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Making a film is hard enough. But getting it to the screen can be even harder. Ask director John McNaughton. It took three years for his controversial debut feature, "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer," to find a distributor before making the 1990 Top 10 list of Time magazine, USA Today and the Chicago Tribune. Then "The Borrower," his second feature, had to survive the bankruptcy of one production company and the foot-dragging of another before a tiny Chicago revival house saved it from cinematic oblivion.
"The Borrower," a $2-million movie that opened to excellent reviews and promising box office at Chicago's Music Box Theater last month, scans the urban landscape of the United States from the vantage point of an extraterrestrial. For crimes committed on his planet, the alien is condemned to "de-evolve," wandering Earth and becoming that most vile of creatures-a human being. But de-evolution is an imperfect process and presents the ongoing threat of physical deterioration. When his head keeps exploding, the creature "borrows" a series of new ones from a motley bunch of characters ranging from a redneck deer hunter to a black homeless person-inheriting the mind-sets and foibles of each.
In both films, the dramatics of the "chase"-so central to action and horror films-are subjugated to McNaughton's chilling portrait of a bleak and violent world. Not only doesn't "good" always triumph over "evil," but we-as human beings-are encouraged to mull over into just which category we fall.
Film critic and historian Richard Schickel calls "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" "the single most brutal movie ever made, one which makes no concession to moral outrage. Because its outward style matches the inner landscape of a psychopath, it's really good film making." And Newsday's Joseph Gelmis observed in a 1990 review: "By refusing to justify its killings, or to make them more palatable-that is, cartoonish-`Henry' offers itself as a realistic antidote to Hollywood's escalating fantasy violence."
McNaughton thumbs his nose at Hollywood conventions in "The Borrower" as well. "The monster is the star of the piece, the cops (Rae Dawn Chong and Don Gordon) hapless Earthlings chasing after what they think is a serial killer," says the 42-year-old McNaughton. "I try to violate traditions and encourage people to use their brains."