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Manhunter
(1986)
In Michael Mann's original version of Red Dragon -
the prequel to The Silence of the Lambs (1991):
- the skin-crawlingly creepy prologue in which a hand-held
videocamera "stalked" a family and then cut to titles
shortly after one of the victims awakened in her bedroom
- the character of retired FBI forensic expert Will
Graham (William L. Petersen - later starring in CSI onTV)
who vividly described a macabre crime scene (by entering the mind-set
of the killer), including details of the killer's features: ("blonde
hair, strong, size 12 shoe imprint, blood AB positive")
- the scene of Graham's tense interview with the first
incarnation of "insane" Dr. Hannibal "Lecktor"
(Brian Cox) in a stark, antiseptic, harshly-lit white cell where Graham
was reminded when Lecktor asked: ("Do you know how you caught
me? The reason you caught me, Will, because we're just alike. Do you
understand? Smell yourself")
- the 'eureka moment' profiler Graham had about the
serial killer's modus operandi as he climbed a tree outside
the Jacobi house: ("When night came, you saw them pass by their
bright windows. You watched the shades go down, and you saw the lights
go out one by one. And after a while, you climbed down and you went
into them, didn't you? (shouting) DIDN'T YOU, YOU SON OF A BITCH!
YOU WATCHED THEM ALL GODDAMN DAY LONG!! That's why houses with big
yards")
- the character of tall, crazed, near-albino serial
killer Francis "Tooth Fairy" Dollarhyde (Tom Noonan) with
a cleft-palate and scraggly white hair, and wearing a ladies' sheer
stocking mask over his head and eyes - who ambushed pushy tabloid
reporter Freddy Lounds (Stephen Lang) in an underground parking garage,
and then forced Lounds to watch a slideshow - beginning with a painting
of William Blake's The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed
in the Rays of the Sun, with further pictures of his transformed
female victims (Mrs. Leeds, Mrs. Jacobi); he delivered a scary speech:
("Before me, you are a slug in the sun. You are privy to a great
becoming, and you recognize nothing. You are an ant in the afterbirth.
It is your nature to do one thing correctly, tremble. But fear is
not what you owe me. No, Lounds, you and the others, you owe me awe")
- the spectacular murder scene - when Lounds was set
ablaze in a wheelchair and rolled down a steep underground parking
garage ramp towards the camera - and died later in a hospital
Murder Scene of Freddy Lounds
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- the sexually-charged scene in which Dollarhyde
took a blind, fiercely independent lab technician co-worker Reba
McClane (Joan Allen) to feel an anesthetized tiger
- Graham's scene with his son Kevin (David Seaman) while
grocery shopping when he had to answer questions about his job and
what he did for a living (including how he had been inducted into
a mental institution due to his association with Lektor): ("I
tried to build feelings in my imagination like the killer had so
that I would know why he did what he did, because that would help
me find him...But after my body got okay, I still had his thoughts
going around in my head")
- the climactic scene in which Graham explosively burst
through a glass doorway to save Reba from the Tooth Fairy, as Iron
Butterfly's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida throbbed rhythmically; Graham
revived and emptied his gun with six shots into Dollarhyde, who fell
down dead on the kitchen floor, with his blood spread out under his
body (like the wings of the demon in the Blake painting)
- the concluding scene when Graham returned to his Florida
home after the nightmarish ordeal had ended, to see his pretty blonde
wife Molly (Kim Greist) and admit: "I thought I had to work
things out and call you after." She responded: "I thought
I wouldn't wait"; they stood at the ocean shore together, as
he asked about the turtles: "How many of them made it?" -
as Red 7's tune "Heartbeat" played
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Dr. "Lecktor" in Cell
Serial killer Francis "Tooth Fairy" Dollarhyde
(Tom Noonan)
Kidnapped Reporter Freddie Lounds
Reba with Tiger
Graham's Murder of Dollarhyde
Graham with Wife Molly
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