Most people lie in order to get out of trouble. Even if it’s only a white lie, its purpose is usually to absolve the person telling it from responsibility or, more often than not, from guilt. This wasn’t the case for Henry Lee Lucas, arguably one of the nastier American serial killers on record. While Lucas’s verifiable crimes are bad enough, including the murder of his own mother, he also made claims after being incarcerated implicating him in literally several thousand killings. He was officially convicted of eleven murders, among a litany of other charges from robbery to rape. Yet something compelled this man into a disturbing bravado. He wanted to take credit for any and every murder possible.
John McNaughton’s genre classic Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) is a riff on the actual life of Lucas, portrayed in chilling fashion by Michael Rooker. But, how exactly does a director shape a movie about a serial killer known for elaborate and grandiose lies? It isn’t easy doing a fictional retelling about the life of Lucas, which makes both perception and truth prominent concepts in this movie. The fascinating part about this movie is that, aside from a character study of a truly despicable and violent man, the way McNaughton presents the crimes of Lucas implicates the audience in a moral debate over their role in watching movies about real life murders and the men who commit them. Many horror movies about killers offer up the subject matter at a safe distance, where the viewer remains obscured on one side of the camera. However, McNaughton utilises the widespread popularity of home video camcorders to put a camera in the possession of Lucas, and this pulls the audience directly inside his perspective, virtually unable to turn away from even the ugliest of details.
When considering the truth and lies of Lucas, it’s only proper that Ottis Toole (played here by Tom Towles) is included as a character alongside Henry. Toole was an equally horrific killer, though one not averse to telling lies. He told his own, but he and Lucas infamously both told authorities about supposedly being inducted into a murderous cult called The Hands of Death, despite nothing tangible to suggest this group ever existed. The two men would confess to over one hundred killings as a pair. Still, the truth was always an obstacle for them, whether apart or together. Most of their relationship is altered in the screenplay, excluding any mention of the cult, and even changing how they met. On the one hand, a lot of the alterations are innocuous. On the other, the fictionalized inclusion of the video camera in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer carries significance.
The camera acts in several ways. Initially, it serves as commentary on media and the public in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. It’s a kind of double-edged sword, in that there’s always a question of ethics when considering what violence the media shows, as well as how much. The camera’s most important suggestion here is in terms of culpability. That’s to say, in real life Lucas told many lies, so then the fictional Lucas cannot be fully culpable for all the crimes he confessed to unless there’s absolute proof of his actions. McNaughton uses the homemade video within his own movie to test the audience, almost as if he’s asking: do you want to see this? Is it necessary? In a way, it is necessary, and that’s because it’s symbolic of truth. The videotapes are nasty, and they’re a sick way for the fictionalized versions of these true to life murderers to get thrills after the fact. They’re also much more than that.
The camera and its videotapes further suggest truth, operating on a wavelength of ‘seeing is believing.’ The videotapes are a way for Henry to remember the crimes. He doesn’t obsessively watch them like Otis, who does so for a sick erotic thrill after the fact. Via McNaughton, the videotapes are a way for Henry to truthfully remember the hideous crimes he’s committed. In the beginning, we see shots of various, unknown women dead and brutalized. These are the discarded bodies in the wake of Henry as he moves through various cities. They’re almost forgotten in a sense; not by the viewer, but by Henry. He moves like the wind from one city to another, murdering, doing terrible things, and he begins a new life every time he passes through a city’s limits. Once the videotapes enter Henry’s life, a certain amount of plausible deniability goes totally out the window for him. Because they’re literal evidence of his crimes. They aren’t embellished into wild stories like the many elaborate confessions Lucas claimed were true in real life, rather they’re brutally visceral. After the videotapes, Henry can’t continue lying to himself. This is why, despite protecting Becky from Otis, in the end he realizes he’s no protector; he can’t be a brother, a lover or a father figure to her, so she, like the rest, is dispatched mercilessly. And so the end becomes a commentary, once more, on Henry’s perspective. After murdering Becky and leaving her behind, as well as the videotapes, he’s effectively abandoned the truth, moving wholly into the realm of an ever shifting, murderously fluid identity as a pathological liar and serial killer.
This grisly end for Becky is also a highly significant event. In reality, Henry sexually abused the real life Toole’s niece, Freida, and unlike the movie’s character Becky, the actual Freida was a twelve-year-old girl. Her character becomes a method through which the fictional Henry shatters his self perception. The actual Henry didn’t protect Freida, as the fictional one does Becky after Ottis gets sexually violent with her. The fictional Henry protects Becky at first, but once Ottis crosses the line, Henry suddenly sees himself in Ottis; the videotapes have finally become his full reality. By the final scene, Henry has no other choice but to accept the reality of what he’s done.
The camera’s a major element in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer not solely for Henry as a character, it also brings the viewer’s role into question regarding how audiences consume violent media, particularly the true stories of killers such as Lucas. There’s a disturbing implication McNaughton heaps upon those watching his movie about why there’s such an interest in these gruesome tales. There is a shocking horror about Henry and Otis recording their violence, yet the audience is already sitting in on the horrifying action to start. The tapes are a psychological device McNaughton uses – specifically considering the real Lucas and Toole did not actually videotape themselves committing murders – to illustrate his eagerness in exploring Henry as a subject, as well as by proxy his audience who are willing, if not eager to witness all the brutality.
Combining this technique with raw realism, McNaughton closes the gap between fictional slasher horror, whose psychotic killers are more often than not exaggerated caricatures, and the lives of real murderers. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer doesn’t allow the viewer the same amount of distance as a movie with Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, or Jason Voorhees. For one, they’re fictional. But more importantly they don’t record their crimes. It doesn’t even matter Henry Lee Lucas never videotaped any of his murders. McNaughton puts us in the middle of Lucas’s world, for better or worse, and even the fictionalised aspects of his story add gravitas to the real story of Lucas, plus the movie forces the viewer to confront themselves and why they’re captivated by the horror of real serial killers.
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