swept the Big Five Oscar categories, with Hopkins winning Best Actor, Jodie Foster for Best Actress, Jonathan Demme for Best Director, Ted Tally for Best Screenplay, and the top award for Best Picture.

The Silence of the Lambs' success as the only horror movie to ever win Best Picture at the Oscars resulted in a franchise that included the prequel adaptation of Red Dragon, with Brett Ratner directing, Edward Norton as FBI agent Will Graham, and Hopkins returning as Hannibal Lecter. It was also adapted again into the TV series Hannibal, with Mads Mikkelsen playing Lecter. However, Red Dragon was adapted initially in 1986 with Manhunter, two years before The Silence of the Lambs was published as a novel and five years before Hopkins took on the role of Hannibal Lecter.

The First Hannibal Lecter Movie Came Out Five Years Before Silence Of The Lambs

Brian Cox Was The Original Hannibal Lecktor

Before Thomas Harris even wrote The Silence of the Lambs, his first Hannibal Lecter novel, Red Dragon, was made into a movie called Manhunter. Released in 1986, Michael Mann directed Manhunter as his third feature film after Thief and The Keep. Mann, who went on to earn Oscar nominations for The Last of the Mohicans, The Insider, Ali, and Collateral, brought Hannibal to the big screen, changing the spelling to Hannibal Lecktor and casting Brian Cox (Succession) as the cannibalistic serial killer. Anyone who has seen Red Dragon and the Hannibal television show knows the story.

In Manhunter, William Petersen (CSI) plays former FBI profiler Will Graham, a man who retired after Hannibal Lecktor attacked him, leading to Graham suffering a mental breakdown. When his former superior, Jack Crawford (Dennis Farina), approached him about investigating a new serial killer case, he agreed with the condition that he didn't get involved in anything but finding evidence. However, Graham ends up visiting Lecktor in prison to ask him for help in getting into the serial killer's mind.

There is a significant difference between Manhunter and Red Dragon, which Brett Ratner directed in 2002. Unlike the latter movie, with Anthony Hopkins reprising his role as Hannibal Lecter, the Michael Mann movie has Lecktor as a tool in Will Graham finding out more about the Tooth Fairy killer, but he is not the center of the story, making this more of a mystery thriller and less of a Hannibal Lecter horror movie. In both films, Hannibal is a key to the mystery but isn't the main character in Manhunter.

Michael Mann's Manhunter Sures Red Dragon In Every Way

While Manhunter is not as focused on Hannibal as the later movies in the franchise, it remains superior to Red Dragon. It starts at the top with director Michael Mann and his pacing and development of the story. He showed why he would pick up so much Oscar notice in the coming years as he created a thriller that kept audiences on the edge of their seats and a visual representation of Francis Dolarhyde (Tom Noonan) that is haunting and terrifying. While Brett Ratner implemented the blockbuster movie-making style he remains known for, Mann wanted something darker and creepier.

Hannibal Lecter was spelled as Hannibal Lecktor in Manhunter.

That also doesn't discount Brian Cox's work while creating his version of Hannibal Lecktor. While Anthony Hopkins easily has the best version of Hannibal on the big screen, Cox held his own when bringing the cannibalistic serial killer to life. Cox also itted the differences between his Hannibal and Hopkins:

"Well, it’s a different character. I mean, it’s like playing Hamlet. Everybody’s going to have their own Hamlet. I chose to play it the way the director Michael Mann and I decided to play it. Tony played it brilliantly...

But we played it the way we played it. Tony decided to take it down another route. And of course, Tony’s was a huge success, and he got the Oscar and he made a lot of money out of it. I made something like 10 grand."

However, other than Hannibal, Manhunter sures Red Dragon in almost every way. When released, the film received mixed reviews, but that has changed over the years. Critics have reappraised the film, which has become a cult classic, especially when compared favorably to the later Red Dragon adaptation. Early reviews criticized Mann's stylized visuals, but that became his calling card and became more accepted in later years. Critics also praised the story's subtlety in Mann's movie, whereas Ratner's was more exploitative in design.

Noonan played the character perfectly, portraying the creepiness of the Tooth Fairy serial killer.

Credit must also go to Tom Noonan, who portrayed Francis Dollarhyde in Manhunter. While not as critically acclaimed an actor as Ralph Fiennes (Red Dragon), Noonan played the character perfectly, portraying the creepiness of the Tooth Fairy serial killer and bringing a level of terror to Michael Mann's movie that was lacking in Red Dragon.

Interestingly, while critics panned Mann's direction when the film was released, Ratner's film used the same cinematographer, Dante Spinotti, who worked behind the camera on both Manhunter and Red Dragon. Spinotti later earned an Oscar nomination of his own for Mann's The Insider. While Red Dragon was a box office success, it remains a mostly forgettable chapter in Hannibal Lecter's mythology. On the other hand, Manhunter remains studied by film scholars thanks to its themes, use of color, and overall depiction of the characters, making it the best Hannibal Lecter prequel ever put on the big screen.