42: Glutton for Punishment (or how Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer messed up my sleep)

You know, I happen to occasionally mess up my valued sleep in some way or another. Sometimes I think I bring this kind of pain on myself, whether it be through finishing papers at the last minute or finishing my own personal stuff. In this case, I did it through watching late-night movies on cable. While I watched the Japanese serial killer movie Vengeance Is Mine (one I haven't seen in a long while, but still a bizarre retelling of a serial killer in Japan during the 1960s), that isn't what effed up my sleep. The following movie did that work for me in half the time Vengeance did. That movie?

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.

Yeah.

Now, I have heard of this movie before, and honestly didn't watch it (albeit a few brief clips that have popped up here and there) until now. For ye not in the know (or just not interested in emotionally scarring yourself, and I wouldn't hold it against you), let me explain something about Henry: the movie is a very cold and mostly fictional story based on serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, who claimed to have killed several hundred people during his reign of terror (most of which were proven false). This 1986 movie was not a mega-budget affair (it was made in Chicago for around $100,000), and got held up in ratings purgatory (the dreaded X rating, although in retrospect it wasn't for gore) until it was released unrated in 1989.

The reason it got so much controversy is because of the very creepy way the murders are committed. You don't have a killer smiling or pontificating about his evilness (like say, Silence of the Lambs), but you have a man who kills people in the way people hunt and kill deer: without pause. Instead of a master villain like Hannibal Lecter, you get a true and unnerving sociopath in the form of Henry. This of course is helped by Michael Rooker, who plays Henry (who you may have seen in Slither and Mississppi Burning, among many others) and makes him truly terrifying. You've met guys like Henry before, and when you do, should rightly run in the other direction. Which of course, makes the end of the film even more shocking (I would compare it to the subtle way we as an audience know Anton Chigurh has killed someone offscreen in No Country for Old Men).

While some may think the idea of mid-1980s horror movie that can still be creepy today seems implausible, please keep the following in mind: this is during the advent of VHS and camcorders. The film uses our killer and (at first) reluctant companion's discovery of a video camera to tape their crimes to comment on the voyeuristic tendencies to sensationalize brutal crimes that is in full bloom today. As Henry's friend Otis rewinds the taped murder of a small family (the movie's nastiest sequence, shown through the view of a camcorder's viewfinder), Henry can only ask what's he doing. Otis calmly says, "I want to see it again." And if you wanted to do the same back then, you might be as sick for wishing it. Now, you could linger on brutal crimes over and over again on almost every new network on primetime alone. It makes a CSI rerun look as tame as an afterschool special. Ewww.

The only judgment made against Henry's actions is what the audience thinks. There's no celebration of the murders of innocent people. There is no comeuppance or assurance of good prevailing against evil. It's just happens, and will seemingly go on (if not by Henry, then by some other sociopath brewing in our society) as the twenty years since the movie has proven.

What I'm trying to say is this: I don't think Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is the exploitive trash that many of its detractors would suggest it is, but it might be the most unsettling movies about modern sociopaths I have ever witnessed (and this is from a man who saw the remake of Godzilla...in a movie theatre). It's a good movie for its subject matter, but by no means is this movie for the squeamish or easily traumatized (I can now understand how my older sister felt after watching the end of Seven). I don't regret seeing it, but I'm really not jonesing to see it again anytime soon.

(And if I didn't do an adequate job of warning you about how disturbing this movie is and you decide to watch it, PLEASE don't write me complaining how it screwed you up, okay? If you don't want to risk your immortal soul, write to me for a plot summary. I'm sure I can encapsulate it for you in a less soul damaging way. Or look it up on Wikipedia. Whatever works for ya.)