Purely Joyful Movie!

Fantastic!

A different way of telling a story

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

I was completely blown away by this film and have no idea why it's not more popular. The acting is amazing, the script is fantastic, and it's wonderfully directed. There are scenes in this film that will stay with me forever because they feel so real.

"Henry: Portrait of a serial killer" belongs to a certain type of films which are not wanted but needed. The film raised many controversies ever since it's initial release, and nobody who already watched it wonders why. It's disgusting, violent, raw, but most of all it is honest. Imagine a combination of "Peeping Tom" and "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" and now amplify the final result. The media and the society itself has always been fascinated about killers for several reasons: why they do it, how they get away with it, but most of all how they do it. The final question never got a fair answer in cinematography until Henry came along. An extremly low-budget film, "Henry" manages to create reactions only because of it's honesty, showing explicit scenes of violence through the eyes of a tormented man. The characters are unhappy and live in a grey world where boredom is a routine and it destroys people from the inside. Infamous scenes like the one when Henry (Micharl Rooker) and Otis (Tom Towells) watch a tape of their own murderous acts ruin society's fascination about serial killers. Most people will not want to watch this movie a second time, but everyone should watch it at least once. It may lack the vegetarian message of "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" or the love story of "Peeping Tom", but it shows us how reality is like and it doesn't lie to us about serial killers and violence. Henry is the " Unforgiven" of horror film.

Henry Portrait of a serial killer is a film that feels more like a documentary than a general horror/slasher film. It doesn't try to sugar coat what it or the lead character is, instead focusing on a truth, well a possible truth. It is based on the confessions of serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, who while a known serial killer, confessed to a load of killings that later were discovered to be lies. As no one knows the true number of killings he made the film bases itself around his confessions instead.When I've shown this film a lot of people have said it's not scary or more importantly it's not gory. If you're looking for an over the top gory/bloody type film this will probably disappoint you. There is plenty of violence, but its grounded in realism rather than trying to go over the top e.g. like the so called torture porn films. As I've seen lots of horror films it's rare for something to get to me and I tend to find the thought of certain scenes usually sound worse than they actually look. However Henry is a film that really did affect me, leaving me with a kind of sick and empty feeling. Michael Rooker certainly played a part with that as he plays Henry in a cold, strange but very realistic way. It's the way he looks, speaks, his mannerisms. Apparently Rooker stayed in character right through production even when the cameras weren't rolling. It's obviously from watching it that Henry is low budget, but that's what really works. It's shot so simple, as if you're watching something real. I also admire how the film kicks right in - the film starts with scenes with dead females, us seeing the dead girls Henry has killed, hearing their screams and his shouting over the top. It really shows you right from the start the mood of the film

Loosely based on the real-life exploits of serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, who confessed to the slayings of over 600 people but who was ultimately convicted in the homicide of a "mere" 11, "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" changes some of the established facts around yet remains a very strong experience for the viewer. As revealed on a certain Wiki site, the film was shot in just four weeks in 1986, at a cost of around $110,000, but was not released until four years later. Despite its great reputation, it is a film that I had long put off watching, having a suspicion that it would be a rather unpleasant experience for me over all. But lately, I have been exposing myself to a bunch of previously dreaded films (such as "Blood Sucking Freaks" and 1978's "I Spit on Your Grave," with "Audition" and "Cannibal Holocaust" soon to come), and find that "Henry" is actually quite excellent; unpleasant, of course, but nevertheless featuring a winning script and three dynamite performances that elevate it to the ranks of first-rate independent filmmaking.In the picture, the viewer makes the acquaintance of Henry (Michael Rooker, in his first screen role), a polite, soft-spoken, illiterate young man who looks a tad like a less muscular Arnold Schwarzenegger crossed with Grand Funk Railroad's Mark Farner...and who also happens to be a quite casual serial killer. Before we even get to hear him speak, we see a trail of Henry's victims on screen: a beautiful brunette lying in the grass with a gashed abdomen, a pair of liquor store owners with gunshot wounds to the head, a bloodied hooker with a glass bottle stuffed in her mouth (!), a dead woman lying face down in a stream. When we first meet Henry, he is doing work as an exterminator, appropriately enough, living in Chicago with an ex-jailmate named Otis (very loosely based on the real-life Ottis Toole, and played here by Tom Towles), a parolee who makes a living as an auto mechanic and pot dealer. Otis' sister Becky (Tracy Arnold) soon comes to stay, and learns that Henry had done his time in jail for the killing of his own mother. And it would seem that old habits do die hard, as Henry's propensity toward homicide for kicks remains undiminished, and when the bored and frustrated Otis becomes a willing student in the art of casual killing, the pair enters into a series of slayings that achieve a whole new realm of fun and games....Featuring expert direction from John McNaughton and those three finely crafted performances, "Henry" truly is a powerful experience. The film is often quite suspenseful, and much of that suspense derives from the viewer's never knowing which of Henry's encounters will turn lethal. Anyone who Henry sees, be it a waitress in a diner or a woman walking her dog, becomes a potential victim, and it is the lighthearted, blithe casualness with which Henry dispatches these victims that makes the picture so horrific. Operating under his philosophy of "It's either you or them," Henry is as dispassionate a killer as Schwarzenegger's Terminator, calmly eating a burger and fries, for example, after breaking the necks of two prostitutes. Several of the picture's slayings are merely suggested (for example, that guitar-toting female hitchhiker who gets into Henry's car; Henry later offers the guitar to Otis as a present) and some seen, as mentioned earlier, only as bloodied aftermath, but still, the film DOES give the viewer ample evidence of Henry and Otis in action. Thus, the repeated stabbing and head bashing of a TV-dealing fence; the oh-so casual murder of a driver in an underpass; the pair videotaping their rape/murder of an entire nuclear family (arguably, the most disturbing sequence in the film), and the final 15 minutes of the picture, which I won't go into but do guarantee will long linger in the memory. The film gives us an explanation for Henry's psychosis that at first seems only barely plausible (his mother had been a hooker who had forced Henry to wear dresses and watch her have sex with the customers)...until one learns that such had been the case with Henry Lee Lucas himself in the 1940s. "My mama was a whore," Henry tells Becky with a sneer on his face, and the moment is an icy one. All told, "Henry" may be unpleasant, detailing as it does the lives of three very damaged and disturbed people (Becky had been repeatedly raped by her father as a girl and beaten by her present husband), but remains a very fine film. Its violence is clinical but hardly exploitative, and in its understated way, leaves a residual chill that a less artfully composed picture could never achieve. It was followed by a sequel six years after its release, but with a different director at the helm and another actor portraying Henry, this follow-up is a product that this viewer is in no great rush to see. Further good news regarding "Henry" is that the film is available to us today on a great-looking DVD from the always dependable Dark Sky outfit; "Henry," originally shot in 16mm, may never look better for home viewing. It took me 24 years to catch up with this one, but I am so glad that I finally did. Pretty potent stuff, indeed!