PixlBit

i remember watching that henry movie like ten years ago. It is arresting.  I would go so far as to call it good.  it does make you uncomfortable though.  probably a more realistic depiction of a serial killer than those Saw movies....

Definitely more realistic a depiction of violence than most movies, and that's why it's so arresting and difficult to watch at the same time. Michael Rooker and the other actors really sold it. 

Not my kind of movie. I prefer to be more entertained with my movies and less disturbed.

Then try Ice-T's audiobook instead! 

My dad gave me a hardback version of The Hand of Death. Which was Henry Lee Lucas's biography. Man... talk about a dark read. There was this one part where he drove through an entire state with some woman's decapitated head on top of his head like a hat. He joined a Satanic cult, and his partner Ottis Toole was a cannibal among other positive things.

They never depicted Otis in the film as cannibalistic, just incestuous, murderous and bisexual to some degree. Satanic thing was never brought up, either. 

The only hardcovers I've received from my dad have been Bill O'Reily books. I actually did want to read Killing Lincoln.

WAIT...Ice T went from Cop Killer, to being a Cop on Law & Order to reading Dungeons & Dragons? First LOL, and props for doing different projects, because this is an odd pairing. Also LOL. 

According to IMDB, he was also in several video games and played Ramrod in Batman Beyond. 

This is why I tend to avoid 'based on a true story' films, more often than not, the real events are way more interesting than whatever story is trying to be presented by the filmakers.

It depends on the movie, but I thought this was an interesting film for what it was, I'm just more interested in reading up on Lucas than I am in watching this again. 

I need to watch this movie. If it's still on neftlix I'm adding it to my list!

It's still there. This would seem to contradict our discussion about how I view mediated violence, save for the fact this is still Hollywood violence that I can handle better than real, bloody and creul violence. I mean it's all those things, but I know it's not real, so I do ok. 

that's something I don't quite follow yet. To me I keep it simple: violence is violence. It's why I do enjoy watching shows like these that tend to help me understand the differences of meditated violence and hollywood violence. Moreso when the lines between the two can easily be blurred pending the content.

Hollywood violence is mediated violence. Mediated violence is simply violence you are seeing being carried out through a form of media rather than in front of you in real life. When I say Hollywood violence, I just mean totally fabricated, fictional violence, like CGI, fake blood, etc.

Even documentary violence is mediated violence as opposed to real violence, but in that case it's all very much real. You're just experiencing it vicariously through a medium, thus the term "mediated" is applied. 

The reason I couldn't handle the stills of FGM (also mediated violence) is because of the gruesomeness, combined with real cruelty, actual human suffering and probably too much blood or organs (I've fainted from depictions of gruesomeness before).

In Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, I'm disturbed, but I know everything is fake and that no real human creulty or suffering is occurring to an unacceptable degree, and while bloody, the imagery is nowhere near as gruesome as real FGM is.

I think I see what your driving at. It kinda reminds me of one class I took long ago that tried to blur the lines between the violence with a movie that came out that was suppose to be "based" on some sadistic murders done back in the 80's. I don't remember the movie well but it involved some guy kindnapping girls and torturing them with rape and medical procedures that made them more accessable for his interests at any given moment.

I think the movie was almost banned given how it bordered close to a snuff film since it supposedly included the very violent actions he did to the actors on screen. But no one really died and instead focused more on the survival aspect of the event when one girl escaped. I recall many of the female students getting upset when the instructor tried to explain that the rape in the movie wasn't a sex crime and more of a control action in of itself.

But what got me was how even though I knew it was just a movie, we were suppose to look on it as actual events given that the actions done in the movie were done in real life.

It's probably why I simplified it with just being "violence is violence" given how it got very deep and complex on the act itself, the movie created and the themes it visitied in not just "entertainment" but also the study of the human condition of the "serial mutliator" and the survivors guilt experainced by the escaped girl.

The oddest thing of it all is that I can recall all of that yet not the title of the movie.

Having watched a lot of The Cinema Snob and taking into consideration it was a borderline snuff film from the 80s ... it could be several things he's reviewed. lol