“I feel like I know you”

Much of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) is immensely unsettling, starting with the way director John McNaughton initiates the detailed, disturbingly routine life of murder. The introductory image of a bloodied corpse in the grass builds to an ongoing trail of shot, stabbed, and generally mutilated bodies, gruesome breadcrumbs that all lead back to Henry. Played by Michael Rooker, in a remarkable screen debut, Henry is an unassuming young man, one seemingly pleasant from the first impression, but one who has, as pieced together by this montage of horror, been making his homicidal rounds. Accompanied by haunting musical cues (an extraordinary dissonant score by Ken Hale, Steven A. Jones, and Robert McNaughton), Henry steadily teases the eponymous male lead and his shocking rampage.

Having lived the life of constant travel his heinous pastime dictates, Henry has secured temporary abode with former jail mate Otis (Tom Towles), who soon adds a third figure to their domestic arrangement, his sister, Becky (Tracy Arnold). Henry works as an exterminator (a fitting enough profession), Otis tends to a gas station and peddles some dope on the side, and eventually, Becky finds work as a shampoo girl (“They pay you for that?” questions her bemused brother). Together, the three share lifetimes of bad times, with Tracy and Henry each recalling twisted pasts marred by parental abuse. Henry, in fact, killed his own mother as a result of her cruelty; not an excuse for his consequent behavior, but apparently, a catalyst.

On the surface, they are a rather affable trio, a little rowdy perhaps, a little crude, but relatively decent. Though Henry’s escapades have been chronicled in the opening, we have yet to actually see him in action, picking up only aural snippets of struggle and viewing only the tableau of discarded cadavers. Subsequently, even knowing what we know, McNaughton and Rooker create an uncomfortably sympathetic portrait of a monster, at least to start. Becky herself takes a shine to Henry. As they sit in the kitchen confessing their dark backstories, McNaughton shoots the sequence in expressive facial close-ups. But as their dialogue ends, the camera pans down to show her hand on his. The tender physical contact is a powerful conduit of association and compassion, for her and, for a time, the viewer.

About 30 minutes in, this changes. Otis is the first to reveal a degenerate side, aggressively and perversely manhandling Becky, inciting a surprisingly valiant Henry to come to her defense. Then, in an apparent effort to reconcile, Henry and Otis head out on the town and pick up two hookers. Two corpses later, it becomes abundantly clear what Henry, and soon Otis, are casually capable of. It is an instinctive violation, a post-double homicide perception that dims prior notions of potential identification and consideration. Though Henry’s capacity for affection toward Becky never fully dissipates, his worldview—“Look at the world. It’s either you or them”—indicates a stanch bleakness that keeps any semblance of burgeoning romance under a psychologically tainted cloud.

Like a contagion, the bloodlust spreads. Henry and Otis descend into unnerving, increasingly explicit territory. Darkness falls (literally, as the film is now almost entirely shot at night), and their eager elation is matched by the realization of Henry’s troubling competency. His thoughtful meditations on murder provide insight into his successful methodology, the whys and hows of what he does, mixing up the method of killing, for instance, avoiding a pattern to throw off police. To make matters worse, the warped duo begin recording their exploits, including a prolonged home invasion that concludes with three dead family members and a nearly enacted bout of necrophilia. This assault appears to be shown in real time through the fuzzy frame of the camcorder’s point of view, but then McNaughton pulls back to reveal Henry and Otis watching the incident on their television, reviewing the scene like game day footage, Otis even replaying the attack in slow motion. It is this type of violence mediated through media that contributes to Henry’s commentary on the spectatorship of violence, the saturation of televised hostility, and the inherent complicity fueled by humanity’s enduring fascination with the morbid. It is one reason, as Errol Morris notes in a documentary included on the new 30th anniversary Blu-ray from Dark Sky Films, that Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is “too smart to be just pure exploitation.”

License plates and street signs tell us Henry takes place in Illinois, and Chicago itself is given a seedy showcase, but the film’s anywhere-in-America quality is partly why it is so upsetting. Charlie Lieberman’s 16mm cinematography seizes the setting and all its downcast coldness and dampness. This is a soiled, low-key horror film, a neorealist horror film. It is a familiar, convincing world, a middle-class milieu of peeling wall paper, littered carpets, and dirty dishes piled in a dirty sink. These are lives on hold or permanent stop, and no one is safe from the nihilistic randomness of Henry’s arbitrary evil.

In an interview on the Blu-ray, which assembles an impressive collection of special features and a fantastically coarse transfer, Morris rightly calls Henry “grisly” and “depraved,” but also “very funny.” Indeed, there are a handful of humorous moments (the symbolic use of a television as a fatal weapon). But the MPAA was certainly not laughing, objecting to the film’s “overall moral tone” and slapping the picture with an “X” rating. Though the film took its inspiration from the real-life spree of Henry Lee Lucas—who confessed to 360 murders and was convicted of 11—Henry is more than typical serial killer fare. It is a definite slice of Reagan-era ‘80s reflection. In contrast to teenage slashers or Stallone-Schwarzenegger action bonanzas, those fabulous films of the period with their triple digit body counts but the ethical pass of being mere “entertainment,” Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is a visceral, emotional, and highly distressing work. It is also one of the best directorial debuts in recent decades, and it is one of very few horror movies that naturally cross the border into art film terrain, with one foot firmly planted on each landing, a formal duality that makes the picture unlike anything else out there.