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| DIRECTED BY |
| John McNaughton |
| STARRING |
| Michael Rooker |
| Tom Towles |
| Tracy Arnold |
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After reading about the controversy that �Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer� created in the late 1980s, I had to stay up until 3:00 AM one night in order to finish watching this film, and I still couldn�t get to sleep very easily after it was over. What makes �Henry� so memorable is its unflinching depiction of the atrocities that certain humans are capable of committing; once the film establishes that perspective, it doesn�t waver in its sheer resoluteness.
Director John McNaughton made a wise choice in not letting himself become concerned with the external world of his characters. We aren�t introduced to the authorities here, for the police are non-existent in Henry�s world. Attempting to create a suspenseful subplot by doing this has been the subject of countless movies throughout the decades, but McNaughton instead decided to simply show us Henry�s own world of sickness and depravity. What results is the creation of a cold, emotionless study of the inhumanity of �murdering simply for the fun of it.� The film�s relentless stoicism in showing this world is, understandably, tough for many to watch, but it also allows us to draw our own conclusions instead of having them spoon-fed to us � la some cinematic morality play.
�Henry� wouldn�t really be well remembered today had it not been for Michael Rooker�s chillingly deadpan performance. He managed to turn what was otherwise standard, �Hollywood fare� dialogue into a number of memorable quotations, and his characterization of the charming killer is right up there with Anthony Perkins� Norman Bates in terms of creepiness. The low budget of the film is sometimes too much to ignore, however. McNaughton really should�ve been subtler with certain scenes where dummies are noticeable, and the soundtrack is really a lot less menacing than it should be.
Nevertheless, Henry�s videotaped murdering of a whole family with his accomplice, Ottis, is about as disturbing as anything I�ve seen in a film � it truly makes Kubrick�s famous �A Clockwork Orange� rape scene look tame. And even if the real Henry Lee Lucas didn�t do everything that we see Rooker�s character do in this film, its tenacious realism is still undeniably powerful and it certainly convinced me to never stop for anyone who waves your car down, no matter how benign they may appear to be.
