otis, and you're there with them watching it, you're participating in watching this and being entertained by it, but it's no longer fun. It's a really, really hideous and repulsive act, and it's a very uncomfortable moment."

McNaugton flips the script once again from getting us to enjoy the violence of one scene and then subjecting us to yet more brutal violence but this is impossible for us to take pleasure in. However, due to the director filming the sequence in this way we are still the voyeurs of the evil pleasures of Henry and Otis sitting on their sofa alongside them while they are entertained by their own acts of murder of the innocent Father, Mother and son. The director is challenging us to ask ourselves what is our desired maximum amount of violence that we are willing to accept and enjoy as filmed entertainment. Apparently, this scene was supposed to be longer in the original script with Otis sexually molesting the dead body of the mother and then committing the vile act of necrophilia. John McNaugton smartly did away with this though as it was unneeded. How the scene exists in the movie is disturbing as it is.

The film’s real inspiration is from the confessions and fantasies of Henry Lee Lucas rather than the actual truth of the murders he was convicted for, as many of his confessions were false. This is conveyed in the four opening post-murder scenes showing us women’s dead bodies and more specifically the first shot where the body of the woman is posed in the exact same position as one of the victims in a case that Lucas was a chief suspect in. McNaugton has said of this “They represent a tableaux of Henry's 'work'; Henry is a murderer, and the shots of his victims, unadorned with commentary or contextualization, represent a montage of his achievements, a portfolio of sorts.” What the director is getting at is that Henry is like an artist and this is a collage of his work.

The character does though share many similarities with that of the real life serial killer. Lucas' mother was a violent prostitute who would dress him up in girl's clothes and force him to watch her have sex with her clients. While his father a truck driver was struck by a freight train and lost both of his legs. The character in the film tells Becky the same story. The real Henry killed his mother and spent several years in prison for it. The character based on him in the movie makes the same claim but there is a great deal of uncertainty as to whether he did it or not due to the contradicting account of how he committed the murder.

As in the film, Henry Lee Lucas became friends in prison with male prostitute and drifter Ottis Toole and they went on to be flat mates when released. Although in the movie, the name given is Otis. Lucas had a sexual relationship with Toole's 12-year-old niece Frieda Powell who lived with them for many years and just like the character in the film, Frieda preferred the name of Becky. Obviously though the movie’s depiction has Becky (A.K.A Frieda) as a fully-grown woman. Another notable difference in the film is that Henry due to the psychological damage inflicted by his mother would go into fits of rage when he would see sexual acts performed in front of him. However, in real life Henry Lee Lucas was also a pedophile and a rapist.

Working as a janitor to pay the bills character actor Michael Rooker auditioned for the lead title role of Henry wearing his uniform, which he wore through the entirety of the filming. Rooker remained in character at all times during the one-month shoot and off set not socializing with any of the other cast or the crew. His wife scared by his dedication to the role put off telling him that she was pregnant until filming had finished. Michael Rooker’s performance is chilling, intense and truly unforgettable. It is one of the most terrifying performances to grace the screen. Actually, Tom Towles auditioned for the lead title role himself but John McNaugton instead gave him the role of Otis. The character is the funnyman to Rooker’s straightman and both the actor and director have referred to him as this saying that they presented him consciously in a darkly humorous manner. Towles’ background prior to the making of this movie was also in improvisational comedy. Tracy Arnold turns in a solid performance as Becky whose character has led a tragic life drawing our sympathies, as she remains here completely and utterly luckless.

 

Throughout the course of the entire film, McNaugton purposely does not include one law enforcement officer on screen. While the movie is indeed realistic this also contributed to the presentation of a bleak harsh world a seemingly lawless one stripping us of any comforts that we might feel from seeing a police officer as Henry and Otis roam freely to dispatch in the most gruesome of ways whomever they feel like. With that said, everything in the movie is far more frightening than any aliens, demons or monsters up on the screen as more likely not than so are we ever going to have a run in with any of these as that would purely be horror entertainment. There is no fantasy here at all just the fact that the real world is not a nice place and that there could well be a sociopathic stranger waiting right around the corner for you for their next victim. The movie is most definitely about a monster but a human one. Along with ‘Manhunter’ (1986), ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ (1991), ‘Seven’ (1995) and ‘American Psycho’ (2000) ‘Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer’ is one of the definitive serial killer masterpieces.

**** out of ****

Dave J. Wilson 

©2012 Cinematic Shocks, Dave J. Wilson - All work is the property of the credited author and may not be reprinted or reproduced elsewhere without permission.