Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer Family Massacre Scene

"Yeah, I killed my Mama."

Henry: Portrait of a Series Killer is a controversial 1986 slasher horror motion-picture show that follows the exploits of a series killer named Henry.

The film starts out with a girl named Becky, who simply got out of a tough relationship with her convict hubby and heads to Chicago to make some money for herself and her brother. She's staying with her blood brother Otis Toole who has taken in Henry Lee Lucas as a house guest. Becky and Henry share troubled pasts, which gives them a somewhat romantic connectedness while Henry and Otis brainstorm a bond based on their shared desires for random violence and become on a killing spree.

The film is notable for two major reasons; 1) launching the career of and 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 dissimilar edits of the film in the Great britain as well equally on domicile video.

A sequel, titled Henry Ii: Portrait of a Serial Killer, was released in 1996. Prepare several years after the original, information technology has Henry shack up with a dysfunctional family headed past an unhinged arsonist named Kai.

---

"Henry: Tropes of a Serial Killer"

• Calumniating 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 Championship Character: Michael Rooker as Henry.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: This is what leads to Becky's undoing. She merely got out of a relationship with an calumniating young man 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 male parent shell and raped her all during her childhood, it'due south understandable how she'd see men similar Henry every bit attractive.
• Ambiguous Situation: As noted below, this film is loosely based on the murders of Henry Lucas and his partner Otis Toole. Nevertheless, not merely are there several deviations from what actually happened, but none of the chief characters are given last names. Every bit a result, while they are clearly based upon them, information technology is ultimately unclear if the Henry and Otis in this film are actually supposed to represent the actual Henry Lucas and Otis Toole. They could but be similarly named killers. This may have been intended to assist avoid or lessen the controversy that would come from making a film based off actual murders.
• Asshole Victim: The Jerkass fence Henry and Otis try to buy a TV from was obviously intended as such according to Word Of God.
  • 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 earlier the ending credits. Even worse when you consider that Henry was probably thinking well-nigh killing her the moment she told him nigh moving dorsum habitation, and that's hours before she was raped past Otis.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Villain Protagonist Henry teams up with beau Serial Killer Otis to proceed a murdering spree. However, Henry turns on Otis when he tries to rape Becky, and kills Otis in the end.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • During the ane moment where information technology seems like Henry will lose (when Otis overpowers him after Henry attacks him when he sees him assaulting Becky), Becky saves him past impaling Otis' heart.
  • A deleted sequence has a infiltrator break into the apartment and attempt to rape Becky while Henry and Otis are away. They come back in time to salve her, and it leads to Henry awkwardly attempting to comfort her while Otis stands effectually twiddling his thumbs.
• Black Comedy: Managing director John McNaughton, on the 20th Anniversary DVD release, says he finds the conversations that Henry and Otis have when they're non committing murders to be this, a sort of very dark comedy duo. He also ruminates that if y'all lookout man the movie more than v 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 begetter was sexually calumniating, and she enters a deep Heroic BSoD after seeing Henry impale Otis.
• Celibate Hero: Or villain, in Henry'south case, every bit it'south unsaid that his mother's abuse has instilled in him a kind of revulsion towards sexual practice, which is why he apparently never does annihilation sexual with his victims, and why he's and then uncharacteristically perturbed by Otis's perversions and Becky striking on him.
• Deconstruction: Of All Girls Want Bad Boys and Draco in Leather Pants. The movie goes through peachy lengths to remind us just how much of a monster Henry is. It besides recursively deconstructs "heroic" serial killers like Hannibal Lecter and Dexter. invoked
• Depraved Bisexual: Otis tries to rape the married woman in the family he and Henry murder, succeeds in raping his sister, and comes on to the guy he was selling weed to.
• Destructive Romance: Falling in beloved with a serial killer gets Becky killed. Henry is a stone common cold sociopath and having a woman fall in love with him does nothing to change that.
• Downer Ending: Afterward killing Otis, Henry and Becky drive abroad together and spend the night in a hotel. The next 24-hour interval, Henry dumps a duffel handbag containing Becky's corpse on the side of the route and drives off to continue his murders.
• Drone of Dread: Nearly 90% of the soundtrack.
• Even Evil Has Standards: While Henry is fine with murdering anyone, including whole families, he repeatedly expresses revulsion towards sexual activity crimes like incest and necrophilia, which is ultimately what puts him at odds with Otis when he walks in on him raping Becky. While Henry kills Becky himself afterwards saving her, the disgust that he displayed in regards to Otis's deviant beliefs towards her appeared to be 18-carat, with his response to the sight of Otis trying to give Becky a Forceful Kiss during an earlier scene beingness to catch Otis and disapprovingly country, "Don't practise that Otis - she's your sister."
• Evil Duo: Henry and Otis, with Henry being the more than dominant and slightly more controlled "idea homo", and Otis being more of a follower and going from "rather reluctant" to "impulsive". A deleted scene likewise implies that they're in a secret sexual human relationship.
• Eviler Than G: Henry when he kills Otis.
• Eye Scream: Otis gets the stop of a metal rummage 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 existence 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 later he and Becky declare their honey for each other has a chorus that says, "Loving you was my mistake." Henry kills Becky the next day.
• Fake Affably Evil: While non exactly charming, Henry tin put a civilized forepart when information technology suits him, but information technology never lasts long.
• For the Evulz: Henry's merely real motivation for his crimes is this.
• Freudian Excuse: Played with. Henry says that he killed his mother because she was abusive, but in context the merits comes off as rather dubious. And while we can infer that having a father who sexually abused his sis didn't do wonders for Otis' mental health, it doesn't seem to exist much of a motivating factor in any of his killings.
• The Ghost: Henry's siblings and Becky's daughter are mentioned only never seen.
• Gunman with Three Names: Or rather Serial Killer With Three Names in the case of Henry Lee Lucas, both in the motion picture and in Existent Life.
• Hate Sink: The killers serving as the Big Bad Duumvirate are both awful in their own ways. They have none of the charisma of their contemporary slasher counterparts, nor are they Diabolical Masterminds in the vein of John Doe or Hannibal Lecter. At the stop of the mean solar day, they're only pathetic, depraved morons who, apart from a few moments of Blackness One-act and Henry having a few standards Otis doesn't, no audition volition find endearing in the slightest.
• I Honey the Dead: Otis begins to molest the corpse of a adult female whose neck he had just snapped, but is stopped by Henry (either because Fifty-fifty Evil Has Standards or out of Businesslike 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 go his revenge, merely Henry advises him not to since that would likely pb to Otis getting arrested. A skilful Samaritan suffers his punishment instead.
• Kick the Canis familiaris: Henry is a dog-kicking machine, spending his days wandering America killing people with absolutely no rhyme or reason. His interactions with other people indicate that murder is the simply thing he truly cares about.
• 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 Telly shop possessor 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 side by side.
• Multiple-Choice Past: Henry tin can't seem to decide whether he beat his mother to death with a baseball bat, stabbed her with a knife, or shot her.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Otis is seemingly genuinely shocked and upset when he kills his first couple victims. He grows out of it, and if anything becomes an even worse series killer than Henry.
• Neck Snap: While Henry claims to constantly change his method of killing, he uses this more often than anything else. He does information technology effortlessly in all but one instance, and anybody seems to die upon it being performed.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Henry advises Otis confronting getting revenge on the boy that hitting 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 defenseless.
• Protagonist Title
• Psychopathic Manchild: Henry comes across every bit fairly unproblematic-minded (he does a remarkably poor chore 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 Aqueduct: After challenge some other victim, Henry leaves her TV on this station. Past the time we see it, it'southward in the heart of playing "Neptune Nonsense". ^annotation A 1936 Felix the True cat cartoon produced by Van Beuren Studios
• Random Events Plot: Aside from a vague subplot revolving around Becky trying to escape her abusive hubby, the only real overarching "plot thread", if information technology can be chosen that, is Henry and Otis' desire to commit murder.
• Cocky-Made Orphan: Henry murdered his mother.
• Serial Killer: Henry and Otis.
• The Sociopath: If beingness a serial killer wasn't enough of a inkling, Henry's indifferent response when Becky tells him that she loves him is further show. 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 begetter (equally his female parent was still married) and had at least two siblings.
• Stupid Evil: Not that Henry is especially brilliant, but Otis is even dumber, ofttimes trying to rape his victims, potentially leaving behind evidence. It takes Henry to stop him each time.
• Suspiciously Apropos Music: When Henry takes Becky out to the cabin 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 get similar 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.due east. all the serial killer and slasher films of the 90s and onward that accept us root for the villain and may sometimes fifty-fifty give them a sympathetic motive. Hither we're given the serial killer character in its rawest class and the issue is more sickening than entertaining. Unlike such protagonists as Patrick Bateman, Henry is socially bad-mannered, plain-looking, not peculiarly intelligent, and downright vicious.
  • The film also retroactively deconstructs the theme oft institute in these type of slasher flicks: the good girl breaking down the defenses of the serial killer. Instead, Henry sees Becky every bit more of a nuisance than a friend or honey interest and kills her in the end. Seriously, Becky's fate would almost seem like a fuck you to Volume!Clarice Starling and Debra Morgan if information technology wasn't for the fact that Hannibal and Darkly Dreaming Dexter wouldn't come up about for over x years afterward 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 savage, ugly, and random and neither side has any moral high basis. And since Henry winds up merely killing Becky later the same night, it'south completely pointless. Watching this and then watching Dexter square off against the Doomsday Killer makes the latter seem near childish by comparison.
• Very Loosely Based on a Truthful Story: Henry Lee Lucas was a existent serial killer who confessed to killing over 600 people... but was merely convicted for 11 killings. The film is more or less based on Lee's claims than his bodily crimes. It actually acquired a huge scandal as police force fed Lucas with details from various crimes, in many cases to clear unsolved murders, thus meaning the real killers were non pursued. Lucas himself got stardom as the only death row prisoner spared past the then Governor of Texas George Westward. Bush-league. He died in prison from cancer. His partner Ottis Toole was not killed past him, merely also died from natural causes while incarcerated. Lucas had served a sentence for the murder of his mother, merely all of the convictions except for this are questioned. The person Becky was based on was actually Ottis'due south niece named Frieda Powell (nicknamed Becky), just 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" laissez passer herself off every bit an older Becky, what happened is probably a Foregone Conclusion).
• Villain Protagonist: Henry.
• Villainous Incest: Poor Becky was subject to this by her begetter. After, her brother forces himself onto her.
• Would Injure a Child: Henry snaps a young boy's neck in front end of his parents during the dwelling invasion.
• Y'all Bastard!: One scene has the television set play a video of Henry and Otis's domicile invasion and subsequent murder of an entire family. It is then revealed that Henry and Otis are the audience watching the video.

---

watsonfrand1954.blogspot.com

Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/HenryPortraitOfASerialKiller

Share this post