The writer and director Michael Mann’s stylish thriller Manhunter (1986), adapted from Thomas Harris’s novel Red Dragon, was the first screen outing for the fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter, played in this instance by Brian Cox and in three further films by Anthony Hopkins. By far the most haunting figure in Manhunter, though, is the psychopath Francis Dollarhyde, nicknamed “the Tooth Fairy”. As played by the looming, softly spoken actor Tom Noonan, who has died aged 74, he is both chilling and pitiful.
Though we see the gruesome aftermath of Dollarhyde’s crimes early on, it is nearly an hour before we meet the man himself, his features smudged and flattened by a stocking worn over the upper half of his face. “That’s the first thing we shot,” the actor said. “I could tell the crew was scared of me.”
