Horrid Henry as he appears in the animated series.
Has anyone heard about Horrid Henry? If you haven't then let me fill you in. Horrid Henry revolves around a very misbehaved young boy who gets up to all sorts of antics and also tends to make life difficult for those around him. Horrid Henry started life as a series of books, and then an animated series was created based on the books. Both were once a thing of happiness from my childhood, but after reading this story you'll soon see why I want to forget their existence. The other day I was cleaning out my attic and I came across one of my old Horrid Henry books. Then shortly afterwards I remembered the cartoon series that only had a lifespan of a couple of years. I'd always wonder why that was so.
So later that day I decided to log on to the internet to find some information revolving around the unexplained absence of the show. At first I didn't find anything useful, but that quickly changed when I came across this rather peculiar web page. The web page was just a plain white screen with a download link. Below the download link there appeared some text explaining what the download was. The download, according to the text, was a zip folder containing every episode of Horrid Henry. Although it wasn't what I wanted to find, I decided to download it, for old times sake. If only I could turn the clock back, if only...
When the download was complete I extracted the zip folder. I immediately discovered that the only thing that was in the folder was one single .avi file simply called "Horrid.avi". At this point I was kicking myself for being so naive and gullible, but I couldn't really complain considering it wasn't what I was looking for in the first place. I opened up the video anyway just to see what it was, this is where it all goes downhill...
It started with the catchy theme song, colourful animation, innocent enough. But the second the intro had finished, it played again, but this time in reverse. When the reversed intro ended, the title card came up like normal. "What the hell is this?" I thought to myself in a state of confusion.
The first scene has Henry refusing to get out of bed, a common scenario within the show. After numerous attempts of trying to get Henry to cooperate, Dad swings open the bedroom door and war and peace ensues over the situation. That's until Dad picks up Henry's baseball bat and smashes up pretty much everything in the room. Henry watches in horror as Dad off loads.
We then cut to Henry staring into the bathroom mirror, looking quite melancholy. But slowly he turns from being depressed to immensely irate. He then appears to be letting out a shout, but all I could here was white noise that followed into the episodes title card. The title card holds a plain white backdrop and the title reads nothing more but the phrase "yrneH dirroH" which appears to be written in blood, quite realistic blood I might add.
The following scene we see a vexed Henry storming down the stairs. As he's going down the stairs he shoves Perfect Peter (his little brother) to the side. Peter confronts Henry and tells him to use his manners, this was a foolish move considering Henry's current state of mind. Henry then picks up Peter and shouts "Try using your common sense, you backward ape!" right in his face. Henry then launches Peter head first down the stairs, then we see Peter lying face down on the floor with his neck seriously broken. Mum comes into the hall and sees Peter's body. She then looks up the stairs at Henry as she's lost the power of speech. Mum then breaks down and holds her dead son. As Henry approaches her she pushes him back and tells him to stay away from her. Mum attempts to ring the police, but she fails to reach the telephone as Henry knocks her out with a nearby vase.
Dad hears all the noise and rushes into the hall. But it's too late, both Mum and Peter are dead. Dad, now feeling murderous, lunges at Henry. Henry defends himself by punching Dad in the face before making a run for the front door. But Dad is quick to act as he grabs Henry and drags him into the kitchen. Dad then throws Henry across the kitchen and he lands on the work surface. As Dad approaches him, Henry then kicks him in the stomach, picks up the kettle and pours the boiling hot water all over Dad's face. We see a graphic close up of Dad's scolded face and then it cuts back to Henry looking psychotic.
Henry leaves the house and starts walking down the pavement. Rude Ralph (one of Henry's friends) sees Henry over the road. Henry looks over at Ralph whilst having cruel intentions running through his mind. Henry sees a truck speeding down the road. Henry then dares Ralph to attempt to walk across the road when the truck is close by and he claims that he'll grant him £10 if he takes on the dare. Ralph, being the foolish character he is, then accepts the dare. Knowing that Ralph is an easily mislead individual, Henry then smirks over the thought. Ralph sees the truck homing in and he steps right in front of it. Fortunately for Ralph, the truck swerves passed him. So Ralph, cocky as the king of spades, heads over to Henry for his £10. But all of a sudden the truck collapses on its side, crushing Ralph as he failed miserably to run away.
Henry heads over to the scene along with a few locals. With his bloody face and tarnished clothes, the driver emerges from the wreckage. Slowly the driver drags himself towards Henry as we soon discover the drivers legs are now immobilized. Then the driver looks up at Henry and utters the sentence "Look at what you did!" Henry glances at the truck and then looks down at the driver. Henry then kicks the driver in the face, which results in breaking the drivers nose and proceeds to walk away from the scene.
For some strange reason the resolution starts to deteriorate and the audio goes all muffled. This lasted for a good three minutes until eventually the picture and audio picked back up. When the picture and audio came back it landed me right in the middle of a scene in which Henry is butchering Sour Susan (one of Henry's enemies) to a pulp with a metal pole, I think. Henry then goes into hiding as he heads for what he thinks is a good hiding place, the bushes in the neighbours back garden. Unfortunately for Henry, the garden he chose to hide in happened to be the garden belonging to Moody Margaret (another one of Henry's enemies). Strange, surely he would of known it was Margaret's garden? Then again it was a rash decision and maybe, with a bit of luck, he might be able to pull this off.
Margaret enters her garden and she so happens to look over into Henry's garden, only to find the mutilated body of Susan, her best friend. She turned white as a ghost as she stood still in a state of shock. As twisted Henry had become, and as much he despised Margaret, he couldn't help but feel the agony within. He then reveals himself and heads over to Margaret. Once again the screen goes funny but not the audio this time. All I could hear was crying, but when the picture came back, Henry is seen violently strangling Margaret. After choking her to death, Henry slowly stands up and looks out of the window. An angry mob and some police cars wait for him outside.
The first of the credits appear and the video stays on those credits. As this is happening the whole audio from the episode plays again in reverse whilst the still image fades to black. It then cuts to the last of the credits. The only thing that appears is the title "Horrid Henry", accompanied by a caption that reads "Copyright ????".
Soon after I tried uploading this on YouTube, but the .avi file somehow vanished from my hard drive and the web page I downloaded it from is nowhere to be seen. I wonder, was this even a proper episode? If so, maybe this has some connection to the sudden declining of the show. I doubt I'll ever find out...