Manhunter, 1986
Director
Cast
visit the film locations
Georgia: Flights: Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport
Visit: Georgia
Visit: Atlanta
Stay at: the Atlanta Marriott Marquis, 265 Peachtree Center Avenue (tel: 404.521.0000) (metro: Peachtree Center Station)
Visit: High Museum of Art, 1280 Peachtree Street NE, Atlanta (metro: Arts Center Station)
North Carolina: Wilmington: Flights: Wilmington NC International Airport, 1740 Airport Boulevard, Wilmington, NC 28405 (tel: 910.341.4333)
Visit: Wilmington
Missouri; St Louis: Flights: Lambert-St Louis International Airport
Trivia
After the success of The Silence of the Lambs, remade as Red Dragon.
See more of Wilmington as ‘Lumbertown’ in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet
Manhunter location: Agent Will Graham visits Lecktor’s cell: Richard Meier-designed Stent Family Wing, High Museum of Art, Peachtree Street, Atlanta
Photograph courtesy: High Museum of Art
From the novel preceding The Silence of the Lambs, and filmed by visual stylist Michael Mann four years before that film (and – just to confuse things – since remade by Brett Ratner as Red Dragon).
This time, the oddly-spelled Hannibal Lecktor (Brian Cox, more chillingly psychopathic than Anthony Hopkins’ grand guignol monster) is incarcerated, not in an underground dungeon from a 1930s Universal horror movie, but in a glossy, white, hi-tech facility.
But rather than psychopathic cannibals, you’re more likely to come across Monet, Durer, Bellini or Toulouse-Lautrec. Michael Mann once again reveals his eye for striking architecture. The top-security institution is actually the High Museum of Art, 1280 Peachtree Street NE, in the Ansley Park area, north of downtown Atlanta, Georgia. Designed by Richard Meier in 1983, and deemed one of the "ten best works of American architecture in the 1980s" by the American Institute of Architects, the porcelain-enameled building houses over 11,000 pieces of art. Its towering atrium soars to four interior levels, with galleries moving from 18th and 19th-century collections near the ground floor to cutting edge contemporary art on the upper levels.
Meanwhile, investigator Will Graham (William L Petersen) stays at the luxury, 50-storey Atlanta Marriott Marquis, 265 Peachtree Center Avenue.
In Washington D.C., t he FBI works out of the District Building, 1350 Pennsylvania Avenue NW at 14th Street. And it’s in front of here, on Freedom Plaza by the National Theater, that the innocent jogger gets busted.
The airport at which the Lear jet touches down is Lambert-St Louis International Airport, St Louis, Missouri.
Wilmington in North Carolina, the self-styled ‘East Coast Hollywood’, with its slew of studio facilities, hosted more of the filming. The hospital was Wilmington’s New Hanover Memorial Hospital, now expanded to become part of the New Hanover Regional Medical Center, 2131 South 17th Street, and Will Graham’s ‘Florida’ beach house (supposedly at ‘DeSoto Avenue, Captiva’) is on nearby Mansonboro Island, North Carolina.
