Drifter: Henry Lee Lucas

Serial killer movies have become two a penny, it feels like at least a couple come out each year. This one, directed by Michael Feifer, just feels like old hat, like it is treading water to make a point that has been made a hundred times before. It doesn't help that Henry Lee Lucas has already been covered in brilliantly grainy fashion previously with John McNaughton's 1990 skin itcher Henry: Portrait OF A Serial Killer, which quite frankly is superior to this in every department. On the plus side are the performances of Antonio Sabato Jr. (Henry) and Kostas Sommer (Ottis), where the former is broody and twitchy, the latter hyper insane, but ultimately it achieves nothing. Kudos, however, is due for at least cleaving close to what facts of the case are known to be true. 4/10

Antonio Sabato was so bad in this movie. I used to think he was a good actor. I read the book about Henry Lee Lucas in the 80s. As always, the book is always better than the movie. However, the movie from the 80s "Henry Lee Lucas, Portrait of a Serial Killer" was done real well. This one couldn't hold my interest. It was done so badly.

When you see Antonio Sabata Jr is the star, you should already know what you're about to get. But being a true story murder junkie, I had to check it out. And yeah... pretty bad. But I liked learning more backstory. So if you're hunting for a good kinda Lifetime movie type film, just with a lot of bad language and gore, this one's for you.

Not only horror is my cup of tea but the story behind serial killers does interest me too. But being in the biz for over 15 years I'm mostly not into movies about serial killers. Oh yes, there are some great ones, The Deliberate Stranger (Mark Harmon playing Ted Bundy) for example, still OOP and the other OOP To Catch A Killer (Brian Dennehy playing John Wayne Gacy), and of course Henry:Portrait Of A Serial Killer concerning Henry Lee Lucas (played by Michael Rooker). The movie I just saw also told the story of Henry. But here it's boredom all the way. Were Portrait gives some nasty disturbing scene's (remember the television) this flick just is about, did he kill 3000 persons or not. We see some killings but the blood never flows. We see stabbings in the back, in the neck but the victims never bled. The best part is when Henry and his friend Otis picks up a hitchhiker. What happens next isn't disturbing but is really the best part. The only fact I could agree with is the truth about Henry having an affair with his niece Betty. He did kill his mother but not as stated in this flick. It's sad to see that a flick about two weirdo's doesn't deliver fear.

This movie is not a classical low budget blunder trying to cash in on the fact that it's about serial killer. Granted, the budget was small, but that did not made a big impact on the movie. Script is well written, and constructed. Realistically portraying the torture in his childhood years, that later on led to his twisted personality, movie is not afraid to make a bit longer scenes, just to make you a bit more uncomfortable.

Henry Lee Lucas was a serial killer that, imprisoned, confessed to over 600 murders. Truth is that we really do not know how many victims he killed, due to his false confessions that were rewarded by the police by better treatment.

Overall, do not expect a masterpiece, or some innovative and strange things in it, but more of familiar style of directing with the focus on the story. If you want to go further than that, you can start analyzing events in his childhood and their impact on his killing urges. Was it all his fault, or were there other culprits?

Movie did manage to stick to the actual story of Henry, so it's not all dramatization and imagined events, like some of the recent movies. They slap a "based on a true events" sticker on it, and hope that it will sell better. This is not the case here.