STARSTRUCK: How I Met Becky and Went to Pieces

Living in LA, you see celebrities everywhere, like chainsaws in a slasher flick. It gets on your nerves after awhile. 

Under your skin.

Once, while waiting in line inside my local Sherman Oaks coffee house, I turned around and spotted Danny DeVito waiting right behind me, minding his own business.

I actually like DeVito. His very funny film Throw Mama from the Train had just come out. (“Owen doesn’t have any friends!”)

But I’d be damned if I was going to drool and fawn over the little man, ask for his autograph, tell him how much I adored his films.

Instead, I turned and looked down at him.

Yo! My man Da-VEE-toh!.

He smiled.

Yo, bro! he said.

And that was it.

But now and then, you’d run into a super-celebrity who makes you doubt whether you'll ever be the same again.

Somebody like Becky.

In 1994, I was having breakfast with in Hollywood a friend at a trendy place called Hampton’s. 

She set down my fries and asked innocently if I wanted another Coke.

The glint of recognition slammed my cortex. It was the same blond hair, petite frame and sky-blue eyes. No, it couldn’t be. 

It was her. Becky was my waitress!

Did you just see who that was? I gasped to my friend.

Who? he asked.

You know — Becky — the ex-topless dancer in the 1980s cult classic Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. In the end of the movie, Becky gets hacked to pieces, her dismembered body stuffed inside a baby-blue suitcase and tossed into a farmer’s field.

I’d first seen Henry four years before as a Sunday matinee. In less than 90 minutes, fictional versions of savage serial killers Henry Lee Lucas and Otis Toole killed 15 people.

In the dark-souled spirit of Taxi Driver and Reservoir Dogs, the movie took a sinister, unabashed look at violence in America, featuring a disturbing home invasion scene and others in which Henry — the epitome of the urban bogyman — snaps necks, wields a screwdriver and decapitates a dead victim with a kitchen knife.

When it was over, I needed therapy. I wanted to grab people by the collar as they filed out of the theater: My God! How can we let people do this to one another?

For years my ex-wife Betty lived in fear, always locking the door, proclaiming, Henry’s out there.

And then, there she was, standing there before me, in the flesh, all put back together again.

I swallowed hard and asked the question that scores of Henry cult followers had asked before me: Ahem. You’re Becky, aren’t you?

She smiled sweetly and nodded her head. 

But when I recited a few favorite lines from the film, Becky looked at me and said, Oh, you even remember dialogue. That scares me!

That's when Tracy Arnold told her own scary story: how she’d been taken hostage by a movie.

She was barely 22 when the aspiring stage actress went from Shakespeare to shock — landing her first film role in the low-budget Henry, filmed filmed in Chicago in four weeks for $100,000.

For $2,000, Arnold played Otis’ innocent kid sister who misguidedly falls in love with the brooding Henry and later falls to pieces as the movie’s pitiful last victim.

Arnold thought she had scored big-time with her first movie role. After all, she knew a lot about the real Henry Lee Lucas. Some of his supposed Texas victims were friends of her family. And Lucas -- then on Death Row -- had spent time in jail near her hometown of Georgetown, Tex.

You know, just typical teenage stories of some kid from Texas.

Henry, filmed in 1985, was shelved for years after receiving an X-rating for violence. But the film rose from the dead after critic Roger Ebert gave it a rave review at the Telluride Film Festival.

After that, Henry made people lose sleep.  I had friends — grown men with sadistic streaks — who could not bear to watch it. Still, the home video version even advertises “Henry” T-shirts and movie posters.

For co-stars Michael Rooker, who played Henry, and Tom Towles, who portrayed Otis, the movie’s unlikely success translated into steady work: Rooker soon scored roles in JFK, Sea of Love, and Mississippi Burning, while Towles has landed regular film and television work.

But for Arnold, the film spelled only frustration. 

By the time Henry hit the midnight market in 1990, Arnold had moved from Chicago to Hollywood to begin waitressing. She landed a few minor roles, including commercials for both McDonald’s and Wendy’s. 

Soon, though, the work disappeared. And the Becky sightings began.

Nobody ever just says ‘Oh, you were in that little film,’ Arnold said. It’s always ‘Oh, my God! It’s you! You’re Becky!’ It’s no small thing.

You know, dorks like me.

The sightings actually started before the film was commercially released—among Hollywood insiders with access to bootleg copies of Henry.

The first time I was recognized, this guy just stared at me like I was a ghost, Arnold said. When he finally approached me, I said, ‘How did you find me? How did you get a copy of the film?’ He just gave me a wicked little smile and said, ‘Oh, it’s around.

Her friends joked that she’d make a great spokeswoman for American Tourister luggage. Once, Arnold was followed for several blocks by a grungy-looking character she believed was going to rob her.

I thought, ‘Oh, am I in trouble.’ Then he walks up to me and says, ‘Dude! You were in Henry! You were, like, so great!’

Casting directors were less than complimentary.

It’s like, these people can’t see me as anybody else but Becky,” Arnold said. They all hear me read for roles and they say, ‘Gee, you were great. We just don’t know what to do with you.’

I wrote a story about Arnold, how she’d turned into Max Baer Jr., who after Beverly Hillbillies was forever seen as Jethro Bodine.

I called her parents back in Texas, who couldn’t bear to watch Henry.

I preferred to see Tracy in some sort of Cinderella-type movie, said her father, Wayne (Pistol) Arnold. I kept in mind that it was just a movie. After it was over, I told her ‘Well, honey, at least you didn’t take your clothes off.’ We were pleased at that, at least.

Years later, Henry was still a topic of conversation in the Arnold family.

A few years ago, my mother chided me for having an unlisted number -- which is unheard-of in rural Texas, Arnold said. She wanted to know how people were going to get in touch with me. I said "Mom, I have a movie out about a serial killer. I don’t want people to get in touch with me."

When I met her, Arnold was working three part-time jobs as she waited for mainstream Hollywood to come calling, still trying to erase the black footnote a strange little movie had left on her career.

She never quite succeeded.

After being nominated for Best Supporting Actress by the Independent Spirit Awards for her role in Henry, she did only a handful of other films, including The Borrower, The Shot and The Other One. She also had a role in one episode of Baywatch.

Not much action for a young actress with so much promise.

But she kept her sense of humor throughout.

That day in Hollywood, I stepped way out of character.

I asked for her autograph for my wife.

Betty, she wrote, I’ve made a deal with Henry and he’s agreed to leave you alone. But I may come knocking.

That Becky, she just slays me.