Manhunter (1986)

 

Manhunter

At this point I should have been reviewing “The Color Purple”, but when I inserted the DVD, I quickly realised I had bought the remake instead of the original. While I look for the right version of the movie, I am jumping ahead to 1986, to “Manhunter”.

“Silence of the Lambs” was not the first time Thomas Harris’ “Red Dragon” was made into a movie. Six years earlier, Michael Mann did his take on the story. One that, sadly, is now mostly forgotten.

The story is pretty much the same as in any of the other versions of the “Red Dragon” novel. An insane serial killer is on the loose (Tom Noonan). The FBI agent (William Petersen as Will Graham), searching for the murderer, consults criminal mastermind and monster superior Hannibal Lecktor (Brian Cox) in his attempt to get into the mind of the killer.

The main difference is the emphasis in “Manhunter” on the police procedure and less on the gory details and with a much-reduced part for Dr. Lecktor. To my personal taste this was a good decision, but also likely the reason the later movies are very much popular culture and “Manhunter“ is not.

Graham has retired from the bureau when his former boss, Jack Crawford (Dennis Farina), brings him back to do his magic again. Graham’s speciality is to get into the mind of the murderer and use that to stop him but when he did just that to catch Hannibal Lecktor, he suffered a nervous breakdown and retired. Needless to say, Graham’s wife is not happy about him going back to work.

The murderer apparently kills an entire family every full moon in the most gruesome manner. To all appearance, nothing connects the murdered families, but clearly it is the same murderer. The FBI follows every clue possible, and Grahams immersive work keeps producing hints for the police to follow. His consulting with Lecktor has the unpleasant consequence that Lecktor and the murderer starts to cooperate, endangering Graham and his family personally.

This is all about the chase. The clues, the police procedures, the attempts to lure the murderer out and the clock ticking until next full moon and a new victim. It is highly detailed and sometimes a bit difficult to follow, but wonderful with such attention to actual police work.

The second focus, of course, is how Graham gets swallowed up in the nightmare mind of the murderer. While Mann tries to make a lot out of that, I do not think it is being taken as far as the following movies and that means that the Lecktor element, while prominent, is not played as hard as in the later movies.

Instead, there is room for the Tooth-fairy, as the murderer is known as, and he is one sick person. The scenes where he takes his blind colleague Reba McClane (Joan Allen) home are creepy way beyond what is actually shown through what is hinted at.

 “Manhunter” is very much a movie of the eighties. The soundtrack, the dialogue and the editing, all make me expect some wobbly VHS effects. It is almost as if the budget is not quite enough for what it wants to do, but most of that is simply because it is older than the movies I would compare it to.

I am not certain why we need so many versions of this story, but this one at least scores points for being the first and it is really not bad at what it does and deserves to be remembered.