THE HANNIBAL LECTER COLLECTION (1986, 1991, 2001 Blu-ray released September 15, 2009 – MSRP $69.98)
Lecter or Lektor? Hopkins or Cox? Whatever flavour of brilliant man-eating sociopath you prefer, The Hannibal Lecter Collection Blu-ray set delivers. However, while often as tasty as some fava beans and a nice chianti, this Blu-ray meal isn’t quite as filling as it could be. Um…and by that I mean the box set is missing a bunch of stuff, like Red Dragon and bonus content.
All right. To be fair, the two Lecter films absent from the set aren’t owned by MGM, the studio responsible for this Blu-ray release (Red Dragon is at Universal while Hannibal Rising, the prequel is with the Weinstein‘s). So let’s give them a break on this count, okay? We’re getting what they’ve got to give. And that is Michael Mann‘s brilliant 1986 adaptation of Robert Harris‘ Red Dragon, Manhunter, the Oscar winning Silence of the Lambs and its follow up, Hannibal. Two great films and one that’s pretty decent. We’re not going to argue over Lambs here. I mean, you can’t! It’s only the third film to ever win the five most prestigious Oscars – Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture. SLAM DUNK. It’s awesome. While it introduced most of the world to Hannibal Lecter through Anthony Hopkins‘ dark portrayal of the character in 1991, the good doctor had been on film several years before. Brian Cox payed Hannibal Lektor (who knows why they decided to spell it differently) in Manhunter, pitting his wits against investigator Will Graham as played here by William Peterson (best known as C.S.I.‘s Gil Grissom). As I stated above…brilliant. Manhunter is a wonderful film and though it’s strange to begin this “trilogy” of films with Cox as the doctor when an adaptation of the same story exists with Hopkins in the role, the included effort is the stronger of the two versions and a welcome addition. The collection closes out with Ridley Scott‘s Hannibal. I may be an unabashed fan of Scott’s work but I won’t be a Hannibal apologist. It’s not a great movie. It’s certainly entertaining and features some wonderful performances and visuals but it ultimately reeks of character exploitation, wringing Hannibal for every drop of blood he’s worth. Like Jason in yet another Friday the 13th. But all in good fun.
The Hannibal Lecter Collection Blu-ray set becomes a mixed bag though when we look at the discs themselves. On one hand we get a gorgeous new transfer of Manhunter in its original theatrical cut. Absolutely stunning and almost worth the price of the set alone. Fantastic work here. I’ve never seen Manhunter look so good! I was really taken aback. Hannibal, on the other hand…um, I don’t even know what to say. Hannibal looked terrible on my screen. It’s a dirty, musty MPEG-2 encode on a BD-25 single layer disc that looks very soft and is severely lacking in detail. Others have spoken quite well of this encode but, I’m sorry, I just didn’t see it. Lambs is right in the middle, again with an MPEG-2 transfer but not looking quite as offensive as Hannibal. In fact, it looks pretty good most of the time. I believe the disc is identical to the one previously available from MGM. This Blu-ray disc is certainly the best the film has ever looked on home video.
The Silence of the Lambs disc also contains all of the bonus features from the previously available individual edition – Breaking the Silence picture-in-picture text and interviews, Inside the Labyrinth: Making of ‘The Silence of the Lambs feature length documemtary, a ton of random featurettes, 20 deleted scenes, outtakes, trailers and a whole lot more. It’s a really good thing that there’s so much on the Lambs disc because there aren’t any other extras in the set! That’s right, Manhunter and Hannibal are movie only discs (unless you count trailers on Hannibal.) So, don’t throw out your old DVDs quite yet. You’ll want to watch those other cuts of Manhunter and listen to Ridley Scott’s commentary track at some point. But for the right price (and at $45 at Amazon, you’re not going to go too wrong here) this Blu-ray set offers up a lot of high-def thrills!
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