Interestingly, the real Henry Lee Lucas did indeed kill his mother, and went to jail for it for several years. However, this doesn't necessarily make it true. It is true that Henry was in jail for committing some type of crime, obviously, and he maintained that it was for the murder of his mother. On the 20th Anniversary DVD, McNaughton further states that Henry honestly cannot remember whether or not he killed her, or, if so, the details, thus explaining the glaring discrepancies in Henry's account of what happened (he told Otis he beat her to death her with a baseball bat, he initially tells Becky ( Tracy Arnold) he stabbed her, and then he tells her he shot her). In his commentary track for the UK Full Uncut Edition DVD, director John McNaughton says he believes that Henry did not kill his mother. No definitive answer to this question is supplied by the film. This is due to the unnatural and unsettling, non-diegetic soundtrack, which functions here, as elsewhere, to subconsciously disturb and terrify the audience. If one listens to the scene carefully, there is a very definite feeling that something is "wrong", but it is almost impossible to puts one's finger on what it is. As such, they mixed a plethora of generally unpleasant sounds, which were then played at a barely audible level. Jones, Ken Hale and Robert McNaughton explain that for that scene, they wanted to unhinge the audience, make them unconsciously aware that something abominable was about to happen. In Portrait: The Making of 'Henry' (2005), composers Steven A. The same thing applies to the scene outside the house. The cumulative effect of all of this is to create a wall of disturbing and inhuman sound, which in turn, creates a sense of unease and discomfort in the viewer not only do we hear the (already disturbing) sounds of murder and death, but such sounds are embellished, enhanced and made ever more disturbing, by the use of other unsettling sounds. So, whilst the words may have actually been spoken during the murder, the way they are spoken is heard non-diegetically (ie not generated by the actual scene itself, but instead artificially created by the mixers). However, the voice has been altered to sound inhuman, far too guttural, like a demon or an animal. Die bitch." It's entirely possible that this is Henry's voice, shouting at the woman, and is therefore diegetic. If you listen closely to the soundtrack, amongst the sounds of the actual struggle and murder, you can hear a voice shouting, "Die bitch. A good example of this marriage of diegetic and non-diegetic sound can be found in the shot of the dead woman on the toilet with the bottle in her mouth. This means that some of the sounds are legitimately generated by the scene itself (a woman screaming for example), some of the sounds aren't (the sound of an animal for example). These sounds were then mixed into the sound of the murders (which were made up of screaming, gun blasts etc), creating a bizarre collage of sounds, some of which are diegetic, some of which aren't. As such, rather than simply have the literal sounds of the murder on the soundtrack, he had composers Ken Hale and Robert McNaughton record a huge number of what could be called "unsettling" sounds, from animals being slaughtered to the sound of a dentist's drill at work. During postproduction, director John McNaughton wanted the soundtrack to have a very disconcerting and disturbing feel to it, to instill a sense of unconscious unease in the viewer right from the very start of the film. However, there is more to the effect than that. As such, the sounds are used simply to clue the audience into the violence which resulted in the macabre scene with which we are visually presented. What we are hearing is the sound of the murder taking place, juxtaposed with the image of the aftermath of that murder we hear the act and see the result, but we don't see the act. In the case of the four early shots and the closing shot, the sounds are ostensibly the sounds of the murder act itself. Strange, unexpected sound effects are used approximately six times during the film during the four shots of the dead bodies which open the movie, as Henry and Otis ( Tom Towles) pull up outside the home of the family they are about to murder, and in the very last shot of the film.
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