Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Memorable, crazy movie

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

This film was actually made in 1986 (although I've read it was actually shot in 1985) but not released until 1990 as there were censorship problems as to the graphic nature of the film's proceedings.The film is loosely based on the lives of real life serial killers Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole.Henry lives with Otis. They both met in prison when Henry was serving a sentence for murdering his mother. Otis' sister comes to stay with them and instantly falls for Henry. Peppered throughout the film are random victims of Henry shown in differing locales and killed using differing methods. Henry continues to kill but we start to see the involvement of Otis. There is even a scene in which Henry passes down his wisdom regarding serial murder to Otis. Henry now has a new partner in crime. Or does he?The first time I heard about this film was on a TV review show which had celebrities talking about new media. Malcolm McLaren was chosen to watch and talk about Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and had said that it was so shocking that he hadn't slept since seeing it! The ultimate recommendation for a horror movie.The first time I actually got to see the film was when it was released on video in 1990 in the UK. However Henry's butchery wasn't the only I was to witness but also that of the BBFC. They had a massive issue with the scene in which one of the random victims is shown to be a dead naked woman sat on the toilet with a broken bottle in her mouth and the home invasion that Henry and Otis not only commit but also film on a camcorder. The film is now uncut in the UK and common sense has prevailed.Henry feels more like a grimy, gritty documentary which was shot by a silent conspirator rather than a glossy, polished Hollywood film in which the police arrest the assailants at the end. There are no police in Henry as the transient main character moves on and the killings seemingly continue.The arrival of this film signified a major new hallmark in the horror genre as this film was so brilliant executed (pun not intended), directed and acted. I can't imagine anyone else inhabiting the role of Henry other than Michael Rooker. He performs the central character with a very strange, very unsettling disconnect and utter lack of emotion, almost like he has a force-field around him. Tom Towles needs mentioning also as the sleazy, rat-like Otis. Try and watch his performance without your skin crawling.A perfect film that was in fact lauded by critics including Siskel and Ebert (yes you read that right! They praised the film whilst taking the opportunity to further criticise the Friday the 13th films. Bore off!) I remember at the time of GoodFellas reading a Martin Scorsese interview in which he said that the film had seriously disturbed him too and that it thought it was amazing. The film was so loved by critics that it was a film which helped with the introduction of a new classification for the MPAA. That classification was NC-17 (it had been suggested that the new certification would be A for Art-house- films that were felt to be of artistic merit but somewhat violent and/or sexual). However NC-17 replaced the old X rating and the stigma remained. Some cinemas still won't show NC-17 films, some newspapers won't advertise these films either.The film has now been restored with the gorgeous looking and sounding 4K print being released on Blu ray. Now thats karma. Lets hope there's a similar karma when it comes to the MPAA's ratings system.

An utterly discomforting journey into the mind of a sadist, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is exactly what its subtitle suggests. Brutal, disturbing & absolutely uncompromising with its content, Henry is unsettling from the very first frame but what really separates it from other examples of its genre is its stringent focus on telling the story from the killer's perspective.Loosely based on real life serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, Henry covers the crime spree of its titular character who goes around randomly killing people without any remorse or empathy. The plot mainly focuses on his stay in Chicago where he lives with Otis, a drug dealer he befriended in prison, and the inner turmoil he undergoes when the latter's sister comes to stay with them.Co-written & directed by John McNaughton, Henry establishes an uneasy tone within the first few minutes in which we see this sociopath driving around the town but interspersed within that segment are snippets of the brutality he leaves behind on every corner. Most of Henry's murders take place off the screen and yet its effect is deeply felt, which can be attributed to the film's clever use of sound effects.The film is truly an unhinged view of a mind filled with reckless hate but it is also extremely honest in illustrating the root cause of Henry's evilness, his philosophy of life & the ruthless but calculated nature of his crimes. Shot on a shoestring budget, the movie makes use of real locations & settings that gives its story an added sense of realism, which in turn ends up making the experience all the more horrifying.Despite the low budget, the technical aspects are no slouch here for the film creatively uses its limited resources to full potential and all of it works in harmony to serve its story as well as characters, whether it's the bleak shots of Chicago streets, the stark arrangement of few scenes juxtaposed together, the pace at which its plot unfolds, the brilliant use of sound & music to further amplify its ominous vibe, and keeping it as true to real life as possible.Coming to the performances, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer features a committed cast in Michael Rooker, Tom Towles & Tracy Arnold, with all three of them doing an excellent job in their given roles. Rooker is obviously the show-stealer here for his rendition of Henry is very chilling, effective & exquisitely balanced. Towles begins his act as if his character is dim but as the plot progresses, he adopts a highly repulsive persona that's destined to shock many, and even Arnold does well with what she's given.On an overall scale, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer isn't a film for everyone. It's an absolute horror show that takes a no-holds-barred approach with its content, swims against the tide of its time by discarding a moral conclusion, is bolstered by three convincing performances, utilises its available resources amazingly well, and despite lacking the graphic depiction of murders, barring one family massacre sequence, can leave its viewers emotionally scarred. A low-budget classic that shows that people in real life are capable of inflicting more horror than any monster on film, Henry is definitely worth a shot.

What makes Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer so harrowing, so numbing, is the absence of any judgment of the characters. The film was shot on 16mm film in one month's time for $110,000 in 1985. It did not premiere until 1990, and became one of a handful of international independent films to instigate the NC-17 rating. It does not contain buckets of blood, nor is it particularly explicit sexually. It is, from any and every angle, an omniscient portrait. Two naked women are shown dead, having already been brutally murdered, one in a field and the other in a bedroom, while a troubled man named Henry drives around Chicago. We hear their screams. All we see are their mangled bodies. That is all we need. And it is stomach-churning.Itinerant Henry and his prison buddy Otis are cold-blooded and chillingly casual murderers. Played by gravelly character actor Michael Rooker, Henry never appears or behaves like anyone out of the ordinary. We get the sense that he hardly ever thinks about murder, except for when he does it. As for Otis, played by the imposing Tom Towles, think of when you smoke a pack of cigarettes a day, versus one after your morning coffee and one after dinner. Think of the discipline and organization inherent in the latter. That's Otis's problem kind of, only he's not just the one pack a day, he's about five and the tobacco is laced with children's tears. That's why he truly brings out the things about individuals we never see. He does many unforgivably monstrous things here, but he still manages to go about his business without remorse or fear of getting caught, so we presume he's just a good ol' boy with a short fuse. And he is; he just goes a few steps further than most.Portrait is not about the thin line between good and evil. Portrait sees no line. There are innumerable films about serial killers. It is a permanent fixture in the Middle American zeitgeist. We fear them, so we turn them into our own bloodthirsty entertainment. They have become mythology for us to use in order to take our morbid curiosities and sadistic fantasies out for a safe spin. Even after this definitive film on the subject, it is not often that a movie dares to portray the real ones, unmitigated by thriller tropes.John McNaughton and his late collaborator Richard Fire do not feel the need to pigeonhole or explain them, not just as movie characters but as people. Without a frame of compromise, McNaughton defies the hankering to pump up the volume, to frame Henry in chiaroscuro or Otis with Dutch angles. When most human beings see the things that Henry and Otis actually go through with---feeling no other rationale, it would seem, than that it's simply something for them to do---our immediate reaction is to ask how someone could do such things, and why. As Nick Nolte says as a homicide detective in Ole Bornedal's 1997 thriller, "Even when we catch the killer, they wanna know the how and why."That character would agree with McNaughton and Fire that people like Henry and Otis, are well beyond the need to justify what they do. What explanation could there be for slaughtering an entire random family, while recording the whole incident on a camcorder to then watch it later with the blank beer-chugging catatonia of watching an inning of baseball? Horror films, though designed to scare us, are also designed to make us feel safe. The killer was humiliated by his quarries in high school, or has split personality disorder. This film is not a horror film. Explanations are just a fiction to make us feel safe. This film does not have explanations. It has events, key moments in the lives of guys who like to drink beer, smoke weed, hang out with Otis' sister and kill random strangers.

The scariest part of this movie is that Henry and Otis , our main characters, were the real life serial killers Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis O'Toole.I loved this film! Michael Rooker reminded me of Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain. Each character does a fantastic job at being both normal and creepy, especially Rooker. The movie told the story well, although I wished they would have spent more time on Henry and Becky. In real life their relationship was quite complicated. Since real life Henry was a pathological liar, we don't know how many people he really killed but the movie doesn't make it about numbers yet shows how brutal he really was.Awesome movie.. it's going on my favorite's list!