robertandrewbacon 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.

Sameir Ali When the plans to shoot a documentary dropped out, the producers start thinking about a Horror Feature film. The film turned out be a huge success, beyond the expectations of the producers.The film starts with some dead body of females. The sound shows how they were killed. Then the serial killer Henry's life is shown. At around 30 minutes, the reason for his psychic behavior is explained to the audience. Yet, we are curious to know what happens next.The film is loosely based on real incidents. But, it's really hard to learn that real Henry's activities were more dangerous.Terrific acting and great making. An amazing Indie flick. A must watch movie. #KiduMovie

jzappa 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.

andishorrorblog 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!