MIchael Rooker stars as a troubled murderer in HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER
HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER (John McNaughton, 1986)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Thursday, July 30, 10:15
Series continues through August 5
212-727-8110
filmforum.org
More than twenty-five years ago, when director John McNaughton (Mad Dog and Glory, Wild Things) was asked by executive producers Malik B. and Waleed B. Ali to make a low-budget horror film, he and cowriter Richard Fire decided to base their tale on the exploits of serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, whose story McNaughton had just seen on 20/20. The result was this creepy, dark, well-paced effort starring Michael Rooker as Henry, a brooding, casual serial killer who can’t quite remember how he murdered his mother. Henry lives in suburban Chicago with ex-con Otis (Tom Towles), whose sexy young sister, Becky (Tracy Arnold), comes to stay with them to get away from her abusive husband. As the relationship among the three of them grows more and more complicated, Henry continues to kill people — and get away with it. The opening tableau of some of Henry’s murder victims — the actual killings aren’t shown in the beginning — is beautifully done, although it also fetishizes violence against women, which is extremely disturbing. (Several of the victims are played by the same woman, Mary Demas, in different wigs.) Henry, which was not released until 1989 because of its graphic content, was nominated for six Independent Spirit Awards in 1990, and Rooker was named Best Actor at the Seattle International Film Festival. The film is screening July 30 as part of Film Forum’s “True Crime” series, which continues through August 5 with such other ripped-from-the-headlines tales as Charlie Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdou, Alain Resnais’s Stavisky, Leonard Kastle’s The Honeymoon Killers, and a double features of Barbet Schroeder’s Reversal of Fortune and Peter Medak’s The Krays.