Henry: Portrait of A Serial Killer - Production

Production

Henry was shot on 16mm in only 28 days for $110,000. During filmmaking, costs were cut by employing family and friends wherever possible, and participants utilized their own possessions. For example, the dead couple in the bar at the start of the film are the parents of director John McNaughton’s best friend, while the bar itself is where McNaughton once worked. Actress Mary Demas, a close friend of McNaughton’s, plays three different murder victims: the woman in the ditch in the opening shot, the woman with the bottle in her mouth in the toilet, and the first of the two murdered prostitutes. The four women Henry encounters outside the shopping mall were all played by close friends of McNaughton. The woman hitchhiking was a woman with whom McNaughton used to work. The clothes Michael Rooker wears throughout the film were his own (apart from the shoes and socks). The car driven by Henry belonged to one of the electricians on the film. Art director Rick Paul plays the man shot in the layby; storyboard artist Frank Coronado plays the smaller of the attacking bums; grip Brian Graham plays the husband in the family-massacre scene; and executive producer Waleed B. Ali plays the clerk serving Henry towards the end of the film.

Rooker remained in character for the duration of the shoot, even off set, not socializing with any of the cast or crew during the month long shoot. According to the costume designer Patricia Hart, she and Rooker would travel to the set together each day, and she never knew from one minute to the next if she was talking to Michael or to Henry as sometimes he would speak about his childhood and background not as Michael Rooker but as Henry. Indeed, so in-character did Rooker remain, that during the shoot, his wife discovered she was pregnant, but she waited until filming had stopped before she told him.

Because the production had so little money, they could not afford extras, so all of the people in the exterior shots of the streets of Chicago are simply pedestrians going about their business. For example, in the scene where Becky emerges from the subway, two men can be seen standing at the top of the stairs having a heated discussion. These men were really having an argument, and when the film crew arrived to shoot, they refused to move, so John McNaughton decided to include them in the shot.

After filming was finished, there was so little money left that the film had to be edited on a rented 16 mm flatbed which was set up in editor Elena Maganini's living room.