• Henry Portrait Of A Serial Killer Movie

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/HenryPortraitOfASerialKiller

One character you create a sort of band with. In Henry: Portrait of a serial Killer you can only feel hate. Hate and disgust for Henry and for his companion Otis. Heck, you even start to hate the girl. For being so naive that is. Although many persons are killed and many violence occurs, Henry certainly ain't a gore or bloody film. Youtube: BHcCOYT8pg - Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. It stars Michael Rooker as the nomadic killer Henry, Tom Towles as Otis, a prison buddy with whom Henry is living, and Tracy Arnold as Becky, Otis's sister. The characters of Henry and Otis are loosely based on real life serial killers Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole. Scanner Internet Archive Python library 0.9.8.

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Henry Portrait Of A Serial Killer Movie

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is a controversial 1986 film that follows the exploits of a serial killer named Henry.

The film starts out with a girl named Becky, who just got out of a tough relationship with her convict husband and heads to Chicago to make some money for herself and her daughter. She's staying with her brother Otis who has taken in Henry as a house guest. Becky and Henry share troubled pasts, which gives them a somewhat romantic connection while Henry and Otis begin a bond based on their shared desires for random violence and go on a killing spree.

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The film is notable for two major reasons; 1) launching the career of the then-unknown actor Michael Rooker and 2) its extreme violence and rape scenes that caused a huge amount controversy with the MPAA and lead to several different edits of the film in the UK as well as on home video.

A sequel, titled Henry II: Portrait of a Serial Killer, was released in 1996. Set several years after the original, it has Henry shack up with a dysfunctional family headed by an unhinged arsonist named Kai.

'Henry: Tropes of a Serial Killer'

• Abusive Parents: Becky's father was sexually abusive, and Henry claims that his prostitute mother forced him to watch her have sex with clients, among other things.
• Actor IS the Title Character: Michael Rooker as Henry.
• Adorkable: Becky seems to find Henry's soft-spoken, awkward demeanor attractive. How wrong she is.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: This is what leads to Becky's undoing. She just got out of a relationship with an abusive boyfriend who was a criminal and thrown in jail for murder awaiting trial. And when she discovers that Henry murdered his own mother, she endears herself to him, believing she found a kindred spirit, instead of seeing that as a serious red flag. Given that her father beat and raped her all during her childhood, it's understandable how she'd see men like Henry as attractive.
• Asshole Victim: The Jerkass fence Henry and Otis try to buy a TV from was apparently intended as such according to Word Of God.

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  • Otis himself becomes one at the end of the film.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Obviously, the serial killer achieves his goal of killing a lot of people. Henry takes Becky to an inn out in the middle of nowhere and kills her. He then dumps her body out in the middle of the highway and drives on before the ending credits. Even worse when you consider that Henry was probably thinking about killing her the moment she told him about moving back home, and that's hours before she was raped by Otis.
• Big Bad: While Henry is a Villain Protagonist, his partner Otis eventually becomes even worse.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • During the one moment where it seems like Henry will lose (when Otis overpowers him after Henry attacks him when he sees him assaulting Becky), Becky saves him by impaling Otis' eye.
  • A deleted sequence has a burglar break into the apartment and attempt to rape Becky while Henry and Otis are away. They come back in time to save her, and it leads to Henry awkwardly attempting to comfort her while Otis stands around twiddling his thumbs.
• Black Comedy: Director John McNaughton, on the 20th Anniversary DVD release, says he finds the conversations that Henry and Otis have when they're not committing murders to be this, a sort of very dark comedy duo. He also ruminates that if you watch the movie more than 5 times, you begin to see a 'comedy of the stupid', with Henry, while being cunning in his killing, is completely illiterate. Meanwhile, while Otis is able to read, he is completely devoid of social graces. And Becky, despite her social prowess, is also hopelessly naive.
• Break the Cutie: Becky. Her father was sexually abusive, and she enters a deep Heroic BSoD after seeing Henry kill Otis.
• Celibate Hero: Or villain, in Henry's case, as it's implied that his mother's abuse has instilled in him a kind of revulsion towards sex, which is why he apparently never does anything sexual with his victims, and why he's so uncharacteristically perturbed by Otis's perversions and Becky hitting on him.
• Deconstruction: Of All Girls Want Bad Boys and Draco In Leather Pants. The movie goes through great lengths to remind us just how much of a monster Henry is.
• Depraved Bisexual: Otis tries to rape the wife in the family he and Henry murder, succeeds in raping his sister, and comes on to the guy he was selling weed to.
• Downer Ending: After killing Otis, Henry and Becky drive away together and spend the night in a hotel. The next day, Henry dumps a duffel bag containing Becky's corpse on the side of the road and drives off to continue his murders.
• Drone of Dread: About 90% of the soundtrack.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Perhaps Henry's only redeemable trait: he absolutely abhors Otis's incestuous advances toward Becky, and protects her from them on two different occasions. He also isn't particularly enthused by the idea of necrophilia, though in that case it may have simply been Pragmatic Villainy.
• Evil Duo: Henry and Otis, with Henry being the more dominant and slightly more controlled 'idea man', and Otis being more of a follower and going from 'rather reluctant' to 'impulsive'. A deleted scene also implies that they're in a secret sexual relationship.
• Eye Scream: Otis gets the end of a metal comb jammed into his eye by Becky.
• Fan Disservice: A few bare breasts are shown in the course of the movie, but the women in question are being brutally murdered.
• Fatal Flaw: For Becky, her attraction to bad men with psychological problems.
• Foreshadowing: The song that plays once Henry turns on the radio after he and Becky declare their love for each other has a chorus that says, 'Loving you was my mistake.' Henry kills Becky the next day.
• Faux Affably Evil: Henry can put a civilized front when it suits him, but it never lasts long.
• Freudian Excuse: Played with. Henry says that he killed his mother because she was abusive, but in context the claim comes off as rather dubious. And while we can infer that having a father who sexually abused his sister didn't do wonders for Otis' mental health, it doesn't seem to be much of a motivating factor in any of his killings.
• I Love the Dead: Otis begins to molest the corpse of a woman whose neck he had just snapped, but is stopped by Henry (either because Even Evil Has Standards or out of Pragmatic Villainy).
• In-Universe Camera: Whenever Otis and Henry film their murders.
• Karma Houdini: Henry, obviously.
  • The homophobic teenage boy who sucker-punched Otis and steals his weed. Otis wants to get his revenge, but Henry advises him not to since that would likely lead to Otis getting arrested. A good Samaritan suffers his punishment instead.
• Kill the Cutie: Becky gets raped by her older brother Otis, then killed by Henry the next day.
• Minimalism: The film has a whopping three major characters, and more dialogue than 'action'..most of Henry's kills are shown in the aftermath or implied.
• Mood Whiplash: McNaughton said this was exactly what he was going for when he went from the murder of the TV shop owner in one scene (which was supposed to be funny and make us root for Henry and Otis), to Henry and Otis videotaping the murder of an entire family the next.
• Multiple-Choice Past: Henry can't seem to decide whether he beat his mother to death with a baseball bat, stabbed her with a knife, or shot her.
• Neck Snap: While Henry claims to constantly change his method of killing, he uses this more often than anything else. He does it effortlessly in all but one case, and everyone seems to die upon it being performed.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Henry advises Otis against getting revenge on the boy that hit him and stole his weed because the two have been seen together and the boy is young, and these factors would lead to Otis getting caught.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Henry comes across as fairly simple-minded (he does a remarkably poor job of reconciling his various accounts of killing his mother), and the enjoyment he takes in some of his killings seems rather child-like.
• The Public Domain Channel: After claiming another victim, Henry leaves her TV on this station. By the time we see it, it's in the middle of playing 'Neptune Nonsense'.^note
• Random Events Plot: Aside from a vague subplot revolving around Becky trying to escape her abusive husband, the only real overarching 'plot thread', if it can be called that, is Henry and Otis' desire to commit murder.
• Reality Ensues: Falling in love with a serial killer gets Becky killed. Henry is a stone cold sociopath and having a woman fall in love with him does nothing to change that.
• Self-Made Orphan: Henry murdered his mother.
• Serial Killer: Henry and Otis.
• The Sociopath: If being a serial killer wasn't enough of a clue, Henry's indifferent response when Becky tells him that she loves him is further evidence. The ending confirms this.
• The Stoic: Other than the sadistic glee he takes in murder, Henry never shows much emotion.
• Son of a Whore: Henry claims to be one, although unlike many other examples, he actually knew his father (as his mother was still married) and had at least two siblings.
• Suspiciously Apropos Music: When Henry takes Becky out to the motel after killing Otis and disposing of his body, they declare their love for each other (Henry more reluctantly, reasonably), and Henry turns on the radio. The song that plays happens to go like this: 'Loving you was my mistake..'
• Tagline: 'He's not Freddy. He's not Jason. He's real!'
• Unbuilt Trope:
  • Of the 'serial killer lead' subgenre of the villain protagonist genre, i.e. all the serial killer and slasher films of the 90s and onward that have us root for the villain and may sometimes even give them a sympathetic motive. Here we're given the serial killer character in its rawest form and the result is more sickening than entertaining. Unlike such protagonists as Patrick Bateman, Henry is socially awkward, plain-looking, not particularly intelligent, and downright vicious.
  • The film also retroactively deconstructs the theme often found in these type of slasher flicks: the good girl breaking down the defenses of the serial killer. Instead, Henry sees Becky as more of a nuisance than a friend or love interest and kills her in the end. Seriously, Becky's fate would almost seem like a fuck you to Book!Clarice Starling and Debra Morgan if it wasn't for the fact that Hannibal and Darkly Dreaming Dexter wouldn't come about for over 10 years after this film was finished.
  • The ending also serves as a prototype for the Bad Serial Killer vs. Worse Serial Killer that has become a staple of the genre. Henry and Otis' fight is brutal, ugly, and random and neither side has any moral high ground. And since Henry winds up just killing Becky later the same night, its completely pointless. Watching this and then watching Dexter square off against the Doomsday Killer makes the latter seem almost childish by comparison.
• Very Loosely Based on a True Story: Henry Lee Lucas was a real serial killer who confessed to killing over 600 people.. but was only convicted for 11 killings. The film is more or less based on Lee's claims than his actual crimes. It actually caused a huge scandal as police fed Lucas with details from various crimes, in many cases to clear unsolved murders, thus meaning the real killers were not pursued. Lucas himself got distinction as the only death row prisoner spared by the then Governor of Texas George W. Bush. He died in prison from cancer. His partner Ottis Toole was not killed by him, but also died from natural causes while incarcerated. Lucas had served a sentence for the murder of his mother, but all of the convictions except for this are questioned. The person Becky was based on was actually Ottis's niece named Frieda Powell (nicknamed Becky), only about twelve when she met Henry (so no abusive husband), and may or may not have met her demise at his hands (given that in prison Lucas tried and failed to have a hybristophiliac 'fan' pass herself off as an older Becky, what happened is probably a Foregone Conclusion).
• Villain Protagonist: Henry.
• Villainous Incest: Poor Becky was subject to this by her father. Later, her brother forces himself onto her.
• Would Hurt a Child: Henry snaps a young boy's neck in front of his parents during the home invasion.