John McNaughten’s 1986 film HENRY: PORTAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER is one of contemporary cinema’s most unflinching glimpses into the flayed mind of a mass murderer. It’s also one of the most realistic and unexploitive. Originally produced for TV (then released theatrically in 1990), the film’s quaint $100,000 budget only enhances its authenticity. Elena Maganini’s editing is tight and clean, lending a documentary atmosphere to this repugnant film. However, HENRY wouldn’t be the critic’s darling (Leonard Maltin and Roger Ebert were among its many critical cheerleaders) that it was if it merely delivered the same soft-headed slasher thrills of films before it. McNaughten admits that he set out to fabricate a "different" horror film, with a very real monster loosely based on real mass murderer Henry Lee Lucas and his dim-witted lackey Ottis Toole. Henry (played by CLIFFHANGER’s Michael Rooker) is indeed a monster, but McNaughten (who also co-wrote the film) paints his effant terrible with such conviction and real emotion that the film becomes a strong meditation on the destructive ability of the human psyche. The source of Henry’s sociopathic foundation is a theme that emerges as the film’s unifying motif: the corrosive effects of a dysfunctional family unit.

The film opens with a close-up of a gruesomely slain, nude female body languishing in the grass. Robert McNaughton’s ominous score is the only accompaniment here; there is no explanation. Quickly cut to a close-up of Henry at a local greasy spoon. He politely thanks the waitress for the meal and exits. Cut back to another murder scene revealing two brutally murdered clerks in a package store. McNaughten’s score is now augmented with the reverberating, garbled screams of the victims. We then see yet another slashed, semi-nude female victim (the same distorted screams again) followed by still another female body floating in a stagnant river. The careful framing of these clinical, forensic shots with Henry make it clear to the viewer that Henry is responsible. The garbled, distorted voices of the victims play out in Henry’s disturbed mind as he recalls his killings. The sequential nature in which the victims are presented also alludes to the "serial killer" nomenclature, that is, Henry engages in a series of killings.

Our first glimpse of McNaughten’s commentary on the disintegration of the family unit occurs as Henry pulls up at a shopping center parking lot. He views a mother and daughter bitterly bickering. He then eyes a woman in a nearby car and follows her, accompanied by McNaughten’s chilling music. We instantly peg her as a prospective victim, but McNaughten slyly tricks us. Henry views her entering her home, with her family playing outside. He decides to spare her and drives away. We then see Henry picking up a hitchhiker nearby, and the scene fades out…

Meanwhile, Henry’s cohort, Otis (Tom Towles-an eerie dead ringer for Ottis Toole), picks his sister Becky (Tracy Arnold) up at the airport. Becky is pinned down in a dysfunctional family: her husband Leroy beats her and soon lands in jail for murder. Her daughter is left in the middle. Becky visits Otis out of desperation, as she simply cannot bear the domestic anguish any longer. She is indeed desperate to run to Otis, for he is a slimy ex-con in and out of menial jobs, finding time to verbally abuse his sister in between his job at the local gas station.

In the next scene we first view McNaughten’s brilliant aptitude at leaving the grisly details to one’s imagination. Henry returns to their apartment, with the hitchhiker’s guitar in tow. McNaughten not only budgets his picture by sparing the gory details of the hitch-hiker’s murder (no expensive effects) but he also doesn’t insult our intelligence and lets us reach the conclusion of the hitch-hiker’s slaying on our own. In this scene, we also see Henry’s charismatic side, as he greets Becky and insists upon her taking his room for her stay.

The film is also rife with pitch-black humor. Henry’s job is a source for such uneasy humor. Henry is an exterminator, and the humor here is that he kills for a living as well as a gruesome hobby, except that one variety of killing is perfectly acceptable by society. And when Henry enters a customer’s home, we again suspect a murder. This time we are correct and once again the mayhem is implied, as the camera swivels around to reveal a strangulated woman. Again we hear the muffled, confused screams as Henry replays the murder back in his diseased mind.

The initial, lengthy dialogue scene between Henry and Becky contains some of the film’s most worthy studies of social dysfunction and decay and its effects on the individual. Becky quizzes Henry on his past, asking why he landed in jail. He reveals that he "killed his mama." Henry’s memory is spotty and he most closely resembles Lucas here, as he isn’t sure exactly how he dispatched of his mother (in interviews, Lucas often changed his story, alternatively admitting the deaths of more than 400 and then denying any murders at all). He goes on to say that "my mother was a whore" and that what justified his killing wasn’t "what she done but how she did it." He describes her many brazen sexual encounters and how she forced young Henry to watch, and if he refused, he would be beaten (this account also rings true in Lucas’ story). Henry has equally grim revelations about his father. "He was a truck driver before his legs got cut off," he says, and remarks about the time his father brought home a bike that was too big for him. The father promised he would grow into it, but Henry never did. Thus, Henry never really "grew into" his childhood as it was scarred by emotional, physical and sexual abuse.

Becky finds a kindred soul in Henry, for she too was reared in an abusive household. Her father’s sexual abuse caused her to take on the role of a victim, as evidenced by her marriage to an abusive husband and her similar interest in Henry. A shared trauma between the two grants this otherwise extraordinary relationship credibility. It is the violated pasts of Henry’s and Becky’s that fosters the subsequent irony and tragedy of the film.

The sundry scenes of dialogue between the three at their cheap card table are quite significant. The three of them form a sort-of "family" at their mock dinner table (strewn with cigarettes and beer cans) that is as close as they’ll ever get to having a real family life (which was stolen from them by their abusive parents). When Otis grabs Becky’s arm, Henry snaps and sternly warns him never to do it again, and apologize to her. Becky then becomes a sort of mother figure, as she insists upon doing the dishes and settling this dispute by suggesting they go out for a beer. Henry will ultimately reject this mother/loving figure in tragic fashion at the film’s end.

On their journey out, they pick up two prostitutes and Henry quickly dispatches of them. Otis is understandably upset, but Henry sees an opportunity here to teach Otis the pleasures of killing. Henry drops his "it’s either you or them" philosophy onto Otis. Otis doesn’t buy into this-yet. That occurs when a drug deal of his (to a teenager-another sign of decay and dysfunction in youth) goes sour as the boy runs off with the goods without paying. "I wanna kill that kid," admits Otis. Henry sees Otis’ rage as an opportunity for his first killing. Henry concludes that they should "go for a ride" to initiate Otis in his own murdering spree. They have a car pull over and Otis gleefully shoots an innocent man in cold blood.

With this incident, Otis shares Henry’s pleasure in killing. Henry becomes a mock father figure to Otis (certainly more of one than his real father), teaching him the tricks of the trade and how to cover one’s tracks. They soon purchase a video camera to immortalize their carnage. The videotaping of the murders is McNaughten’s springboard for his commentary on voyeurism. In one scene, Henry and Becky dance while Otis films them. We then see McNaughten’s camera pan out to reveal a TV set, and both Otis and Henry are re-viewing this. The viewer feels more self-conscious about their own voyeurism once they realize they’ve been tricked as they watch Henry’s heinous acts.

The ultimate statement of familial decay and dysfunction occurs when Henry and Otis videotape their slaughter of an entire family. The tranquil home housing a common family is fatally disrupted by two men coming from very broken homes. This sequence is also significant because Henry reveals his festering sexual dysfunction: when Otis attempts to rape the wife, Henry disallows it and nearly panics. Otis deals with his past abuse in the precisely opposite way from Henry: he is hypersexualized, while Henry’s sexuality is repressed.

While the film’s climax is indeed gruesome, it is hardly surprising considering the intersecting lives of such volatile personalities. While Henry goes out one last time for cigarettes, Otis and Becky are left alone. Otis’ insatiable sexual appetite defies even familial boundaries as he attempts to rape his sister. Fortunately, Henry arrives in time and a fatal brawl erupts, resulting with Otis’ death. Henry and Becky scramble to make a getaway plan and Henry disposes of Otis’ body.

On their drive to a motel, Becky proclaims that she loves Henry. McNaughten’s scripting is perfect here, as Henry replies "I guess I love you to." Simply put, Henry does not have the emotional capacity to share or reciprocate love as he was so brutally robbed of it at such a tender age. In the motel room, Becky plays the hitchhiker’s guitar (foreshadowing her death). The next morning Henry sets a bloodied suitcase out on the highway and continues driving…

It’s a nihilistic ending to a disturbing film. The film neither condones nor judges Henry’s actions. It merely portrays them, which gained the film much of its controversy. However, those willing to take a closer look beyond the film’s graphic portrayal of diseased minds will find a worthy meditation on the destructive, lasting power of childhood abuse that resides hidden just below the façade of normalcy, giving rare insight into the reason why it’s "always the quiet one."