10 Real Life Happy Endings That Became Disturbing Movies

5. Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer (1986)

Based on the real life story of serial killers Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole, John McNaughton’s harrowing low budget psychological horror arrived during the decade of the slasher movie, which elevated the spree killer to the status of comic book supervillain, murdering all comers in franchises where the law of diminishing returns was the only true constant.

McNaughton refuses to glamorise his grotesque subjects, unflinchingly following these two very ordinary monsters deep into their low rent depravity. These serial killers don’t have operatic backstories, convoluted modus operandi, cool nicknames or obsessive relationships with the detectives pursuing them. They’re just messed up drifters who like killing people: you know, like real serial killers usually are.

In McNaughton’s film Henry ends up murdering Otis and his sister and continuing on down the highway alone. The smarter of the two, it was Henry who advocated varying the method of slaughter and type of victim and never staying in one place for too long, and the implication is that he’ll continue killing for as long as he wants…

In real life, however, both Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole were caught and convicted for their crimes in 1983 and died in prison decades later. Lucas attempted to ‘confess’ to six hundred or so unsolved killings, but - like so many of his outlandish fictional counterparts - it was determined that he was simply mythologising his past, trying to make himself out to be bigger and badder than he actually was.

Discounted and discredited, Lucas was just ignored after that.