Every once in a while a horror movie comes along that becomes a landmark in the genre — but is also the kind of film that makes you feel like you need to take a long, hot shower after you watch it. Wes Craven’s original The Last House on the Left is one of those. So is Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. And the same goes for John McNaughton’s Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, a movie so grim, so unremittingly bleak, that it took five years for the producers to find someone to release the damn thing.
Henry stars Michael Rooker (making his frighteningly intense screen debut long before starring in The Walking Dead and the Guardians of the Galaxy movies) as a fictionalized version of Henry Lee Lucas, a notorious real-life serial killer who was convicted of murdering 11 people, but at one point claimed responsibility for hundreds more (though he later said he was lying) over a roughly 23-year period. While the narrative conflates facts about Henry’s life with events conceived for the movie, McNaughton and co-writer Richard Fire weren’t interested in making a documentary.
