The Initial Reaction to 'Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer'

John McNaughton's "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" was made back in 1986, but did not get a theatrical release until 1990. It remains a very disturbing look at a murderer lacking a conscience who essentially kills at random. For those who've seen "Henry," you know how unnerving it gets. The fact that it got released at all is amazing.

Michael Rooker who played Henry was at the Egyptian Theatre to talk about the initial reaction to it. Neither Michael nor anyone else involved believed it would get any response. They filmed what they thought people wanted to see, a scary movie. But this was no Freddy Krueger-like horror film. This was real life horror, and what's scarier than real life?

Chuck Parello, who later directed the unnecessary sequel to "Henry," managed to get it screened at the 1989 Chicago Film Festival which later led to it being shown at the Telluride Festival. Michael recollected the first time he saw "Henry" in a theater and said there were about 40 people in the audience. There were not a lot of sounds coming from them, and there was no laughter. This led Michael to say that after you've watched "Henry" 20 times, you start to see the humor in it (and he's right).

The movie's most disturbingly controversial scene is when Henry and Otis (Tom Towles) do a home invasion and murder an entire family. After that scene ended, Michael said more than 60% of the audience left, and all at the same time. Many of them were vocal about what they had witnessed:

"Fuck this shit!"

"This is bullshit!"

"This is what cinema's coming to?"

Michael was sitting with the producers when that happened, and he freely admitted they all loved the response "Henry" was getting.

People came out of it stunned and silent and Michael remembered seeing one guy walking out of the Nuart in Santa Monica with his hands shaking. He also said a friend of his yelled at him because the movie made him think "those thoughts." There were no car chases, gratuitous violence, and the violence shown in "Henry" is mostly minimal. Many of the murders Henry commits are never shown but heard as the camera circles around the bodies of his victims. It ends up leaving a lot of room for imagination, and you can't help but think about what you didn't see. Sometimes it's what you don't see that is more frightening.

But the most memorable incident for Michael Rooker was when he arrived late to one screening. As he headed into the theater, a woman was not walking but running out of the movie and ran right smack dab into him. When she realized who Michael was, she screamed and raced to the women's bathroom. Theater ushers and the producers had to come out and calm her down, saying to her over and over:

"He's really an actor..."

"Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" is seriously disturbing, but for good reason. Unlike other horror movies that revel in blood and gore and vicious fantasies, this was horror out of real life. Every once in awhile, you need a film like this to remind people of the ugliness of real life violence, and to make us realize we are not as desensitized to it as we think. If "Henry" didn't cause a good portion of moviegoers to walk out, then the filmmakers would have succeeded in making that point clear.

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