"Actor: Anne Bartoletti"

• Henry Portrait Of A Serial Killer: Special Edition Double Play - (Blu-ray + DVD) | Blu Ray | (24/10/2011) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £22.99

  Released from prison following his mother's murder. Henry (Michael Rooker, JFK) supplements his job as an exterminator with a series of violent, indiscriminate murders. Crazed drug dealer and fellow jailbird Otis (Tom Towles) provides Henry with a willing accomplice in his grisly pursuits but as the depravity escalates and Henry begins to form a tentative bond with Otis' sister Becky (Tracy Arnold) events spiral towards a chilling and violent conclusion. Based on the harrowing true story of convicted mass-murderer Henry Lee Lucas (portrayed with a dead-eye passivity by a magnetic rooker), John McNaughtonis (Mad Dog and Glory, Wild Things) Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer is one of the most remarkable films in the crowded serial killer genre. Impressively building to a disquieting and horrific climax, the film provides a sobering and nightmarish glimpse into a deranged and damaged mind. A bona-fide cult classic that as well as being long unavailable is presented here for the first time in its entirety and as the director intended: it's a startling, morally complex and frequently uncompromising work of genuine daring and vision.

• Henry - Portrait Of A Serial Killer | DVD | (25/05/2001) from £13.59   |  Saving you £-3.60 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Most horror films exist in a fantasy movie-world safely removed from our existence, populated by zombie-like killers and psychopathic madmen. The power of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is its chilling placement in the mundane existence of everyday life. Michael Rooker plays Henry not as a raving psychopath but as the frumpy guy next door, a drifter who takes out his frustrations on random victims and escalates his body count after teaming up with the violent ex-con Otis (Tom Towles). Though not exceedingly gory in light of the excesses of such fantasy horrors as the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street series, director John McNaughton's straightforward presentation and documentary-like style creates a chilling realism that many viewers will find hard to watch. McNaughton neither comments on nor flinches at the brutal violence, which reaches its apex in a disturbing camcorder-eye view of a particularly sadistic murder of a middle-class couple, with Henry and Otis smiling through the deed as they record it for their continued pleasure. Henry straddles the line between True Crime (though fictional, the story was inspired by the confessions of real-life serial killer Henry Lee Lucas) and horror, a bleak, brutal kind of terror for a generation deadened by the escalating outrageousness of movie murders and nightly news crime scene clips. --Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com