Hannibal Lecter

Hannibal Lecter M.D. is a fictional character in a series of horror novels by Thomas Harris and in the films adapted from them.

Lecter was introduced in the 1981 thriller novel Red Dragon as a brilliant psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer. The novel and its sequel, The Silence of the Lambs, features Lecter as the secondary antagonist after the other two serial killers of each story. In the third novel, Hannibal, Lecter becomes the main character. His role as the antihero occurs in the fourth novel, Hannibal Rising, which explores his childhood and development into a serial killer.

The first film adapted from the Harris novels was Manhunter (based on Red Dragon) features Brian Cox as Lecter, spelled "Lecktor". In 2002, a second adaptation of Red Dragon was made under the original title, featuring Anthony Hopkins, who had played Lecter in the motion pictures The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal. Hopkins won an Academy Award for The Silence of the Lambs in 1991. In 2003, Hannibal Lecter (as portrayed by Hopkins) was chosen by the American Film Institute as the #1 movie villain.^[1]

Appearances

Novels

Hannibal Lecter is introduced in the 1981 novel Red Dragon as a brilliant psychiatrist who is incarcerated after having been revealed to be a cannibalistic serial killer. In the backstory, FBI special agent Will Graham, who investigated Lecter's murders but was unaware of his involvement, initially consulted Lecter about the case before realizing he was the culprit; Lecter nearly killed Graham when he was captured. The plot finds Graham consulting Lecter in order to catch another serial killer, Francis Dolarhyde, known by the nickname "The Tooth Fairy". Through the classifieds of a tabloid, The National Tattler, Lecter provides Dolarhyde with Graham's home address, enabling him to disfigure Graham and attempt to kill his family.

In the 1988 sequel The Silence of the Lambs, Lecter assists an FBI agent-in-training named Clarice Starling in catching a serial killer known as "Buffalo Bill". Lecter and Starling form an unusual relationship in which he provides her with a profile of the killer and his modus operandi in exchange for details about her unhappy childhood. Lecter had previously met Buffalo Bill, the former lover of his patient (and eventual victim) Benjamin Raspail; he keeps this information to himself, however, preferring to give Starling information in the form of clues and riddles designed to help her figure it out for herself. Lecter eventually stages a dramatic, bloody escape from captivity and disappears.

In the third novel, 1999's Hannibal, Lecter lives in Florence, Italy, under an assumed name, while Mason Verger, his surviving victim, attempts to capture Lecter with the intention of feeding him to wild boars. Verger enlists the help of Rinaldo Pazzi, a disgraced Italian police inspector, and Paul Krendler, a corrupt Justice Department official. Lecter kills Pazzi and returns to the United States to escape Verger's Sardinian henchmen, only to be captured. After helping kill Verger, Lecter rescues Starling (who had followed Lecter with the intent of arresting him herself, only to be overtaken by Verger's henchmen) takes her to his rented lake house to treat her, after she was shot with several tranquilizer darts. During her time there he keeps her sedated, attempting to transform her into his dead sister Mischa through a regimen of classical conditioning and mind-altering drugs. One day, he invites her to a formal dinner where the guest and first course is Paul Krendler, whose brain they consume together. On this night, Starling tells Lecter that Mischa's memory can live within him instead of taking her place. She then offers him her breast, and they become lovers. The novel ends three years later with the couple living in Argentina.

Subsequently, Harris wrote a 2006 prequel, Hannibal Rising, after film producer Dino De Laurentiis (who owned the cinematic rights to the Lecter character), announced that he was going to make a film depicting Lecter's childhood and development into a serial killer with or without Harris' help. (Harris would also write the film's screenplay). The novel chronicles Lecter's early life, from birth into an aristocratic family in Lithuania in 1933, to being orphaned, along with his beloved sister Mischa, in 1941 when a German Stuka bomber attacks the Soviet tank that was in front of their forest hideaway, collecting water. Shortly thereafter, Lecter and Mischa are captured by a band of Nazi collaborators turned deserters, who murder and cannibalize Mischa before her brother's eyes. Lecter is so traumatized that he is rendered temporarily mute and later becomes fixated on cannibalism. Lecter escapes from the deserters and takes up residence in an orphanage (where he is bullied by the other children and abused by the dean) until he turns 16, when he is adopted by his uncle Robert and his Japanese wife, Lady Murasaki. After his uncle dies, Lecter forms a close, pseudo-romantic relationship with his step-aunt; during this time he also shows great intellectual aptitude, entering medical school at a young age. During this period, he is tutored in the Japanese martial art of kenjutsu by Murasaki, who descended from a house of Hiroshima Samurai. Despite his seemingly comfortable life, Lecter is consumed by a savage obsession with avenging Mischa's death. He kills for the first time as a teenager, brutally murdering a fishmonger who insults Murasaki; he then methodically tracks down, tortures and murders each of the men who killed his sister, in the process forsaking his relationship with Murasaki and seemingly losing all traces of his humanity. The novel ends with Lecter being accepted into the Johns Hopkins Medical Center.

In film

Red Dragon was first adapted to film in 1986 as the Michael Mann film Manhunter. Due to copyright issues, the filmmakers changed the spelling of Lecter's name to "Lecktor". He was played by Scottish actor Brian Cox.^[2]

In 1991, Orion Pictures produced a Jonathan Demme-directed adaptation of The Silence of the Lambs, in which Lecter was played by Welsh actor Anthony Hopkins. Hopkins' Academy Award–winning performance made Lecter into a cultural icon. In 2001, Hannibal was adapted to film, with Hopkins reprising his role. The ending for the film was changed from the novel due to the controversy that the novel's ending generated upon its release in 1999. In the 2001 film adaptation, Starling attempts to apprehend Lecter, who cuts off his own hand to free himself from her handcuffs. In 2002, Red Dragon was adapted again, this time under its original title, with Hopkins again as Lecter and Edward Norton as Will Graham.

In late 2006, the script for the film Hannibal Rising was adapted to novel format. The novel was written to explain Lecter's development into a serial killer. In the film, the young Lecter is portrayed by Gaspard Ulliel. Both the novel and the film received generally negative critical reception.^[3]

Concept and creation

Thomas Harris has given few interviews, and has never explained where he got inspiration for Hannibal Lecter. However, in a making-of documentary for the film version of Hannibal Rising, Lecter's early murders were said to be based on murders that Harris had covered when he was a crime reporter in the 1960s. In 1992, Harris also attended the ongoing trials of Pietro Pacciani, who was suspected of being the serial killer nicknamed the "Monster of Florence". Parts of the killer's modus operandi were used as reference for the novel Hannibal, which was released in 1999. In an interview on Inside the Actors Studio, Hopkins said that he used the characteristics of Katharine Hepburn and HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey as inspiration for his performance.

According to David Sexton, author of The Strange World of Thomas Harris: Inside the Mind of the Creator of Hannibal Lecter, Harris once told a librarian in Cleveland, Mississippi, that Lecter was inspired by William Coyne, a local murderer who had escaped from prison in 1934 and gone on a rampage that included acts of murder and cannibalism.

In her book Evil Serial Killers, Charlotte Greig asserts that the serial killer Albert Fish was the inspiration, at least in part, for Lecter.^[4] Greig also states that to explain Lecter's pathology, Harris borrowed the story of reported serial killer and cannibal Andrei Chikatilo's brother Stepan being kidnapped and eaten by starving neighbours (though she states that it is unclear whether the story was true or whether Stepan Chikatilo even existed).^[5]

Red Dragon firmly states that Lecter does not fit any known psychological profile. However, Lecter's keeper, Dr. Frederick Chilton, claims that Lecter is a "pure psychopath." Lecter's pathology is explored in greater detail in Hannibal and Hannibal Rising, which explain that he was irreparably traumatized as a child in Lithuania in 1944 when he witnessed the murder and cannibalism of his beloved younger sister, Mischa, by Lithuanian Hilfswillige. One of the Hilfswillige members also claimed that Lecter unwittingly ate his sister as well.

In The Silence of the Lambs, Lecter is described through Clarice Starling's eyes as "small, sleek, and in his hands and arms she saw wiry strength like her own". The novel also reveals that Lecter's left hand has a condition called mid ray duplication polydactyly, i.e. a duplicated middle finger.^[6] In Hannibal, he performs plastic surgery on his own face on several occasions, and removes his extra digit. Lecter's eyes are a shade of maroon, and reflect the light in "pinpoints of red".^[7] He is also said to have small white teeth^[8] and dark, slicked-back hair with a widow's peak.

Popular culture

Hannibal Lecter (specifically Hopkins' portrayal) has often been the subject of parodies and references in general media. These include an appearance in MAD magazine, as well as several television series and films such as The Simpsons, French and Saunders, Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore, South Park, the Nickelodeon program Fairly OddParents, Fillmore!, The Office, Whose Line Is It Anyway, Family Guy, Happy Tree Friends, The Cable Guy, Austin Powers in Goldmember, Addams Family Values, The Critic and Clerks 2.

The character has also been parodied in a musical, entitled SILENCE! The Musical.

Rapper Eminem frequently mentions him in his songs.

See also

• Dorangel Vargas, a serial killer known as the "Hannibal Lecter of the Andes"

References

External links

• Hannibal Lecter at the Internet Movie Database
• Information about Hannibal Lecter, with a focus on Manhunter (1986)
• Crime Library profile of Lecter
• NPR broadcast on Lecter