Why Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is So Disturbing
(Spoilers for Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer follow)
The opening shot of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) shows a close-up of a woman’s face. She is staring lazily into the distance and appears to be lying on her side in some grass. Perhaps she is on a picnic and is about to sleep the food off. As the camera zooms out we begin to sense that something is wrong. The woman has a cut above her left eye that looks fresh. The camera zooms out some more. We see that the woman is naked and has a large wound on her side. We realize that she is dead.
This shot is disturbing not just because we are immediately shown a dead body but because we do not know that she is dead from the start. It is also shocking because the dead body is placed in what would otherwise be a banal scene. The first five minutes or so of Henry show us a number of murder scenes that vary in terms of how shocking they are but also in terms of how banal they are. This mixture of the banal and the shocking continues throughout Henry. It is what makes the film so unnerving. The banal never completely goes away. There is no veil of fantasy that is typical of serial killer narratives that allows us to experience the violence from a safe distance.
The murder scene after the woman in the park shows us a cashier in a convenience store slumped over the counter with a bullet hole in her head. There is also a man lying on the floor with a bullet hole in his head. Unlike the woman in the park, we can see right away that these people are dead. What is interesting though, is that the rest of the scene is undisturbed. The items on the shelves look like they are in their proper place. The next scene is what we would think of as a typical murder scene. It is in a motel room and the first thing we see is a bed with blood on the rumpled sheets. The camera then pans to the bathroom to show a half naked woman slumped on the toilet with a broken bottled jammed into her face. The last murder scene in the first cluster of murders begins with what looks like a juice carton floating down a stream. The carton passes by the body of a woman lying facedown. These scenes vary in their mixture of the shocking and the banal. Even the scene in the motel has a touch of banality. Besides the blood on the sheets, the body and some blood on the sink, nothing else seems out of order. There is a dispassionate way that the murder scenes are arranged but there is also a dispassionate way that the first five minutes or so are edited. In between shots of the murder scenes we see Henry go about his day as if nothing has happened.
Henry not only follows the titular serial killer but also Otis, his friend from jail. Otis’s sister, Becky, comes to visit them in Chicago to escape family problems and to possibly find a new home for her and her daughter. Becky immediately takes an interest in Henry, even when Otis tells her that Henry went to prison for killing his mother. When Henry and Becky are alone for the first time together they exchange stories of childhood abuse but it is clear that Becky is more eager to hear Henry’s story than Henry is to hear to hear Becky’s. Becky says that she feels like she has known Henry for a long time. This is the point when Henry tells Becky how he killed his mother. Becky’s interest in Henry mirrors our own societal interest in serial killers. As if to punctuate this point, Otis arrives at the end of the conversation to ask if there is “anything good on TV”.
Our fascination with serial killers leads to narratives that have a veil of fantasy over them that allow us to experience or even enjoy the violence from a safe distance. TV shows like Hannibal (2013-2015)and Dexter (2006-2013), while being gruesome, definitely have this veil. Hannibal Lecter is intelligent, sophisticated, cultured and, according to him, kills and eats people because they are rude. We like to follow Hannibal because it is enjoyable to watch him outwit people. We are disgusted by the fact that he is a cannibal but we can stomach it because he turns human flesh into exquisite cuisine. What makes Hannibal truly fantastical is the elaborate art that he and other serial killers make out of the bodies of their victims that are often left out in public. There is none of the banality found in the murder scenes in Henry. We are sometimes left to wonder how the killers put these art pieces together without anybody spotting them. Dexter Morgan is a forensic technician that analyzes blood spatter for the Miami Metro Police Department. He is not as sophisticated as Hannibal but it is clear that he is much more intelligent than his colleagues. What is interesting about Dexter is that the serial killer has a strict code. Dexter only kills the worst of the criminals who did not face the justice that they deserve. We enjoy watching Dexter because the titular character kills scumbags. He makes elaborate “kill rooms” in order to make those he kills face what they have done. Dexter brings justice where the criminal justice system has failed. A veil of righteousness covers the show and we see Dexter as a hero of sorts.
The veils of sophistication/artistry and righteousness that cover Hannibal and Dexter allows us to enjoy the violence with a manageable level of discomfort. There are other works that also have veils of fantasy over them but I wanted to highlight two TV shows because we spend more time with the serial killers. There has to be justifications for why we should spend so much time with such despicable people. Could we spend as much time with Henry? Not without turning him into an artist or a vigilante. However, Henry, Hannibal and Dexter share something fundamental in common. They kill because it is pleasurable for them. It is not about getting rid of rude people or about killing people that need to be brought to justice but about the pleasurable killing experience. Hannibal enjoys toying with and dominating people he sees as being beneath him. Dexter can admonish the people he kills all he wants but it is ultimately about the pleasure he gets when he finally plunges his knife into his victims. We know intuitively that their ultimate reason for killing is pleasure but to face this reality would be too unsettling. This is what Henry does. Henry is killing for pleasure and there is no veil to make it easier to watch.
Henry is not only about Henry’s murderous exploits but about how he influences Otis to participate in the murders. After Henry and Otis get into a fight Becky suggests that they should go out for a drink to patch things up. The night out turns into them picking up two sex workers. Henry kills one of the women when she resists him being too aggressive and kills her friend when she screams in response. Henry casually dumps the bodies and they drive away. Otis is clearly distraught by what he has just witnessed. When they get home, they talk about it:
Henry: You telling me you never killed anybody before?
Otis: I ain’t saying that.
Henry: Then you’ve killed before right?
Otis: Well, maybe I didn’t have no choice.
Henry: You didn’t have no choice here neither. Did you?
Otis: Huh?
Henry: Did you?
Otis: I don’t know, it ain’t the same.
Henry: It’s always the same and it’s always different.
Otis: What do you mean?
Henry: It’s either you or them, one way or the other. Ain’t that right?
Otis: I don’t know.
Henry: Open your eyes, Otis. Look at the world. It’s either you or them. You know what I mean.
Otis: Yeah.
What is interesting about this scene is that Henry sounds vaguely like a vigilante. The key word is vaguely. We don’t know what he means when he tells says “It’s either you or them”. Dexter justifies his killings by saying that he is serving justice. His victims are scumbags who get what is coming to them. What did Henry’s victims do to warrant him killing them? It is not clear. It is not clear and it does not matter that it is not clear because Henry kills for pleasure. When Henry says “It’s always the same and it’s always different” we are reminded about the mixture of the banal and the shocking. When he kills someone, it is just another kill but with each new kill comes a new shock, a new wave of pleasure.
A subsequent kill involves Henry and Otis killing a very rude TV salesman (Hannibal would be proud). Otis is more active this time and seems to enjoy it. Henry stabs the salesman multiple times while Otis holds him down and then Otis flips a switch to electrocute him with a TV that Henry has smashed over his head. However, it is the next kill that truly introduces Otis to killing for pleasure. At this point we know that Otis sells weed to supplement what he makes from his job at a gas station. We know that he has been selling it to a high school boy. When Otis gives the boy the weed he also comes on to him. The boy is disgusted and punches him in the face before running off. Otis is furious and wants to kill the boy. He tells Henry as much but Henry advises him against it because people have seen him with the boy on multiple occasions. Otis is clearly frustrated and says that he would like to kill somebody so Henry takes him on a trip. They park on the side of the road and open the hood of the car to make it look like the car broke down. When a man pulls over and asks if they need help Henry encourages Otis to kill him. Otis does so, gleefully. This killing is one of the more disturbing ones because of its casual banality. It is as if Otis had a bad day at work (selling weed is basically his second job) and needs to blow off steam. Otis kills a random man to release his frustration. This makes sense and no sense to us at the same time. We don’t understand why he has to kill somebody, but we understand that he has to kill somebody. He needs to blow off steam like we do but does it in a much more extreme way.
Yes, Henry and Otis are like us in a way. They are not intelligent sophisticates like Hannibal or cunning vigilantes like Dexter. It is clear that the creators of Henry want to throw our affinity with them in our faces. In the documentary about the making of Henry, the creators, including the director and co-writer John McNaughton and writer Richard Fire, talk about how they wanted to make the audience think about their enjoyment of violence. They do this with what is the most disturbing scene in the whole film.
It is sometime in the evening and Henry and Otis park in the driveway of a house. There is a cut to a shot of a TV playing a video. The video depicts Henry, who we can see is filming the video, and Otis torturing a family. Otis grapples with and gropes the mother, ripping her clothes off when Henry directs him to do so. We then see that the father is lying tied up on the floor with a bloody pillowcase over his head. The father struggles against his restraints and shouts so Henry gives him a few kicks to get him to be quiet. At some point the son walks in and Henry drops the camera so he can restrain him. Henry and the son struggle for a bit before Henry kills him. This prompts Otis to kill the mother. When the father hears that the mother has stopped screaming, he kicks Henry which prompts Henry to kill the father. Henry picks up the camera so he can pan it over the bodies of the father and the son. He then walks over to Otis to film him playing with the mother’s body. When Otis wants to do something sexual with body Henry shouts at him to stop and walks over to the door. The film suddenly cuts away from the shot of the TV to reveal that Henry and Otis have been watching the video the whole time. Otis rewinds the video so he can watch it again.
In the making of documentary, McNaughton discusses how with this scene he wanted to depict violence in a way that was closer to real life. McNaughton then discusses that by showing that the audience has been watching along with Henry and Otis the whole time it implicates the audience as not being so different from them for watching the violence for entertainment. This implication works so well because there is no veil of fantasy to distance the audience from the violence. There is probably no scene more banal than people sitting and watching TV yet what is shown on the TV is anything but banal.
Henry is so shocking because it is so banal in equal measure. We do not get to enjoy the violence on screen because there is no veil of fantasy that is needed for our enjoyment. We are forced to face the bare, banal reality of the violence. Henry and Otis are not sophisticated artists or intelligent vigilantes, they are ordinary workingmen. They are like us but not like us at the same time. This leaves us profoundly unsettled.