What makes Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer so harrowing, so numbing, is the absence of any judgment of the characters. The film was shot on 16mm film in one month's time for $110,000 in 1985. It did not premiere until 1990, and became one of a handful of international independent films to instigate the NC-17 rating. It does not contain buckets of blood, nor is it particularly explicit sexually. It is, from any and every angle, an omniscient portrait. Two naked women are shown dead, having already been brutally murdered, one in a field and the other in a bedroom, while a troubled man named Henry drives around Chicago. We hear their screams. All we see are their mangled bodies. That is all we need. And it is stomach-churning.

Itinerant Henry and his prison buddy Otis are cold-blooded and chillingly casual murderers. Played by gravelly character actor Michael Rooker, Henry never appears or behaves like anyone out of the ordinary. We get the sense that he hardly ever thinks about murder, except for when he does it. As for Otis, played by the imposing Tom Towles, think of when you smoke a pack of cigarettes a day, versus one after your morning coffee and one after dinner. Think of the discipline and organization inherent in the latter. That's Otis's problem kind of, only he's not just the one pack a day, he's about five and the tobacco is laced with children's tears. That's why he truly brings out the things about individuals we never see. He does many unforgivably monstrous things here, but he still manages to go about his business without remorse or fear of getting caught, so we presume he's just a good ol' boy with a short fuse. And he is; he just goes a few steps further than most.

Portrait is not about the thin line between good and evil. Portrait sees no line. There are innumerable films about serial killers. It is a permanent fixture in the Middle American zeitgeist. We fear them, so we turn them into our own bloodthirsty entertainment. They have become mythology for us to use in order to take our morbid curiosities and sadistic fantasies out for a safe spin. Even after this definitive film on the subject, it is not often that a movie dares to portray the real ones, unmitigated by thriller tropes.

John McNaughton and his late collaborator Richard Fire do not feel the need to pigeonhole or explain them, not just as movie characters but as people. Without a frame of compromise, McNaughton defies the hankering to pump up the volume, to frame Henry in chiaroscuro or Otis with Dutch angles. When most human beings see the things that Henry and Otis actually go through with---feeling no other rationale, it would seem, than that it's simply something for them to do---our immediate reaction is to ask how someone could do such things, and why. As Nick Nolte says as a homicide detective in Ole Bornedal's 1997 thriller, "Even when we catch the killer, they wanna know the how and why."

That character would agree with McNaughton and Fire that people like Henry and Otis, are well beyond the need to justify what they do. What explanation could there be for slaughtering an entire random family, while recording the whole incident on a camcorder to then watch it later with the blank beer-chugging catatonia of watching an inning of baseball? Horror films, though designed to scare us, are also designed to make us feel safe. The killer was humiliated by his quarries in high school, or has split personality disorder. This film is not a horror film. Explanations are just a fiction to make us feel safe. This film does not have explanations. It has events, key moments in the lives of guys who like to drink beer, smoke weed, hang out with Otis' sister and kill random strangers.

HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER is one of the most notorious serial killer movies ever shot, a notoriety helped by the fact that the BBFC banned it back in the early 1990s. Thankfully in these more enlightened times they've now seen fit to release it uncut, giving me the opportunity of finding out what all the fuss was about.

This is one of those movies whose low budget origins actually adds to the appeal, because it turns out to be one of the most grimly realistic movies ever made. There are no frills here, no Hollywood gloss, just a director getting down to business with his depiction of the ordinary life of a man with a compunction to kill. And very good it is too: the lack of trappings allows the writer to really get into the psychology of his characters.

One of the things that most surprised me about this film is that Henry is actually quite a likable protagonist. Part of that is because Michael Rooker is a very good and sympathetic actor - his supposed villain Merle Dixon in the TV series THE WALKING DEAD was another guy who it was hard to hate - but it's also due to the quality of the writing. In reality, the real villain of the piece is Otis, played to the sleazy hilt by Tom Towles.

Yes, the film contains a string of disturbing murder sequences, particularly an early excursion into the found footage genre with the slaughter of a family caught on camera. But while time has diminished the impact of the deaths, it has done nothing to diminish the impact of the film itself; this is strong, compelling film-making for the ages and one of the most gutsy serial killer movies ever made.

The movie is infamous (the sequel not so much, though I have not seen that),but I only came by to see the movie the other day. It really is quite dark and mean and as crazy as one may think it is. There is a lot of "unnecessary" violence in this and not a lot explanation.

This may either be a good or a bad thing for you. Acting wise Michael Rooker kills it (sorry not sorry). I've never had the pleasure of meeting the man, but from what I've heard he is a delight. And that is a general truth about actors playing really evil people on film. The ending may feel either open to interpretation or quite evil ... I think it is pretty obvious what happens and it is the only way to end things. Apart from those who thought a sequel made sense of course ... Vile, disgusting and quite despicable - not for the squeamish for sure