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The remote possibility of moral redemption seems to be held out by Henry's tentative relationship with Becky, but even that faint glimmer of hope is extinguished by a devastatingly downbeat ending. Rooker achieves frightening intensity as an ice-killer for whom murder and taking a beer out of the fridge are much the same thing. It is this air of detachment that makes the blood run cold. Whether presenting a halting conversation or bloody carnage, he observes events with the unblinking eye of a surveillance camera. Later, the violence becomes more graphic, but what makes it so disturbing, and sometimes almost unwatchable, is the cool matter-of-fact tone McNaughton sustains throughout.
Henry portrait of a serial killer cast series#
The violence is at first oblique, with Henry's past murders presented as a series of grotesque tableaux accompanied by the (recorded?) sounds of the victims death struggles. Turning up at the Chicago apartment shared by old prison buddy Otis and his timid sister Becky, Henry (Rooker) slowly draws Otis into his dark, obsessive world of casual murder. The bleak and quiet style of 'Henry' makes the characters seem frighteningly real. This is almost a documentary - and the stuff nightmares are made of. The movie, which fictionalizes the story of mass murderer Henry Lee Lucas, isnt a psychological study in the conventional sense. The film is based on the true-life story of serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. But as the depravity escalates and Henry forms a bond with Otis sister, Becky (Tracy Arnold), things start to get out of hand. McNaughton's compelling study of a blithe sociopath makes the flesh crawl and the mind reel. The title 'Portrait of a Serial Killer' actually says it all. Fellow jailbird and drug dealer Otis (Tom Towles) becomes a willing accomplice in Henrys bloody killings.