I am not generally a fan of serial killer films as a subgenre. They’re often ridiculous, their antagonists somehow criminal masterminds with creative flair matched only by the access to the resources they need to stage baroque murder scenes. Even The Silence Of The Lambs and Se7en - two of my all-time favorite films - fall prey to these clichés to some degree, and lesser films indulge them wholeheartedly, trivializing and reducing serial killers to a cartoonish Other, like zombies or vampires or mummies. And, in reality, they aren’t. They aren’t brilliant, they aren’t clever, and they sure as shit aren’t antiheroes. A lot of serial-killer films - at least horror films - forget that, and I think it can be kind of gross and disrespectful, especially when their victims aren’t anything more than props for cheap scares. Which isn’t to say that I don’t like any horror films about serial killers, but I think the ones I do like are all ones that take their characters and the costs of what they’re doing seriously, and don’t glamorize or romanticize any of it at all.
And that type of film really gets its start with Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer. It’s a bleak, unsparing corrective to the idea of the serial killer as a monster apart from humanity and their murders as something creative or even artistic. The late Roger Ebert once described another film as one that “is what it is and occupies a world where the stars don’t shine.” And I can’t think of a better description for this film than that.
It’s the story of three people - there’s Becky, her brother Otis, and Otis’ roommate Henry. Becky shows up at Otis’ place in Chicago, on the run from her abusive husband. She left her daughter at her grandmother’s house and plans to send for her once she’s settled in. Otis is out on parole after a stint in jail, though it isn’t clear why he was there. He met Henry while he was on the inside. Henry’s quiet, reserved, polite. Henry murdered his mother when he was about 24 years old.
Henry goes out a lot at night.
The film tells its story largely in terms of juxtaposition - it’s both the story of a young woman trying to get her life together, getting out from under a bad living situation, and also the story of two men whose ability to assign value to human life is severely compromised. Most of Becky’s segments on her own take place in the daytime, soundtracked by upbeat pop music, as she finds her way around Chicago, trying to figure out what her life is now. In those moments, it’s almost like we’re watching a drama about a young woman trying to find her way in the world. The segments focusing on Henry and Otis take place mostly at night, in the parts of Chicago where tourists never go, and bad things happen there, scored by ominous, pulsing synthesizer. There’s no mistaking what kind of story it is. It’s also a story that takes place in the margins - Henry works when he can as an exterminator but it isn’t steady, Otis works at a gas station, deals weed on the side, and meets with his parole officer monthly. Becky finds work as a shampoo girl at a salon, and it’s a definite step up from her previous job dancing at a strip club. Their world is cars that are barely holding together, squalid apartments, shady characters dealing stolen goods out of a storage unit, furtive assignations with sex workers in dimly lit alleyways. Theirs are lives marked by histories of parental abuse and neglect, of barely getting by from one week to the next, of bad decisions with lasting consequences. You can see how they never really had a chance. It feels like we spend most of the film submerged in the dark, and the brief flashes we get of life outside of their world feel almost like another planet entirely. Becky’s part of their world - she’s suffered as much at her parents’ has as either of them - but she’s also hopeful, optimistic. And has no idea what Henry and...increasingly...Otis are capable of.
Likewise, the first act establishes what kind of story it is through visual juxtaposition. It alternates shots of murder victims, lying where they fell, long circling shots taking in the devastation, soundtracked by the echoes of their last moments, screams and pleading, as if the violence still lingers in the air, with moments of Henry going about his business - paying for lunch at a diner, going to work and collecting his pay, noticing women who might be headed someplace alone. For the whole of the first act, all of the violence is observed as aftermath if observed at all - there’s an especially chilling detail with a guitar that would be totally innocuous if we didn’t know exactly how Henry came across it. This shifts gradually in the second act as Henry begins to show Otis what’s possible as long as you don’t get sloppy or fall into a pattern, and from here on the violence is increasingly there on camera for us to observe. It’s messy, abrupt, and ugly, blood and the moans of someone slowly dying, begging for their lives. It comes out of nowhere, with little fanfare. One moment, Henry’s having sex in the back of his car and the next he’s choking the woman to death. There’s a home invasion sequence shot through a camcorder, which lends it the kind of queasy, intimate immediacy that most found-footage films never even touch. It honestly feels like you’re watching something you weren’t meant to see. And the film goes on, we’re faced more and more with exactly who Henry is, who Otis is becoming, and we aren’t allowed to look away. Henry’s had a lot of practice, knows what will and won’t attract attention. Otis quickly discovers he has a taste for killing, taking to it with the enthusiasm of a little boy who’s just realized that just because your parents say you can’t do something, that doesn’t actually stop you from doing it. There are some really dark impulses there that maybe surfaced briefly earlier in the film, but come out more and more as things escalate.
It's also a very grounded story, devoid of flourish. The dialogue is naturalistic, consisting of conversations between people who aren’t especially articulate, who are divorced as much from themselves as each other, and the performances are largely understated, free of unnecessary histrionics. Otis isn’t very bright, he’s impulsive and mean in a needling, belittling way, and it’s tough for him to keep his various appetites in check. Henry, by contrast, is quiet and unassuming, able to move through the world without attracting much attention or notice. He’s careful, and it’s why he hasn’t been caught yet. Becky is young but there’s a tiredness around her eyes that tells us everything we need to know about what she’s been through up to this point. Henry’s most likely the first man Becky’s ever met who hasn’t tried to abuse her in one way or another, and to her, that’s kindness. He protects and defends her around Otis, and you get the sense nobody’s ever done that before either. Her attraction to Henry and willingness to put her trust in him are immediate, predicated on not much more than him extending basic courtesy to her. She imagines a life with him, and the moments her face lights up with hope for something better are hard to watch, precisely because we know her hope is seriously misplaced. There’s a tension there, between the three of them - Otis is almost pure id, he wants what he wants when he wants it, and doesn’t think before he acts. Henry knows Otis is a liability, and Becky sees Henry as a hope for a better life. So it’s as much about the relationship between these three people as anything else, almost like a love triangle, as fucked-up as that sounds, and as the film progresses the strain between Henry and Becky on one side, and Otis on the other gets tighter and tighter, until it finally snaps..
The film is based loosely on the story of Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole, actual serial killers responsible for, in Lucas’ case, possibly eleven deaths. It’s difficult to tell, because Lucas cheerfully confessed to hundreds of crimes in order to secure additional perks while in prison. Like the real killers on whom they’re based, Henry and Otis aren’t glamorous. There’s no flair for the artistic, no themes to their killings. Just a lot of ugly, pointless death.
That’s the reality, and the film ends on a cold, awful note that settles in your stomach and spreads to your bones. Killing isn’t art, it says. It’s just killing.
IMDB entry
Available on Tubi
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