Editorials
[Butcher Block] The Uncomfortable Realism of ‘Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer’
Butcher Block is a weekly series celebrating horror’s most extreme films and the minds behind them. Dedicated to graphic gore and splatter, each week will explore the dark, the disturbed, and the depraved in horror, and the blood and guts involved. For the films that use special effects of gore as an art form, and the fans that revel in the carnage, this series is for you.
Movies have a long-standing relationship with serial killers, from larger-than-life fictional personalities like Patrick Bateman and Hannibal Lecter to true-crime enigmatic killers like Charles Manson and Ted Bundy; it’s as though there’s an inherent need to delve into the pathology behind these twisted minds in film. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer exists far removed from the rest; based on real-life serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, this horror film isn’t interested in the whys of its killer. Instead, it’s a voyeuristic window into his life, one so uncomfortable that the film sent the MPAA into a tizzy and wound up on the shelf for years until finally getting a release.
Co-writer/director John McNaughton’s feature debut, Henry doesn’t really have a story in the traditional sense. It opens to a shocking frame of a discarded dead woman, completely naked and covered in blood, before cutting to Henry (Michael Rooker), a seemingly normal man going through a mundane daily routine. As he quietly eats his breakfast before driving on through town, the film continues to juxtapose these ordinary moments with brutal shots of the dead bodies that Henry is leaving in his wake. It’s a chilling introduction to the casual, impulsive nature of Henry. This matter-of-fact style of slaying, combined with McNaughton’s choice to film in 16mm, gives Henry an overall gritty feel that seeks to drive home that the world’s scariest monsters have no motive behind their actions.
Henry shares an apartment with his former jail mate Otis (Tom Towles), who just picked up his younger sister Becky (Tracy Arnold) from the airport to stay with him for a while. Becky is the closest thing the film has to an audience proxy, a vulnerable young woman with a long history of sexual abuse who’s currently fleeing an abusive relationship. It’s through her that we learn a little more about Henry’s past, and it’s through her that we’re given just a smidgen of hope that there’s some kind of logic to Henry’s homicides. When Becky pries about Henry’s murder of his own mother, he can’t even get the details right. It’s a major red flag that hints at how many murders he’s committed, but also how very insignificant the act of murdering is to him. Becky’s too broken to notice; she instead relays her own traumatic past.
Once Otis embarks on a killing spree with Henry, McNaughton continues to ratchet up the tension, dread, and unease the more the pair gleefully approach their ruthless deeds with reckless abandon. It culminates in one harrowing doozy of a finale, and McNaughton brilliantly brings things full circle by having the film’s final victim unwittingly admire the guitar that belonged to one of Henry’s earliest victims, a hitchhiker.
The MPAA famously said that no number of edits would pass Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer with an R-rating. It’s a revealing statement considering how very little gore there is throughout the film, save for a couple of effective death sequences and cutaways to the bloody aftermath. When the film finally saw release a few years after its premiere at the Chicago International Film Festival, unrated no less, the reception was polarizing.
McNaughton delivered an unflinching portrayal of what a serial killer really looked like, saturated in realism and completely devoid of the entertainment value that usually sugarcoats the most depraved aspects of humanity. For some, being put into the voyeuristic role of watching Henry commit his heinous acts in all its ugliness was too much to handle. Brilliant direction and an uncanny performance by Rooker make Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer one of the most distressing, terrifying horror films of all time.
Sometimes it’s not gore that disturbs, but uncomfortable truths.
Editorials
Not Another ‘Scary Movie’: Revisiting Forgotten Parody ‘Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th’
After Scream (1996) made a killing at the box office, as well as won over critics and audiences, a lot of folks in the movie biz thought they could do the same thing (and yield similar results). That thing, of course, being a slasher. Most of these opportunists wound up being pretty straightforward; they were low on humor or commentary. Yet others, like Scary Movie (2000), saw the potential for spoofing Scream, and acted on that impulse with both haste and excitement.
A few months after the Wayans’ comedy first hit theaters, Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th landed on the USA Network, as part of the channel’s “Shriek Week” programming. That straight-to-cable (then home video) destination is possibly why many people still don’t know about this one. Or they simply chose to forget. Whatever the reason, only one of these two horror parodies came out on top—and it’s certainly not the movie where Coolio channeled Prince, and Tom Arnold saved the day.
Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th previously went by the name of I Know What You Screamed Last Semester. That Trimark acquisition then settled on a wordier title, just so it could avoid the litigious wrath of Miramax Films. Folks may or may not remember that Columbia Pictures was sued over the “implied connection” between I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) and Scream. So, yeah, there was no way that this competing Scream parody wasn’t going to be kept on a tight rein.
A Heavy Reliance on Late ’90s TV References
Simon Rex, Julie Benz, Majandra Delfino, Harley Cross, Danny Strong, Tom Arnold and Tiffani-Amber Thiesen in Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th.
Naturally, there would be similarities between Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th and Scary Movie—their scripts are built on the backs of the same two movies. It goes without saying that the other big slasher of the 1990s, I Know What You Did Last Summer, was as much of a target as Scream. However,the film pads itself with more TV references than Scary Movie did.
Half the cast coming off of (and in some cases, returning to) a WB show could be a reason why. Dawson’s Creek is particularly zeroed in on, based on how there’s a central character named “Dawson Deery“, and how the teen drama’s teacher-student affair plotline is satirized to the nth degree. As if there weren’t enough nods to television, Baywatch, VH1’s Pop Up Video, and even those cheesy Mentos commercials all serve as joke prompts.
Shriek director John Blanchard and writers Sue Bailey and Joe Nelms all hailed from television, so it’s understandable that they would stick close to home. The movie’s humor in general makes more sense, in light of learning that Blanchard worked on SCTV, Kids in the Hall, and MADtv. The writers, on the other hand, were each fairly green, with Bailey being the most experienced of the two; she wrote and produced the game show BattleBots. Nevertheless, they, plus Blanchard, churned out a passable, joke-a-minute movie. The whole thing is staggeringly of its time, but no one here was aiming for longevity.
Having seen enough of these kinds of movies, we know to expect jokes of the low-hanging fruit variety. That’s the parody’s whole prime directive. From the characters having names like “Screw Frombehind” and “Doughy Primesuspect”, to stereotyping that feels taboo nowadays, this is a movie from a different era of comedy. Its coarse, corny, and unapologetic sense of humor won’t sit well with everyone in these more enlightened times. In which case, Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th can be treated as a time capsule.
Does Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th Humor Still Hold Up Today?
“You may already be a victim”—Someone receives a most peculiar threatening piece of mail in Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th.
Although Shriek doesn’t live up to its own claims of being so funny that you’ll die of laughter, its bawdier parts could still lead to some nervous laughter. For instance, after this movie’s parallel to Drew Barrymore’s Scream character is done in—not by the killer but by a bug zapper—the movie throws a newspaper next to the victim’s fresh corpse. The headline? “Popular slut killed! Football team mourns”.
We then move on to the wacky and inappropriate goings-on at Bulimia Falls High School, home of the Hurlers. At this nexus of constant absurdity, indecency, and surrealism, students are seen fornicating on the lawn, cheerleading squad applicants are advised to be comfortable with partial nudity, and terrorists openly prepare for an anthrax attack. It can be a tad jarring to watch, especially if you didn’t grow up witnessing this style of comedy firsthand. Hell, even if you did, you may still have a “what the hell were they thinking?” reaction.
It’s not just the aggressively edgy humor here that can make you chuckle—the slapstick, the sight gags, and the ribaldry all have a decent chance of landing. The movie’s own villain, whose hockey mask was instantly transformed into a crudely Ghostface-esque one after coming in contact with an open flame, commits more cheap laughs than kills. His and his victims’ chase sequences, most of which are cartoonish in nature, left this writer grinning. The Scooby-Doo fan in me also totally ate up that clever unmasking joke.
Final Thoughts on This Forgotten Horror Parody
Shriek If You Know What Did Last Friday the 13th
Now, the jury is still out on whether these comedies are to blame for the death of the first slasher revival. There is more to consider than some parodies. At the very least, the likes of Scary Movie didn’t exactly encourage big studios to put their money on a trend that was being derided to death (and not as profitable as the spoofs). These sorts of movies also felt unnecessary at the time, given how their principal inspiration is already a deconstruction of the genre. But like anything else that quickly becomes popular, mockery is unavoidable.
Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th is indeed a movie nobody asked for, much less needed. As a sample of pre-millennium humor and cultural attitudes, it’s not always precise. But as I’ve laid out, your mileage may vary. Horror parodies typically don’t have the best track record, so managing one’s own expectations here is recommended.
Upon rewatching, I for one laughed a bit more than I did back then. Only this time, I responded to the jokes that my younger self didn’t notice or find all that amusing. So it just goes to show that the movies don’t change—we do.
Harley Cross and Majandra Delfino must unmask the killer a number of times in Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th before learning their true identity.
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