Chicago's MPI Home Video originally commissioned McNaughton to make a quickie horror film with a $100,000 budget. But instead of a slasher movie that MPI would have been pleased to have, McNaughton and co-writer Richard A. Fire, the latter a veteran of Chicago's Organic Theater, which also gave the movies Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator), instead made a grim, disturbing drama that deserves a place in the true-crime film pantheon with In Cold Blood and The Honeymoon Killers. McNaughton was inspired by a 20/20 report on Henry Lee Lucas, who claimed to have killed dozens as he drifted across the country, and he and Fire shared the desire to make a movie free of the usual genre-picture morality plays.
Fictionalizing its account of Henry (Michael Rooker), his frequent partner in crime Otis (Tom Towles) and Otis's younger sister Becky (Tracy Arnold), Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer refuses to present its men as mere villains. In between his killings, Henry is as courteous as a church deacon and Becky, who temporarily moves into their Chicago apartment, soon bonds with him over their abuse-filled childhoods. But that abuse by his mother, who made him watch her have sex with men, has left Henry with a rage lurking just beneath his common courtesy and forever tainted sex for him. It's this emotional isolation that makes Henry a tragic figure (especially after the movie's chilling ending).
Just as there's more to Henry than murder, there's more to the violence in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer than grisly thrills. The movie boldly asks us to walk a mile in Henry's shoes, and it insinuates us into his crimes. The script cleverly lulls us into seeing Henry's vision of the world, especially in the scene in which he and Otis try to buy a TV from a fencer of stolen goods (Ray Atherton) who's so ride and insulting that, by the time Henry and Otis attack him, you don't really blame them. Yet, a little while later, we're treated to the horrific sight of Henry and Otis videotaping themselves as they terrorize and murder a suburban family, a scene that refuses to gloss over the depravity of the two through any sort of stylistic technique. It rubs our noses in cold-blooded murder. When Otis soon becomes enamored of the video of the home invasion and fetishizes its violence by watching himself rip off the wife's blouse again and again, in slow-motion, he's acting an awful lot like society as a whole, which thrives on a stew of sex and violence. In Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, there's a fine line between aberrant behavior and national pastime.
Even though some criticized Henry for its violence and subject matter, missing the drama that justifies them, the movie quickly gained a following when it got its limited theatrical release. The new 20th anniversary DVD, released by MPI's Dark Sky Films division, does an outstanding job of chronicling the movie's struggles and successes from conception to belated release. It includes a comprehensive, 52-minute making-of documentary that rounds up most of the on- and off-camera players involved, as well as an audio commentary in which McNaughton is interviewed by the documentary's director, David Gregory. As is often the case when there is both a lengthy making-of featurette and a director's commentary, there's some overlap in anecdotes, but the movie's unusual genesis and its struggles to overcome its producers' dissatisfaction (MPI shelved the movie upon seeing it) and the MPAA ratings board (which gave the movie an ‘X' for "disturbing moral tone"; the film was released unrated) merit the lengthy extras. In other words, unlike many other recent upgrades from a one-disc to a two-disc DVD, this re-release is an unusually worthy one.
The new Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer DVD also includes several deleted scenes and outtakes, but since the sound elements for them are missing, they are seen only silently, with commentary by McNaughton, whose post-Henry career has included Mad Dog and Glory, Normal Life and Wild Things. His debut feature retains its power because, unlike many indie hits, Hollywood never "remade" it as a studio movie (think of Robert Rodriguez remaking El Mariachi as Desperado for Hollywood). Making a movie as grim as Henry is simply not the business the Hollywood studios are in. At least not in 1986, 1990 or 2006.
For more information about Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, visit Dark Sky Films. To order Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, go to TCM Shopping.
by Paul Sherman
