I decided to give Henry a watch over Thanksgiving with my family, which in retrospect was really not the best choice of films post-dinner. I wasn't to know this in advance, of course, since I actually knew precious little about it save for the obvious fact that it concerned the actual serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. It kind of put us off the turkey. The opening scenes alone, showcasing a number of Henry's gruesome murders and his own "shopping spree" in a mall parking lot for victims, were more than enough to disquiet all of us for a long while.

The film is quite gritty and realistic. It spares no effort to romanticize the gruesome murders and make them particularly cinematic, which gives you the disturbing feeling that you're actually watching as someone is killed rather than viewing an acted recreation of a homicide. The low budget film style really only adds to the experience. In a time period swamped with monster movies and fantasy horror, Henry really set itself apart, and instantly ran into trouble with ratings boards internationally for its trouble. The film is actually a relatively inexpensive exercise in criminal horror, dealing with a slightly fictionalized account of Henry Lee Lucas' life as a vagrant serial killer. The story revolves around what passes for his daily life with Otis and Otis' sister, Becky, once she moves in with the two of them temporarily. In this adaptation, Otis (based on Ottis Toole, the real Lucas' accomplice) is someone Henry met in prison. A believable enough circumstance given that they're both fairly horrible.

In fact, one is equally (if not more) disgusted with the behavior of Otis. Henry is a chilling man in the film, and his cold exterior and complete lack of regard for human life is rather...clinical in nature. You have the feeling that he's honestly not capable of feeling human emotion in the way that most other people can, and while this is unnerving and horrifying, Otis' behavior seems equally as shocking in contrast because he isn't like Henry at all. He's an absolutely disgusting man, but he is shown to feel things. He truly well gets off on what he's doing with Henry and finds it titillating to watch their personally recorded tape of a multiple homicide they committed together against an unsuspecting family in their own living room. Henry is just robotic and utterly detached. Killing for him seems to be about as emotionally provocative as waiting for his turn with a bank teller. When Henry gives Otis lectures on how to properly murder other humans without being caught or suspected by the police, he sounds about as mentally and emotionally "there" as a boring economics professor would. Which is to say not at all. It certainly leaves you feeling quite cold inside to think that people like either of them exist and are out there, sometimes motivated by nothing at all to just wantonly steal away the life of another person and cause suffering. They're two very different people who are utterly terrifying for seemingly polar reasons. Things get dicey later on in the film between the two, however, when Henry walks in on Otis sexually assaulting and attempting to strangle his own sister. Henry ends up killing Otis, so he and Becky flee the city.

Henry's willingness to let Becky accompany him on his drive out of town and future fugitive lifestyle leads one to briefly wonder about him. He seems to like her, and he essentially killed her brother for sexually assaulting her in his absence. (They even dispose of his body together in what has got to be one of the most gruesome film moments of all time.) Is Henry really that detached from other human beings after all...? Will the presence of Becky in his life actually change something fundamental about his behavior? Well, the answer to that is a resounding "you're watching a film about a serial killer, dumbass." Whatever happened to her is certainly a mystery, but most people who are alive can't fit themselves into suitcases that small.