Trailer
Plot summary
Will Graham gave up his work as an FBI profiler after he captured the serial killer Hannibal Lecktor and was attacked by him, an encounter that nearly cost him his life. He lives in Florida with his wife Molly and their son until his former superior, Jack Crawford, asks for his help with a new case. Families have been killed in their homes on nights of the full moon, and the victims are left with bite marks; the press calls the killer the Tooth Fairy. Graham promises Molly that he will only look for evidence, then travels to the most recent crime scene in Atlanta to enter the killer's mindset. He asks Lecktor, in his cell, for his insight into the killer's motives.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Manhunter (1986)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Director David Lynch was an early candidate to direct the film under his contract with producer Dino De Laurentiis, but he turned down the job after finding the story "violent and completely degenerate."
- Unable to get permission to use a plane for a scene of Will Graham studying crime photos mid-flight, director Michael Mann booked the crew on a real commercial flight from Chicago to Florida and shot it with hand-luggage equipment while calming the actual passengers with Manhunter crew jackets.
- Joan Allen related that Michael Mann simulated the impacts of bullets in Dollarhyde's kitchen by throwing glass jars across the surfaces so they would shatter where he needed them to; one of those broken jars left a shard of glass embedded in Petersen's thigh during filming.
- Actors John Lithgow, Mandy Patinkin and Brian Dennehy, plus director William Friedkin, were considered to play Hannibal Lecktor before Brian Cox got the part; Cox based his performance on real Scottish serial killer Peter Manuel and was asked to audition with his back turned so casting agents could judge the power of his voice alone.
- Producer Dino De Laurentiis renamed the film from Red Dragon to Manhunter, a title director Michael Mann called 'inferior,' because De Laurentiis's earlier production Year of the Dragon had bombed at the box office in 1985.
- Richard Gere, Mel Gibson and Paul Newman were all considered for the role, but Michael Mann cast William Petersen after seeing footage from To Live and Die in L.A.
- Actor Ted Levine, who would later play Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs, crashed the film's wrap party to see old Chicago theater friend William Petersen, and that meeting with director Michael Mann led to Levine being invited to audition for Mann's show Crime Story.
