Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) on Netflix
NR19861h 23mBiographyCrimeDrama
Henry, a drifter who kills as he travels, comes to Chicago and moves in with Otis, a friend from prison. Otis's sister Becky arrives to stay, and Henry grows close to her.
- Netflix3.2/5
- IMDb7.0/1045,031 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes87%
Trailer
Plot summary
Henry is a drifter who moves from town to town and kills the people he meets. He arrives in Chicago and settles into the apartment of Otis, a man he knew in prison. Otis picks up his sister Becky at the airport and brings her home to stay, since she has no money. Becky asks Henry about his mother's death, the crime that put him in prison, and he says his mother abused and humiliated him as a child and had sex in front of him. Becky says her father raped her as a child. Otis makes a sexual advance toward her, and Henry threatens him and becomes her protector. Becky finds work at a salon, and Henry and Otis go out for the night.
Cast
- Mary Demasas Dead Woman / Dead Prostitute / Hooker #1
- Anne Bartolettias Waitress
- Elizabeth Kadenas Dead Couple - Wife
- Ted Kadenas Dead Couple - Husband
- Denise Sullivanas Floating Woman
- Anita Oresas Mall Shopper #1
- Megan Oresas Mall Shopper #2
- Cheri Jonesas Mall Shopper #3
- Monica Anne O'Malleyas Mall Victim
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Henry only exists because a planned documentary about 1950s Chicago wrestling collapsed: the owner of a trove of vintage wrestling tapes doubled his price after financing was already arranged, so producers Waleed Ali and John McNaughton took the $110,000 meant for that documentary and used it to make a horror film instead.
- With no budget for extras, director John McNaughton filled the film's Chicago street scenes with real unknowing pedestrians; in the scene where Becky comes up from the subway, two men seen arguing at the top of the stairs were genuinely arguing and refused to move, so McNaughton just kept them in the shot.
- Michael Rooker stayed in character as Henry for the entire month-long shoot, even off set, to the point that costume designer Patricia Hart couldn't always tell if she was talking to Rooker or to Henry; when Rooker's wife found out she was pregnant during filming, she waited until shooting wrapped to tell him.
- Atlantic Entertainment Group agreed to release Henry theatrically only if it got an R rating, but the MPAA slapped it with an X, a rating then popularly linked to pornography, and Atlantic dropped the film as a result.
- Henry, along with Peter Greenaway's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover and Pedro Almodovar's Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, became one of the films whose ratings fights pushed the MPAA to create the NC-17 rating for serious, non-pornographic adult films.
- British censor James Ferman personally overruled his own BBFC team's edit of the home-video release and ordered the family-massacre scene trimmed to almost nothing, cutting 71 seconds and reordering the scene, bringing the film's total UK cuts to 113 seconds.
- Henry and Otis are loosely based on real killer Henry Lee Lucas, who confessed in prison to more than 600 murders at a rate of roughly one a week, but a Texas attorney general's investigation found most of his confessions false and he was ultimately convicted of only 11 killings.
