Thirty years ago, before Michael Rooker was rocketed to fame by his role as the bigoted, hillbilly brother of everyone’s favorite brooding bumpkin on The Walking Dead, Rooker starred in a shocking movie called Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. On October 21st, Dark Sky (The House of the Devil and The Innkeepers) will rerelease this film nationwide. This movie sparked a heated debate about cinema and censorship, and still promises to shock audiences today as much as it did at its premiere thirty years ago.
Henry (Michael Rooker) is a psychopathic drifter who has coldly murdered a number of people for no particular reason and without any remorse. Leaving bodies in his wake, Henry makes his way to Chicago, where his he settles into the run-down apartment of his drug-dealing former prison friend and occasional roommate Otis (Tom Towles).
Also moving in is Otis’s younger sister Becky (Tracy Arnold), who is fleeing her abusive husband. As she fends off her brother’s incestuous advances, Becky finds herself attracted to Henry – unaware that he, along with Otis, are continuing their murderous rampage.
This movie has everything that made the censors of the eighties furious: unflinching violence, psychopaths, and incest. Henry was groundbreaking in its brutality, and it struggled as a result. Though the movie originally premiered in 1986, it didn’t get released until 1990, and when it did, it was stamped with an X rating—a rarity for films that didn’t have titles like Boob Party 7 or The Boob I Love. In fact, it’s still rated “X (surrendered),” though a new rating is pending (In fact, Google says it’s rated R).
HENRY opens in New York on October 21, McNaughton will attend the film’s New York premiere, at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema and on October 28, McNaughton will present it at the Laemmle NoHo in Los Angeles.
