39. HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER

39. HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER
(1986)
Directed by John McNaughton

The true story of Henry Lee Lucas is a fucked bit of American Gothic. Dirt poor, he was horribly abused as a child by his drunken prostitute mother and legless stepfather, suffering brain damage and losing an eye in the process. In the midst of the abuses and humiliations he was introduced to necrophilia with a dead animal by one of his mother's clients at an early age. Evil had staked a claim on the young lad. He killed his mother, spent a few years in a Michigan prison and, after getting paroled, took to the road where he turned into a murder machine for the next eight years, teamed up with his lover, a bisexual pyromaniac named Otis Toole. "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" is the low budget cult classic that is loosely based on the exploits of Henry and Otis and it's a genuinely unsettling and extremely dark ride. Michael Rooker's portrayal of Henry is chilling and the violence is often so realistic that the movie takes on the distressing feel of a documentary or snuff film. I think most people watch horror movies to be entertained and to open the release valve on a variety of anxieties, mainly those concerning death, but movies like "Henry" offer paltry threads of solace and leave a person with little more than a lingering sense of trepidation. Therein lies it's rare power. Realistic horror like this forces us to confront awful realities without the consoling accoutrements of metaphor or myth. There are horrible monsters out there in the American night. Death can be waiting at the next interstate exit and that death could be horrible and painful. A memento mori from me to you.