Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

Decades before the explosion of true-crime podcasts and streaming miniseries invited casual viewers to contemplate the obscure inner lives of murderers and rapists, director John McNaughton shocked unsuspecting audiences with his unflinching, profoundly bleak character study of one such enigma, loosely inspired by the real-life case of Henry Lee Lucas. Between the film’s festival premiere in 1986 and a delayed theatrical release four years later, criticisms around the dearth of distribution opportunities available to films like McNaughton’s helped motivate the creation of the MPAA’s NC-17 rating in 1990. Michael Rooker is hypnotically opaque as Henry, an itinerant ex-con who shares a cramped Chicago apartment with his old prison friend Otis (Tom Towles) and Otis’s sister, Becky (Tracy Arnold), eventually involving them in a heinous and apparently random killing spree. Writing in Film Comment, the critic Dave Kehr observed: “McNaughton suggests that suspense is just sentimentality—a bit of wishful thinking that we’re better off without. Real horror exists without suspense, without thrills, without any physical release. It is emotion with no place to go, and Henry allows no escape.” To mark the groundbreaking film’s 40th anniversary, Scary Movies is honored to host McNaughton in person for the world premiere of a brand-new 4K restoration. A Dark Sky Films release.