📌A retelling of the book "Red Dragon" by the author Thomas Harris. °The article was written by: @ematteo
1979. Jack Crawford comes to Will Graham to ask for help in catching a serial killer, whom the FBI calls the Nibbler (the reason for this nickname - he bites the victim's body with large teeth).
Graham agrees and flies to Atlanta, where the Leeds family was recently murdered, and arrives at the crime scene at night.After investigating the entrance and the first floor, Graham goes to the second floor, where he finds: broken mirrors, signs of struggle, blood on the floor, beds and walls. Mrs. Leeds had bites and traces of talcum powder on her body because the madman had taken off his gloves. The father's throat had been slashed, and the children had gunshot wounds. Nibbler was a necrophiliac because the rape marks were postmortem.
In the course of the evening, Graham gets the idea to check the eyes of the victims (thanks to his imagination and a lot of pictures), after which he finds a smudged thumbprint.
You know the saying "only a madman can understand a madman"? Will knows it, so he decides to contact an old acquaintance... Dr. Hannibal Lecter, who almost took his life, leaving a huge knife scar on his stomach.
The conversation was very tense for Graham, but he learned a lot of important or interesting information. For example, Nibbler is going through the stages of "rebirth" and will shine at the next full moon because he is getting better every time.
But there is one thing...Lecter is playing a double game. What does he have to lose? Sitting in a four-walled cell in the basement, he has nothing to lose. He helps the investigator and at the same time receives a letter on toilet paper from the "young pilgrim" (as Lecter calls his new interlocutor).
The FBI learns about the letter with the dental impression from the janitor, so they come up with a plan:
1) They move Lecktor to a neighboring cell so he can't see his cell.
2) They turn off the lights in all the cells and the hallway.
3) They bring in an electrician who was actually an FBI agent.
4) They take the letter, take the fingerprints, take the hair.
5) Put the letter back in the toilet paper roll.
Only Lecter is not stupid... He realized everything when he saw the rubber gloves with talcum powder in the pocket of the "electrician".
They find the letter, but the middle is torn off, just the ends of the letters "TETLER", the name of the magazine where he could publish his writings. Thanks to a special cipher and a recipe book, he encoded the message...
At night, one of the employees calls Crawford and shouts that Hannibal gave Graham's home address, or rather, his family's address! Jack calls his buddy and tells him not to panic, saying "I've called a helicopter, soon your family will be safe.Will.Will!".
The morning his family was at his cousin Jack Crawford's house, Molly was learning to shoot, which will help her in the future. ....
Soon Will contacted the notary of the first family (Jacoby or Jacob) and asked for their belongings to be re-sent. He had an idea! What was it?
-The Toothy left his symbol on a branch (near the First Family's house), he took his wire cutters, he thought the lock was on the door, but it had been changed, he didn't know that. He watched them. He knew where he was going. But how could he know that if he didn't know it personally?
The idea came to him as he watched the tape.
Earlier, Will Graham and Jack Crawford had set up Freddie the journalist. They recorded a fake interview in which Graham talks bad about Nibbler. Calling him gay, stupid, etc. They also took photos of the apartment they had prepared for Dolarhyde to go to.
At night, the killer buys a magazine from TETLER, and the next day, Freddie Lounds goes missing....
A man wakes up in an old wooden wheelchair, literally glued to it with superglue. "Do you know who I am?" asks a voice in the darkness. It is the voice of a red dragon. The Great Red Dragon! There is a tense dialogue between the men, the dragon turning the journalist toward the white canvas where the spotlight was shining. Dolarhyde turns his back to him and takes off his robe....
All over his back, legs and arms was a huge tattoo of William Blake's masterpiece "The Red Dragon and the Sun-Clad Woman.
Then Francis forced the journalist to leave a tape in which he praises the greatness of the Red Dragon, all its essence, its charisma. He says that Will Graham will regret his words, and then heard heartbreaking screams.Dolarhyde bites the journalist's lips off with his dentures, and a short time later, his Freddy flies toward the TETLER building in a burning wheelchair.
Will gets the family's belongings and the tapes from Gateway Film Lab. Now they know the killer:
-Male.
-Has a problem with his appearance. -Can't see himself.
At this time Francis Dolarhyde (Director of the Gateway Company) meets his subordinate - Riba McClane. She is blind, so Francis managed to establish a kind of dialogue with her.
They socialized for a while, and then they had a great night at his mansion (former nursing home owned by his grandmother, who gave him false teeth that he used to bite his victims). The second personality, the "Red Dragon", asked Francis about Riba. The second self wanted Dolarhyde to kill her, so he even tried suicideª but it didn't work, and then the man's eyes fell on a copy of Blake's masterpiece, and an idea flashed through his head....
That same day, he took Riba home and went to the Brooklyn Museum, where the original of his second personality (his second self was the prototype of his late grandmother) was on display. He stunned but did not kill the two janitors and ate a watercolor canvas with the image of the Red Dragon. ....
Back in town, he finds Will Graham, Jack Crawford and his entire team in his office.
The FBI agent described the madman and they all said it looked like their boss. The man runs to his van and drives off in an unknown direction.
The man rushed to his van and drove off in an unknown direction. Dragon yelled at him, but then asked to talk to him. Francis stopped at a gas station.
When he arrived at Riba's house, he was disappointed in her and convinced of Dragon when he saw her kissing another man. A co-worker. She went inside and Francis shot the man in the head. Then he knocked on the door and Riba said: "I told you so." - only to be interrupted by Dolarhyde putting a chloroform rag over her face. She passed out after a while.
Night. Riba wakes up with water on her face and screams, but Francis tells her to be quiet because "he" will hear.
The man says he doesn't want to lose Riba, that he has no choice but to kill her and then himself. The girl cries, begs him not to, and he hears a gunshot! The smell of smoke and blood on her face! She's alive! Footsteps, doors, Riba manages to run out of the house and into the hands of the FBI. The men pounce with questions and the house is blown up by the dynamite in the basement. All evidence is erased, but that doesn't save Francis. "He's dead. He shot himself in the face." - said the woman, holding her charred hands to her face.
Everyone leaves, Graham goes back to his wife and stepson, because the madman is dead? Only it's not quite like that....
Graham is fishing near the house, while his home phone is ringing off the hook with Crawford's calls.
Tests on the bones found in the fire show that the bones do not belong to Dolarhyde, which means he is still alive.
Molly calls her husband to the phone and takes his place at the fishing pole. Graham starts to cut his way through the bushes, when suddenly someone comes at him with a knife... A struggle ensues, and he yells for his wife and son to run! The boy ran home, but Molly took the fishing rod and stabbed Francis, who in the meantime cut Graham's cheek and he fell, hitting his head hard and bleeding....
Molly ran home as Dolarhyde ran after her. First she kills the family, then she kills Graham. But no such luck! Nibbler enters the house and gets a load of lead in his face. One shot...two...two...three...the revolver is out of bullets. The madman is definitely dead.
Graham goes to the hospital and Lecter is happy to see the news in the papers.