12/07/2026
Thank you for joining us on Friday. Despite the heat it was a great night. Here are the fun facts for Manhunter.
Manhunter is the underwhelming and generic title of this fantastic 1986 film which originally was going to be named after Thomas Harris’s terrifying novel, Red Dragon. Red Dragon was a much more intriguing and apt title but the producer Dino De Laurentiis, thought people might assume it was a Kung Fu movie. Also, he’d recently had a box office disappointment with a film called Year of the Dragon. So, no dragons were allowed in the title. Which is annoying because the references to William Blake and the red dragon are part of what makes this story so fascinating. Brian Cox who plays Hannibal Lecktor for Hannibal’s first time on screen, was not impressed by the title change and called it “cheesy.” Strangely, the names of serial killers in this film (Lecktor and Dollarhyde) are the same as Thomas Harris’s book but spelled differently. Odd indeed.
This is one of those movies that couldn’t be more 1980s. Michael Mann, the driving force behind the tv show Miami Vice, was chosen to direct after David Lynch turned it down because he said it was, "violent and completely degenerate” which is a bit rich coming from the director of Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet and Eraserhead. This is iconic direction, but I think Michael Mann was almost too popular and commercial for the critics to give Manhunter the credit it deserved at the time and reviews were mixed. It is almost impossible for you youngsters to grasp how massive Michael Mann’s Miami Vice show was in the mid-1980s. For a couple of years, young men wore pastel light-weight suits with the sleeves rolled up even when it was raining in Stoke.
Despite its disappointing box office performance and snooty mixed reviews, Manhunter is a cult film now partly because of the thumping, almost overwhelming soundtrack with songs from the likes of Iron Butterfly but its cult status is especially because of the way every shot was filmed with Mann’s use of symbolic colour and even cameras filming at different rates to disorientate. The final scenes are 1986 sensory overload. Sure, Manhunter has dated more than Silence of the Lambs, which was brilliantly non-decade specific but that’s the charm of Manhunter. Every frame, every sound is pure 1986. Even the cinefilm that Dollarhyde works on was a dated technology by the end of the eighties.
This is an excellent cast. Joan Allen has never been bad in anything and for this film she learned to walk round New York blind-folded to ensure that she could convincingly play the blind character, Reba. Her commitment to make her performance outstanding was matched by the other members of the cast. Both William Peterson and Michael Mann spent time with Violent Crime Units and the FBI. The focus of this film is the psychological burden and damage caused to the detectives who hunt serial killers and then try to go home to live a normal life. Peterson (who went on to play Gil Grissom in CSI) gives an impressive performance, he is detached and withdrawn. He was Michael Mann’s first choice for the role (Richard Gere and Mel Gibson were also considered) as was Tom Nooman (other work includes Last Action Hero/Heat/12 Monkeys) who plays the horrifying Tooth Fairy. He maintained his distance and creepiness on set. When I did the fun facts for Silence of the Lambs, I mentioned that of both novels, Red Dragon is the one that really made my skin crawl. The Tooth Fairy is a creation of monstrous genius. (In the 2002 remake, Ralph Fiennes played the role). I don’t think I have ever read a more disturbing book. Michael Mann captures a lot of that horror and what is more difficult, a lot of the pain: both Dollarhyde and Will Graham are tormented characters.
And finally, Hannibal the Cannibal. In Silence of the Lambs Anthony Hopkins is in a gothic dungeon. Here Brain Cox is in a minimalist white setting. He’s a psychiatrist psychopath absolutely in control of his clinical environment. There is a reality to this performance; he has no charm or flickers of warmth, unlike Anthony Hopkins: he’s just arrogant, rude, and appalling. Brain Cox based his performance on a real Scottish serial killer (as you know, I never name those monsters, let them be forgotten) and he is authentic and repulsive. I’ll be so interested to hear what you think afterwards. (Note: lots of people chatted to me about this and the concensus, with a few exceptions, was that everyone loved and admired Brian Cox's performance but on the whole, probably preferred Hopkins' Lecktor) I adore Anthony Hopkins but this very different interpretation of Lecktor is probably more real. Other actors considered for the role of Hannibal were John Lyhgoe who would have been fabulous (he played a serial killer in the original Dexter and was without doubt the best thing in the whole of Dexter) and Mandy Patankin. So, it is fair to say that all casting was thoughtful and superb.
And just to add, this was pre-CGI, so that was a real sedated tiger.
Red Dragon was remade in 2002 with the sublime Edward Norton. It’s a fair film but this is far better. So, enjoy the horror and I’ll quote the tagline to finish: Enter the mind of a serial killer: you may never come back.
