Manhunter(1986)

Submitted by Julio M

The first adaptation of Thomas Harris’ novel RED DRAGON, later reimagined in 2002 as Red Dragon

Pooper:
Will (William Petersen) figures out that Francis Dollarhyde (Tom Noonan) is “The Tooth Fairy”. Along with a police contingent, he confronts Dollarhyde -who has Reba (Joan Allen) as a hostage- in his house and, after a protracted fight, kills him. Will, his former superior Jack Crawford (Dennis Farina) -who also took part in the siege- and Reba all survive.


Longer version:
In retaliation for the demeaning interview Will organized with sleazy National Tattler reporter Freddy Lounds (Stephen Lang) to slander him and lure him out of hiding, Francis Dollarhyde -a.k.a. the serial killer “The Tooth Fairy”, due to his horrific use of teeth as a trademark in this crimes, this stemming from having had cleft palate surgery as a child, which left him with no upper teeth and led him to use his abusive grandmother’s grotesque dentures instead- kidnaps Lounds, forces him to record a taped confession recanting his actions and, then, kills him by binding him to his grandmother’s wheelchair, setting him on fire and launching him against the parking lot of the offices of The National Tattler.

At the same time, the FBI finally decodes the mysterious message sent by Dr. Hannibal Lecktor (Brian Cox) to Dollarhyde, via The Tattler: he was instructing Dollarhyde to go to Graham’s house in Florida and kill everyone in it. Will rushes to find his wife Molly (Kim Griest) and son Kevin (David Seaman) alive and has them moved to a safe house; then, he explains to Kevin the reasons for which he had decided to retire as an FBI agent and why he is doing what he is doing now.

Meanwhile, back at his job as a technician at a film laboratory in St. Louis, Dollarhyde musters the courage to ask fellow worker Reba McClane -who is blind- to allow him to give her a ride home. Instead, he convinces her to go to his place; there, they have an incident-free time, although, unbeknownst to her, he is actually watching -with the sound turned off- videos of a family who want their home movie processed by the lab, now targeted by him as their next victims. While this happens, Will goes once more over the evidence and realizes that the killer must be doing this out of a driver for being accepted.

Later on, Dollarhyde watches, enraged, as another co-worker -who had shown interest in Reba- gives Reba a drive. Having followed them, he murders the co-worker as he leaves and renders Reba unconscious, abducting her. By this point, having already come across the home videos of the two murdered families, Will discovers the connection: they had their home videos custom-processed in the same facility; also, the house where the padlock was cut with a bolt cutter clearly appears in one of them as prior to being broken into. This leads Will and Crawford to the lab where Dollarhyde works and they learn that Dollarhyde himself is in charge of the processing endeavor and that he did not show up for work that day. With this, a police contingent is set up to head to Dollarhyde’s house and arrest him.

Will sees through a window and finds Dollarhyde holding Reba hostage and getting ready to murder her using a shard of broken glass -along with the bite marks, he also smashed mirrors at his crime scenes because he hated his reflection on them, and used the shards in various gruesome ways against his victims-. He lunges at Dollarhyde and fights him, but the killer subdues him, produces a shotgun and engages in an intense shootout where he kills two policemen and wounds Crawford but ends up himself injured as well. Retrieving to the kitchen, he is confronted and killed by Will.

In the end, Will, Crawford and Reba, having survived, are seen being tended by Paramedics and Will returns to his family, leaving the FBI behind once and for all.