Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) “Corn, corn, everywhere, nor any a drop to drink” Frank curses and tosses the empty bottle of Turkey Mountain into the field. Frank was stuck somewhere between Kampsville and Mozier on Route 96. The alternator in the Impala had been weak for some time and he should have known better than to leave the wipers, radio and AC on while he pulled over to check the roadmap. The rain clouds had passed and swept across the prairie, and Frank (having the benefit of spreading the tri-state map over the hood of the car) was now completely sure of his position. However, unless someone passed to give him a jumpstart, he wasn’t going anywhere. A couple of teen girls in a Fiero with MacMurray College stickers had slowed down long enough to giggle at him but that was over an hour ago and it would be getting dark soon. You can’t underestimate either the loneliness or stabbing autumn chills of the mid-west. Cell phone reception was out of the question. Hard to believe there’s still stretches between St. Louis and Chicago where you could see for miles and not spot any houses. Of course there must be one out there somewhere, and if another car didn’t pass in five minutes Frank was just going to have to try to hoof it to the nearest farmhouse. Frank shivers and swipes his jersey gloves out of his rucksack in the trunk. And wishes he hadn’t cut the fingers out of them. If he ever wanted someone to stop and help him, the Impala seemed a poor and suspicious choice at the moment. It was the car of a transient killer and rapist roaming the back roads. Like the Impala driven by Michael Rooker in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (McNaughton 1986), which was currently out (27 September 2005) in a 20th anniversary edition by Mpi Media Group. Michael Rooker, star of this semi-factual account of serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, probably has never gotten his due as an actor, and the roles he had garnered in the 1980s were the result mostly to the unrated and underground copies of Henry: P.O. A. S. K circulated around LA. You’ve seen him, he’s one of Wyatt Earp’s boys in Tombstone (Cosmatos 1993), he’s the police captain in the Bone Collector (Noyce 1999), he’s Sheriff Pangborn in the Dark Half (Romero 1993). But he hasn’t been given much chance to carry a picture, as he does admirably in H: P O A S K. From the opening pan and zooms over corpses while Henry, a charmer in a Carhart, flirts with a greasy spoon waitresses, the film is decidedly gritty. Shot in a series of bad Chicago ‘hoods, the film is a tribute to all those people and places you kinda know and would rather not admit to, from the white trash young mother shampooing your hair to that seedy ex-con spraying your apartment for roaches, to that scruffy guy whose lack of teeth suggest him to be unqualified to pump your gas and make change. The performances of all the principle characters are excellent, from Rooker’s Henry, to Tracy Arnold as Becky, the young love interest, and especially Tom Towles, as Otis, Henry’s partner in crime. The dialog, considering the theme, is naturalistic and frighteningly somehow rings true: Becky: I don't want to talk about Leroy! Otis: Okay, we don't have to talk about him! You hungry? Becky: Yeah. Otis: Good, I'm hungry too. I wonder if Leroy's hungry. No? Not doing it for you? You have to trust that when maniacs make small talk and little jokes, its something like that. But anyway, as is the fate of all low budget masterpieces, the performances of the non-key players are stilted and poor. Though Frank has heard that one of the actresses playing a victim was so traumatized by the filming that she went into shock. Cool. Please forgive. But, cool. Some of the other cool parts you will probably wonder (if you are as analytical as Frank) as to their intentionality. When Becky tells Henry at length about being raped by her father, we cut to Henry answering: “So you didn’t git along wi’ yo daddy?” The anticlimax is delicious. But is it just poor editing or weak script? Who cares? Or after Henry and Otis kill a couple whores, they grab some fast food. The two drink coffee in sync. Way creepy. But coincidence? Or subtle in-road by the director. Again. Who cares? Once more, the selling point of the picture is Rooker’s likable boy-next-store killer. The quiet cool makes him, convicted murderer or not, seem to be like perfect catch for Becky in that run-down Chicago neighborhood. It’s the burgeoning love affair between Henry and Becky that brings cohesiveness to the story. Of course, this has been more than slightly sanitized for audience. The real Becky was a spry 15 when Henry Lee Lucas got his eye on her (“eye”-singular, Lucas had lost and eye as a child, a result of his mother’s refusal to let him see a doctor after a knife accident). Becky followed Lucas on his misadventures for some time before he stabbed and dismembered her. In Henry, she is spared this fall by being fairly promptly dispatched. The story of the real Henry, in fact, is quite fascinating, and the fast and looseness of H: P O A S K’s use of the life of Lucas is the film’s failing. To be fair, police were still piecing together Lucas’ misdoings when the film was made, so one forgets how much more topical the pic was in the mid-eighties. Also attention to detail is very, very often the death of the bio-pic (consider, despite all due praise to Charlize Theron, the aimlessness of Monster [Jenkins 2003].). Conversely, looseness with the facts has also whitewashed a pic or two (Consider The Aviator [Scorcese 2004]). Real accounts of Lucas paint him somewhat of a braggart and a storyteller. And not the seductive killer as Rooker plays him. Oh, well. Frank isn’t 20 yards from the Impala when the MacMurray co-eds are back. And while they don’t have any jumper cables, they do know of a kegger in Jacksonville…