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
then an animated series was created based on the books. Both were once a
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
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
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
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,
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
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
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
drags him into the kitchen. Dad then throws Henry across the kitchen and
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
Henry leaves the house and starts walking down the pavement. Rude
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
foolish character he is, then accepts the dare. Knowing that Ralph is an
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.
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
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
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
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