Through a Killer Darkly

Back in 2004, Fangoria released a comprehensive list of what they believed to be the 50 scariest movies of all time. Not being an avid subscriber to the historic magazine, I picked up a copy, thinking this might be (at least) a fairly crucial quick-reference encyclopedia to have on hand. Slowly but surely, I made my way through the list, and, to my surprise, found its picks relatively tame. Even though I liked most of them, and was moderately enlightened by such listed classics as "Jacob's Ladder" and "Cronos", nothing, to me, really lived up the hyperbole Fangoria was granting these flicks. I don't know when I abandoned the list, but it was certainly before I got to "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer". If I had gotten to "Henry", well, I would have felt too intimidated, rather than too passe', to continue onward. It's a rabbit hole of a movie; once you're through it, it can only get darker.

As a real scary movie fan, I don't know why I just got around to "Henry" last week. It was a movie I Netflixed and forgot about; when it arrived in the mail, I thought, "Fine, just another one to watch before I get to the real gem of my cue -- 'Taxi: Season 2'!" But then I mentioned to my moderately desensitized friend Dave that I was about to sit out on the porch and check it out with a fresh new cigar on hand, and he gawked with eyes rolled back in his head, like he had witnessed a murder years earlier, tried against try to forget about it, and then, in one quick instant, remembered everything:

"Shit, man, that's the most disturbing movie ever!"

Yeah, he was right -- at least for an independent flick from the 80s that doesn't show any real live dolphin mutilations. When I was a kid, I used to watch scary movies late at night on USA -- movies that I've now come to watch with about as lighthearted an approach as watching a "Seinfeld" episode. During commercial breaks, I would tread real carefully to the bathroom, checking with an almost cartoonish, Abbott and Costello-esque caution around every corner to make sure Jason Voorhees wasn't standing there with a machete, ready to give me the axe! I really haven't done this in years, but after watching "Henry" late Friday night, I relapsed to my old ways, this time checking instead for Michael Rooker and his menacing alien eyes.


Move over Jason, I got a NEW nightmare now!







Michael Rooker really is one of the best, most underrated character actors this side of Stephen Tobolowski; his gaunt stance and quiet/busy glare can cut through your soul. It's too bad he has, like many a great character actor, been relegated to some of the most mediocre, if not worst, movies in recent memory. But in 1984, he was an unknown struggler in Chicago, enlisted by Director John McNaughton to be in a, well, sort-of-different new crime/horror film as a man with a slightly subverted view of human life. Perhaps "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" ruined his career in many ways. Kind of like Jim Cavezal in "Passion", you just can't see him any other way after his ground breaking role (you're supposed to see him as an auto mechanic, and you only see Jesus instead).

Here's the genius of McNaughton's film, though -- as well as why so many indie flicks were great before the mid 90s when studios started jumping on the Escape-from-Hollywood bandwagon with their bigger budgets: no stars. With unknown actors, we're treated to strangers we don't have a connection with -- strangers who might be dangerous; might smile at us one minute, then pump a couple rounds of lead royal into our adrenal gland the next. Take Otis, for instance, Henry's sadistic redneck roommate, played with a twisted stare by Tom Towles. We're not quite sure what his gaze means; it's a trick he's never played on an audience before, and we have no reference point for his sadistic style. But in the minute when he asks his sister, Tracy Arnold, to go get him a beer, then makes a quick lunge to plant a firm one right on her unsuspecting lips, we're shocked -- we have NO idea where he's come from, or where he's going. What kind of a sick person would do that, even if it IS pretend?

Sure, McNaughton, in this case, somewhat lucked out by having no budget and no prospects to hire anyone known (that would've made the flick a mainstream thriller with more lights and the story told from hard-boiled beat detective Sly Stallone's viewpoint), but he nevertheless exploits the audience's newness to his actors for full, gritty realism.

"Henry" was one of those flicks of the 80s that saddled every major controversy about film and censorship. Finished in 1986, it played the midnight circuit with an Unrated classification until the MPAA finally passed it with an R rating in 1990. Why the hold up? It wasn't that the notorious ratings board kept telling the distributor to make changes here and there, because that would make them censors and "the MPAA is NOT a censorship board". Rather, it was that the overall tone was objected to. In other words, a movie where a normal-looking Joe commits horrible murders -- in many cases, videotaping everything -- would not be appropriate for modern audiences, unless the killer would get with the program and slap on a mask already to hide his humanity. I mean, come on Henry, it's the 80s for nut's sake!

But of course, like all highly objected-to flicks, Henry spent its four years in ratings board limbo amassing a notoriety not unlike its serial-killer subject, "Confession Killer" Henry Lee Lucas (on death row at the time and later commuted to life-in-prison by then Texas Governor George W. Bush), and by the time it was deemed appropriate for audiences, it had made its money back in droves.

Still, "Henry" still has the power after all these years. Watching it the other night, desensitized as I am to movie violence and further removed as ever from a good celluloid scare, I was glad that there're still some things I haven't seen, and can't prepare for. If this flick is any measure, I might wait a couple of months, then keep movin' on down that Fangoria listed I started seven years ago.

Here's a blast from the cable access past, an interview with "Henry" Director John McNaughton on what looks to be Sheboygan, WI's very own Mustache SweaterVest Film Club...

PART 1




PART 2