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Month of Horrors / Hell is Adaptations: Hannibal Rising
To say that Hannibal Rising is the worst of the Hannibal Lecter films is not necessarily a derogatory statement. After all, the Lecter films range from surreal and thrilling (Manhunter), to profound yet action-packed (The Silence of the Lambs), to baroque and experimental (Hannibal), and finally to popular yet solid (Red Dragon). While Hannibal Rising seems like the least necessary film in the series, it’s easy to forget how much call there was for this story to be told. After the hints of Lecter’s past in Hannibal the novel, there was suddenly a market for a Lecter prequel of some sort, but especially one that fleshed out the horrific experiences of the doctor’s early childhood.
For those who haven’t read the novel, Hannibal delves deeply into the cannibal’s psyche, showing us that he makes use of a classical-medieval mental technique known as the Memory Palace. First explained by Cicero, the Memory Palace is a mnemonic device that associates facts and memories with a physical structure that one creates within his mind. (The BBC series Sherlock makes use of this device, as well.) This is to help explain Lecter’s superior intellect and mental capacity, but also to give the reader hints of his formative years. While walking through his palace in search of a memory, Lecter has to be careful to avoid certain places that contain memories that can harm him, especially memories of his young sister Mischa, who died under grotesque circumstances during World War II. These come to a head at the climax of the novel, when he attempts to brainwash Clarice Starling into becoming his sister, and he can’t help but remember that Mischa was eaten by Nazi deserters trying to survive a harsh winter while avoiding Soviet forces.
Month of Horrors / Hell is Adaptations: Red Dragon
Considered at the time to be the black sheep of the Hannibal Lecter cinematic family, Red Dragon retells the story of Thomas Harris’ first Lecter novel. That’s not quite fair though, because Dragon wasn’t Lecter’s story, but Will Graham’s. It’s an important point to make, because even though Lecter would quickly take over as the most interesting character in this shared fictional universe, Red Dragon the novel is the story of Will Graham, an FBI agent and profiler who excels because of his ability to empathize with just about anyone, even serial killers.
Unfortunately, his special abilities are put to use in solving the Chesapeake Ripper case, where the killer has apparently been removing random organs from his victims. Except that these organs were actually being chosen with great care to prepare various dishes. And when the trail leads Graham to Dr. Lecter’s office, he is nearly disemboweled before managing to shoot Lecter and call for help.
Month of Horrors / Hell is Adaptations: Hannibal
After establishing a solid crime thriller formula with Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs, novelist Thomas Harris took a chance and tried something entirely different with his wildly popular Hannibal Lecter character: he set him free. Harris’ fans had been wondering for some time what the cannibal psychiatrist would be like in the wild, as it were, out of captivity and free to roam as he pleased. Written eleven years after Silence the novel and eight years after the film, Hannibal is the gory, violent, and disturbing followup to his increasingly popular series. Did it live up to its promise?
It’s hard to say. The next Lecter novel had two very difficult tasks: to tell a story centered for the first time around Dr. Lecter that did justice to everything his readers had learned about him in Dragon and Silence, and to write something that would please the many fans of the film. Even the choice to write a novel with Lecter as a main protagonist must have been a difficult one. It would have been much easier to keep him as a secondary character with Clarice Starling or another FBI agent in the foreground. Harris had built up the mystery and abilities of Dr. Lecter so greatly that it would seem impossible to actually write a story that lived up to what it was claimed he could do when not imprisoned.
Month of Horrors / Hell is Adaptations: The Silence of the Lambs
“Memory, Agent Starling, is what I have instead of a view.”
It’s easy to understand how Manhunter and its source material Red Dragon lost much of its staying power after the release of The Silence of the Lambs in 1991. This is the film that made many people ridiculously famous: Anthony Hopkins, Jodie Foster, Ted Levine, Jonathan Demme, and Thomas Harris, among others. It won five Academy Awards in one swoop, beating out The Prince of Tides (for Best Picture), JFK (Best Director), Cape Fear (Best Actor), Thelma & Louise (Best Actress), and Fried Green Tomatoes (Best Adapted Screenplay).
Unlike Harris’ novel, Silence the film is a standalone piece that makes no reference to the earlier story, ignoring the novel’s many reference’s to Red Dragon’s protagonist Will Graham, now living as a disfigured drunk somewhere in Florida, and inferring that Graham’s boss Jack Crawford was the one who caught the notorious cannibal psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter. For the purposes of adaptation to a new medium, it’s understandable that many changes would need to be made, but it’s actually fascinating how well the finished product works both as a standalone piece of art and as an adaptation.
“I ate your script with a Montrachet and a side of red caviar.”
Month of Horrors / Hell is Adaptations: Manhunter
Watching Michael Mann’s Manhunter is something like watching a now-famous actor in a commercial filmed at the beginning of his career; except that here the actor is a character, and the character is Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Yes, this year’s Month of Horrors will feature a crossover with our Hell is Adaptations series in an overview of all the films adapting the Hannibal Lecter novels.
What is especially noticeable to fans of later Lecter films is the scarcity of the popular cannibal in this 1986 crime thriller. It seems a little silly to assume that anybody would need an introduction to the character of “Hannibal the Cannibal,” but perhaps a quick overview is in order for the few newcomers. Originally created for Thomas Harris’ 1981 crime novel Red Dragon, Dr. Hannibal Lecter is an extremely intelligent serial killer from Eastern Europe who ate his victims and avoided detection and arrest for many years before being caught almost by chance by FBI agent William Graham, a man who has the ability to empathize with killers and figure them out from the inside. Dr. Lecter worked both in an emergency room and later as a psychiatrist, and used his medical knowledge to commit and hide his violent crimes. In many of the media adaptations of the Lecter novels, the cannibal doctor often serves as a guide to help the FBI apprehend other serial killers, though usually with the intention of playing both sides of the game.
