Will Graham, a gifted but tormented former FBI profiler, is reluctantly pulled out of retirement to hunt a terrifying serial killer known as "The Tooth Fairy," who is slaughtering entire families during full moons. Desperate to save the next family before the lunar cycle is complete, Graham must risk his own fragile sanity by consulting the brilliant but psychotic psychiatrist he previously captured: Dr. Hannibal Lecktor.
Information |
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Language |
English |
Country |
United States |
Premiere date |
August 15, 1986 |
Running time |
120 minutes |
Genre |
Crime Thriller Mystery Horror |
Budget |
$15,000,000 |
Box Office |
$8,620,929 |
Crew |
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Directed by |
Michael Mann |
Produced by |
Richard Roth |
Written by |
Michael Mann |
Music by |
The Reds Michel Rubini |
Cinematography |
Dante Spinotti |
Edited by |
Dov Hoenig |
Production Co. |
De Laurentiis Entertainment Group (DEG) |
Distributed by |
De Laurentiis Entertainment Group (DEG) |
Top Cast |
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Official Trailer |
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Movie Collection |
Movie Order: #01 in The Hannibal Lecter Collection
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The Plot
Retirement Interrupted
Will Graham, a former FBI criminal profiler, has retreated to a life of seclusion in Florida following a mental breakdown precipitated by a near-fatal attack at the hands of the notorious serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecktor. His peaceful retirement is interrupted when his former superior, Jack Crawford, arrives at his beachfront home seeking assistance with a harrowing new case. A serial killer, dubbed the "Tooth Fairy" by the police due to the bite marks found on his victims, has slaughtered two entire families during successive full moons, claiming ten lives in the span of a month.
Graham is reluctant to return to the darkness of profiling, but he eventually agrees to assist under strict conditions. He promises his worried wife that he will only examine the evidence and will not expose himself to physical danger. Graham travels to the site of the most recent massacre in Atlanta, where he attempts to immerse himself in the mindset of the killer, walking through the blood-stained home to understand the psychological drivers behind the atrocities.
Old Ghosts and New Fingerprints
After discovering the killer's fingerprints at the crime scene, Graham meets with Crawford to discuss the findings. Their meeting is ambushed by Freddy Lounds, a tabloid journalist from the National Tattler with whom Graham shares a bitter history; Lounds had previously published secret photographs of Graham while he was hospitalized recovering from Lecktor's attack. Determined to gain insight into the Tooth Fairy's pathology, Graham decides to confront his past directly.
He visits Dr. Hannibal Lecktor, a former psychiatrist now incarcerated in a high-security cell. Graham asks for Lecktor's perspective on the Tooth Fairy’s motivations. Following a tense psychological sparring match, Lecktor agrees to review the case file. However, the meeting is a calculated risk; Lecktor later uses deceit to obtain Graham’s home address, setting a dangerous game in motion.
The Coded Message
Graham travels to Birmingham, Alabama, to investigate the first crime scene. While there, Crawford contacts him with news that Lounds has published a sensationalized story about the case. More disturbingly, Crawford connects Graham with Frederick Chilton, the warden of Lecktor's asylum. Chilton has discovered a note hidden in Lecktor’s personal effects. upon analysis, the FBI realizes the note is from the Tooth Fairy himself, expressing profound admiration for Lecktor and a specific interest in Will Graham.
Crawford brings Graham to the FBI Academy at Quantico, where specialists analyze a missing section of the note to determine what Lecktor removed before the authorities found it. The analysis reveals an instruction to communicate through the personals section of the National Tattler, Lounds' newspaper, confirming a direct line of communication between the two killers.
The Trap and the Transformation
The FBI initially plans to plant a fake advertisement to entrap the Tooth Fairy, but they realize that without the specific book code used by the killers, the Tooth Fairy will spot the forgery immediately. Forced to let Lecktor's original advertisement run, Graham orchestrates a risky strategy: he organizes an interview with Freddy Lounds in which he gives a deliberately false and derogatory profile of the Tooth Fairy, hoping to incite the killer into making a mistake.
The sting operation fails to capture the killer, and the plan backfires tragically. The Tooth Fairy kidnaps Lounds and transports him to his home. There, the killer reveals himself to Lounds, showing him a terrifying slideshow comprising William Blake’s The Great Red Dragon paintings, images of past victims, and slides of a new family he has targeted. The Tooth Fairy forces Lounds to tape-record a statement before setting him on fire in a wheelchair. The journalist's flaming body is rolled into the parking garage of the National Tattler as a grotesque warning.
A Threat to the Family
The stakes escalate when Crawford informs Graham that the cryptanalysts have cracked Lecktor’s coded message to the Tooth Fairy. The message contains Graham’s home address and an explicit instruction to kill his family, ending with the chilling line: "Save yourself. Kill them all." This reveals Lecktor's belief that Graham would eventually track down the Tooth Fairy. Graham rushes back to Florida, finding his family terrified but safe. The FBI immediately moves them to a secure safe house, where Graham attempts to explain to his son, Kevin, the traumatic reasons behind his previous retirement.
The Great Red Dragon
The narrative shifts to reveal the Tooth Fairy’s identity: Francis Dollarhyde, a film processing technician in St. Louis. Dollarhyde approaches a blind co-worker, Reba McClane, and offers her a ride. They eventually go to Dollarhyde's home, where Reba is completely unaware that Dollarhyde is watching home-movie footage of the family he plans to butcher next. Despite his monstrous nature, Dollarhyde finds himself drawn to Reba. She kisses him, and they make love. This newfound intimacy confuses Dollarhyde, but it momentarily suppresses the "Dragon's" bloodlust.
Simultaneously, Graham begins to understand that the Tooth Fairy’s murders are driven by a desperate desire for acceptance. However, Dollarhyde's internal struggle collapses when he watches Reba being escorted home by another co-worker. Mistakenly believing he is witnessing a romantic betrayal, Dollarhyde murders the man and abducts Reba. When she tries to calm him by using his name, he coldly tells her, "Francis is gone. Forever."
The Connection
Desperate to find the link connecting the murdered families, Graham has a breakthrough: he realizes the killer must have seen their home movies. He and Crawford deduce that the victims likely used the same processing lab. They identify a specific facility in St. Louis and fly there immediately. The investigation reveals that Dollarhyde has been casing his victims by viewing their home movies as they were processed, allowing him to plan his break-ins with extreme detail. Graham identifies Dollarhyde as the employee who viewed the films and obtains his home address.
The Final Confrontation
Graham, Crawford, and a police escort race to Dollarhyde’s secluded home. Inside, Reba is terrified as Dollarhyde contemplates her fate, struggling with the urge to kill her using a shard of broken mirror glass. As police teams surround the house, Graham sees that Dollarhyde has a hostage and makes a split-second decision, lunging through a window to intervene.
Graham is quickly subdued by the physically imposing Dollarhyde. The killer retrieves a shotgun, wounding Crawford and killing two police officers in the ensuing chaos. Badly wounded in the firefight, Dollarhyde returns to the kitchen to execute Graham. However, his injuries cause him to miss his shot. Graham returns fire, finally killing the Tooth Fairy. In the aftermath, paramedics tend to Graham, Reba, and Crawford. Having faced his demons and stopped the Dragon, Graham returns home to his family, retiring from the FBI permanently.
