Tom Noonan Gave the Scariest Performance in Any Hannibal Lecter Movie

Writer Thomas Harris gave the world Hannibal Lecter, one of the greatest on-screen monsters in cinema history. In novels such as The Silence of the Lambs and Red Dragon, the erudite psychiatrist-turned-cannibal terrified audiences, even more so when brought to the screen by Anthony Hopkins. Yet, Hopkins wasn’t the first person to play Lecter in live action, as he was preceded by Brian Cox in Manhunter. Moreover, Manhunter featured the scariest moment in any adaptation of a Harris work.

Directed by Michael Mann and based on the 1981 novel Red Dragon, Manhunter follows FBI agent Will Graham (William Petersen) as he tries to find Francis Dolarhyde, a murderer dubbed “the Tooth Fairy.” Played by Tom Noonan, who passed away on February 14 at the age of 74, gives a chilling performance, one that outdoes even Hopkins’ work as Harris’s most famous creation.

Released in 1986, Manhunter marries Mann’s cool, neon aesthetic to Harris’ overheated form of psychological horror. Most of the film focuses on Graham, an incredibly empathetic profiler who has retired from the FBI after capturing Hannibal Lecktor (as the name is spelled in this film). However, Graham’s desperate superior, Jack Crawford (Dennis Farina), convinces him to investigate a series of murders carried out by the Tooth Fairy, the soft-spoken man Francis Dolarhyde.

Rendered deeply self-conscious by the abuse his mother heaped on him and concerns about his physical appearance, Dolarhyde witnesses perfect families in the film he develops and then murders them. After each killing, he leaves bite marks on the women, earning his Tooth Fairy nickname, and replaces their eyes with mirrors.

Despite these over-the-top elements from the source material, Mann emphasizes the gumshoe, workaday nature of the FBI, which restricts even Dolarhyde from being too outrageous. It’s a difficult assignment, yet somehow Noonan pulled it off. A hulking man who stood 6’5″, Noonan cut an intimidating presence, which also led to him being cast as Frankenstein’s Monster in The Monster Squad. However, he balanced his intimidating physique with a gentleness, accentuated by his soft tone of voice and warm eyes.

In his best roles, Noonan played those two elements off one another to create a complex figure. He emphasized the gentleness of Frankenstein’s monster and made the Satanist Mr. Ulmer in The House of the Devil someone the main character would believably trust. He used his size to make actor Sammy Barnathan in Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York all the more pathetic when he gets vulnerable.

But his best moment came as Francis Dolarhyde in Manhunter. Noonan gets us to feel sorry for Dolarhyde as Graham and Lecktor uncover the trauma that made him into a killer, and we’re even moved by his romance with a blind coworker played by Joan Allen. None of those feelings go away when Dolarhyde first reveals his diabolical nature. Rather, Noonan uses them to accentuate the horror.

Midway through Manhunter, a botched operation results in Dolarhyde capturing the tabloid reporter Freddie Lounds (Stephen Lang). With Lounds bound to a chair, Dolarhyde reveals himself in his person as the Red Dragon, Satan as imagined in the poetry and etchings of William Blake. He monologues to the captive Lounds about his power, about how Lounds owes him not fear but “awe.” At the beginning of the monologue, Dolarhyde shows Lounds images of Blake’s drawings and photographs of victims, punctuating each image with the question, “Do you see?”

In the Harris novel Red Dragon, and the later substandard adaptation by Melania director Brett Ratner, Dolarhyde uses this moment to reveal his muscular body, prosthetic sharp teeth, and large dragon tattoo. But Mann chooses a more conventional approach, dressing Dolarhyde in regular street clothes. In this version, he wears a nylon stocking over the top half of his head and does not put in the teeth until the final moments.

However, the scene still chills because of the subtle way Noonan plays Dolarhyde as both imperious and nervous. He remains calm throughout his speech, only slightly raising his voice when Lounds’s eyes close. While the calm could be interpreted as confidence, especially as Noonan towers over the seated Lang, it instead reads as reverence. Dolarhyde truly believes that he has transcended the body that he hates, that he’s become a vessel of the Red Dragon. Noonan never overplays it, never gets into the campiness that sometimes overtakes Hopkins’s work as Lecter. He plays it gentle, human, and utterly horrifying.

In that one scene, Tom Noonan’s ability to be both powerful and gentle brings a unique terror to a Hannibal film, a terror unmatched by any other Harris adaptation.