It took 20 years but finally one of the greatest horror films of all time, Henry - Portrait of a Serial Killer, is getting it’s due with a special 20th anniversary edition DVD. The film transfer is as a good as it’s going to get and it’s got great extras such as a brand new featurette with interviews with Michael Rooker, Tom Towles [Otis] and co-screenwriter/director John McNaughton.

I got a chance to talk with the man who created such an indelible portrait of a vicious serial killer, Michael Rooker. Even though Henry was delayed for three years from theatrical release, tapes still got out there and Rooker built a career playing killers, cops and eccentric characters. He has become the 'go to guy' in Hollywood when you want a powerful nuanced performance.

Really Scary: So can you believe its been 20 years since you made Henry. When you first started the film you couldn’t have imagined that people would have remembered it for this long.

Michael Rooker: Are you kidding me? When we first did this project we were like, “What the hell is going to happen with this?” We had no idea. We had no distribution, no anything really. If it hadn’t been for John McNaughton being so stubborn and sticking with it all those years, it would never have been seen.

But the thing was I was getting recognized on the streets of LA and New York years before it was released. I was being recognized on the street, not from any other movies but from Henry and I’d already done Eight Men Out, Mississippi Burning and Sea of Love. I thought people were flagging me down because of those movies but it was because of Henry. The filmmakers had basically distributed hundreds and hundreds of videos of Henry, in a mass mailing type thing.

RS: What was your opinion of horror movies up until then?

MR: I saw a lot of horror films when I was younger. That was because my mother was a big horror fan. She loved those movies and I grew up watching them. But the ones from the 80’s were all Hollywood-ed up. A lot of Friday the 13th type stuff with a lot of setups. You knew who was coming and what it was going to look like, that kind of thing. All the violence is really pretty cold or snide and shot in a very slick manner. A lot of movies were like that, not only horror movies but all of the action movies. So the horror genre just followed suit. In Henry, we didn’t. We didn’t have the money. My God, we barely had enough money to pay for the light bulbs with the tinfoil around them.

RS: How did you and Tom Towles get along?

MR: Tommy and I got along very well. We all had a pretty good working relationship and we’ve remained friends for 20 years now.

RS: Was the screenplay for Henry as stark as the film ended up being?

MR: The script was almost non-existent. We had just three by five cards for each scene so we just played it by ear. We just gave [co-screenwriter] Richard Fire and John [McNaughton] ideas and thoughts and we’d all put them together in a scene. But when I first auditioned it wasn’t really a script. Then we did a little rehearsing, a rewrite, put it into script form and it ended up ok. Simple, but pretty good.

RS: Besides your presence and what we could see on the camera. What did you bring to the character of Henry?

MR: Almost everything [laughs]. There was no page. The relationships between the characters developed as we went along from our imaginations. Somebody would come up with an idea and we’d go “Yeah, cool.” We kept it as simple as possible because we couldn’t afford to do it any other way.

RS: What did John McNaughton have that made it such a good film?

MR: He hired good actors! [laughs]

RS: When was the last time you saw the film?

MR: This past month I saw it in New York at a midnight showing for the last Fangoria Convention. I hadn’t seen it in many years. It still holds up and looks good. It still gives you that eerie kind of haunted ship feeling and that’s been the draw over the years. It’s done in a stark, barebones manner. It all came together to create a little piece that keeps coming back for new generations of sick, perverted individuals to love and appreciate [laughs].

RS: Why have you and John McNaughton not worked together again?

MR: I really don’t know. John got busy. I got busy. We’re just now hooking back up creatively and thinking of doing something else together. We’re asking that same question “How come we haven’t done something else?” We make a pretty good team but it’s taken 20 years to figure that out. You got to keep going and making a living. Paying the mortgage, buying the G.I. Joe for Christmas, that kind of thing.

RS: I recently got to speak with Johnny Depp for another website and I asked him “What was the character that he was sorry to say goodbye to?” He said that on the last day of shooting Edward Scissorhands he looked in the mirror and was like, “This is the last time I’m going to see you. Goodbye.” What happened on the last day of Henry?

MR: [eerie laughter] Henry continues on. He empties his trunk and goes on down the highway. I can bring that role back in a second. In fact, I’ve done it like two other times where I just ripped into the little idiosyncrasies and it’s interesting. I’ve never said good-bye to Henry. That character, the introverted-ness, the soft-spoken quality is always there. I’ve only had the opportunity to bring it out in maybe two other little pieces that I’ve done. One was for David Koepp called Suspicious. It was a short film where basically I did Henry for him and it was great.

Then I did a hard rock heavy metal video for a buddy of mine that was producing it for a band. So I did that and that worked out very easily. There were no lines, just a physical appearance and it ended up being pretty cool. The music video was seen all over the world. Not because of my work in it [laughs], but because of the band.

RS: Has anyone talked to you about remaking Henry?

MR: We’re thinking about it. We’re not sure what we’re going to do. But everything’s an open book right now. I know John and I want to do something together. Maybe we’ll find somebody who’ll give us some money to do something but who knows?

RS: How was it working on putting together the DVD?

MR: It’s been really odd talking about the movie. I don’t have any different answers. It was really interesting having to talk about my audition. When I came into the audition John was hoping and praying that I could actually act because I sure as hell looked like the role [laughs].

RS: Do you think violence in films could affect someone negatively?

MR: I don’t think this movie could make anyone more violent than they already are. It’s a pretty simple piece. It’s extremely violent in certain scenes where you see the violence, but even when you don’t see the violence you see the aftermath. That is even more disturbing, when you’re allowed to use your own imagination. 80 percent of the violence in this movie is off camera. People come out of this piece thinking “Oh my God, there is so much violence in that.” What violence? There’s a couple of scenes that’s really extremely violent. Granted those scenes are extreme and very violent but mostly we only see the aftermath.

RS: Since Henry you’ve obviously done a lot of films including a lot of horror films. Do you enjoy doing horror films or is that just what comes to you?

MR: Days of Thunder was a horror film [laughs]. The Sixth Day with Arnold Schwarzenegger, that was a horror movie. [laughs] Oh my God I’m playing with a clone [laughs].

With roles I decide right then and there with whatever’s on my plate in front of me. I think there has been only two times in my professional career, where I’ve actually had a movie waiting for me. The rest of my 50 something movies have just shown up. I’m unemployed and all of a sudden there’s another movie coming down.

RS: Do you regret any of them?

MR: Really there’s probably really been about three or four that I didn’t feel were something I should do. Maybe four or five were done strictly for the money and usually they come out ok but they’re not as good as the ones that I really feel passionate about like Mississippi Burning, Sea of Love and JFK. If I read it and think “There ain’t nobody that can play this better than me” then those are the ones I usually want to do and I’ve been very fortunate to get those opportunities.

RS: What do you think about horror films today?

MR: I don’t see many of them.

RS: Has anyone gotten scared of you when they’ve seen you?

MR: Yeah, many times. I’ve lost work because of Henry. But also I’ve gotten more work because of it. Eight Men Out is one my favorite movies and I got that because of Henry. If John Sayles hadn’t seen my work in Henry, I would have never been cast.

RS: Now you’re in another horror film Slither.

MR: Yeah, I read the script by James Gunn and I really dug it. When I spoke with him we talked a little bit about the project. The way he spoke about the project mirrored the idea I had come with when I was reading his material. I was thinking “Yeah it’s a horror movie but the character still has his humanity.” It was a good role for me and it’s a love story with some monster stuff going on.