Drifter: Henry Lee Lucas (2009)

Just perfect...

Highly Overrated But Still Good

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

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

A man called Henry Lee Lucas is arrested for murder in Texas . As he's interrogated by the police department he confesses to another murder . Then another . Before very long Lucas has been confessing to an unprecedented number of murders I'm not really an aficionado of serial killers / spree killers and so consulted wiki as to this true life mass murderer . Henry Lee Lucas isn't going to win any humanitarian awards . He eventually confessed to 60 murders while in police custody . When he went to court he said he committed 100 murders then before long he was confessing to 3000 murders .. He was found guilty of the murder of an unidentified woman in Texas woman and sentenced to death but this was commuted to life imprisonment on the grounds that he was almost certainly in Florida at the time of this murder " Hold on Theo . If he was in Florida that almost certainly means that he didn't commit the murder so why did the court do something resembling a strange compromise where's imprisoned instead of being executed ? Surely he's innocent or guilty and no compromise involving punishment is required ? " Yeah that's what I don't understand either and things don't make a lot of sense . There's a massive difference between 3,000 murders and 1 murder . Most importantly from a legal point of view there's a massive difference between 3,000 murders and zero murders . If you don't kill anyone then no crime has been committed therefore the state has no right to imprison anyone . Lucas continually kept changing figures as to the numbers he supposedly murdered and that leads to a limited number of possible scenarios 1 ) He was guilty of at least one or more murders and seeing the resultant publicity decided to up the numbers to gain even more infamy . The good a man does while he is alive dies after him but the evil he does live long after him 2 ) The police deciding he's guilty of one or more murder decide to stitch him up for a few unsolved cold cases and Lucas went along with it and it kind of snowballed from there 3 ) Lucas was entirely deluded and committed no murders at all but the cops thought he was guilty of at least something so decided to stitch him up What is certain is Lucas was found guilty of killing his mother and served ten years for her killing . Apart from that the film is unsure as to how it should play its hand . Lucas doesn't come across as the most pleasant or intelligent of men . He is from a background of to use a derogatory term " trailer trash " but this doesn't necessarily make him a murderer of one individual or many and the film does seem to be a bit to willingly say he was a serial killer without going in to any specifics as to the amount of people he murdered . It feels the need to be a a compromise . I'm not saying Lucas was in any way innocent of murder but you're painfully aware that the film isn't trying to make out what the truth may be and stick to its opinion of that possible truth and for what might have been a very impressive well made indie film featuring an outsider from society ends up sinking to a degree

Director Michael Feifer has also worked on movies about Richard Speck, Ted Bundy, BTK, Ed Gein and the Boston Strangler; this time he makes the effort to be more factual. Antonio Sabato Jr. is pretty convincing as Henry Lee Lucas, who confessed to committing any where from 350 to 600 murders. Many of these meaningless murders were with companion Otis Toole(Kostas Sommer). This film has Lucas making confessions to a Sheriff with the Texas Rangers(John Diehl)and a District Attorney(John Burke). One believes all of the confessions, while the other claims most of Lucas' tales are just that...tales. Either way; Henry Lee Lucas was driven to his devious and murderous ways my an abusive mother(Cala Coley). Kelly Curran portrays Toole's 14-year old niece and Lucas' lover...and one of his victims. This movie appears to have had a limited budget, but is very watchable. A crime story fiend's delight.

I'm not sure if this film was supposed to be serious or funny. This is suppose to be the story of serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, but it didn't strike me as much of anything. Actually the tone makes it seem as though everything is a joke, which may have been how Lucas was but at the same time you really can't know which way you're suppose to feel, laughing at or laughing with the film. It doesn't help that Antonio SabatoJr who plays Henry is one note. he has his face scrunched up in what seems to be an Elvis Presley impersonation for a good part of the film and it never changes. Give the film points for trying to do something with its limited budget, the film really looks like they actually had money at times, but outside of that the film never comes together. Its another disappointing horror film based on true events that isn't as compelling as the source material. I'd skip it