Michael Rooker's career started with the relentless cult horror film, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.
 |
| "I just love Glee." |
During
a time when mask-wearing slasher villains were in full swing, all but taking
over theaters, the genre was proving itself to be very marketable. Halloween
had broke on to the scene, the Friday the 13th series was in full swing,
and knockoff titles like Slumber Party Massacre were cleaning up the
scraps. These films were cheap to produce, relied on new (inexpensive) talent
looking to break into the industry, and the box office returns were all but
guaranteed. So when John McNaughton was commissioned to make a movie with a
body count, and he didn’t deliver a slasher movie, but a true horror film, the
film’s investors were faced with a film they didn’t know how to market.
Henry:
Portrait of a Serial Killer remains as
horrifying and disturbing today as it was upon its much delayed and extremely
limited initial release. It announced the arrival of a terrific new talent
behind the camera—who would go on to direct the criminally neglected Wild
Things—as well as introduced the world to Michael Rooker, who has gone on
to become one of the best living character actors. He’s a guy who can walk on
screen and you sort of smile. He has that way about him—that charisma—that
makes him compulsively watchable, and it’s why his performance as Henry is so
iconic. Because of him, as scary as anything Henry does is the fact that he
makes us want to like him.
 |
| "Yes, it's my real hair." |
Henry
lives with his buck-toothed sidekick Otis (Tom Towles, magnificently creepy) in
a ramshackle apartment somewhere in the shadowy bowels of Chicago. Otis is
exactly the archetype you picture in your head just by hearing the name, right
down to the beer belly and the trucker hat. Henry is as everyman as they come:
Charming, polite, working a blue collar job as an exterminator—no irony lost
there. They could be anyone you pass a million times a day crossing the street,
or stand next to in line at the grocery store.
As
the film progresses, the everyday veil of what’s acceptable about these two
slowly gets peeled away. Simple conversations with Otis’ sister Becky (Tracey
Arnold) begin to carry an unbearable undercurrent of tension. Any drive in the
middle of the night could lead to a random act of homicide. Mundanity explodes
into graphic violence like the flick of a switch. Get hit in the face by an
“ungrateful punk” at work? Let’s go kill somebody. Anything goes, just like the
reality we all occupy. The fact that it’s so easy for them to make that leap,
yet appear like normal Walmart shoppers, seriously makes you want to consider
buying a good security system.
 |
| "I've been looking for that bottle everywhere." |
The
film’s most legendary sequence is seen through the lens of a VHS camcorder, and
it shows us one of the top ten most disturbing scenes in motion picture
history. What is most alarming about this part is that we allow our revulsion
to combine with fascination, as we are enslaved into the viewpoint of the
proverbial “captive audience.” As terrible as it is, we can’t look away, and
when it’s revealed that this has already happened, that we are watching the
awful events right along with the people who committed them—implicating us—the
feeling is unsettling and stomach churning.
If
only John McNaughton could have seen into the future he would foretell with the
numerous television shows of carnage—Cops, World’s Scariest Police
Chases—we are now more culpable than ever in our fascination with mayhem.
It’s become entertainment. Even the broadcast news with its harrowing reports
of evildoing has become so sensationalized and filtered that it barely
registers before we change the channel. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
somehow still manages to circumvent all our 21st century de-sensitivity and
engage us on a primal level.
 |
| "Well, they called us white trash, so get in the can!" |
This
film reminds us that it could all end at any moment. Swiftly. Without so much
as a bang or a whimper. And it shows us that, in the screwed up world we live
in, someone might actually not pay attention unless it was entertaining. I
can’t think of anything scarier than that.
-Blake O. Klener