Scary Movie

Julie and Gibson, my downstairs neighbors, are moving this weekend. (Thanks for the bottle of wine, it was- notice the past tense- a Coppola; they know what the dumb filmmaker likes.) On Saturday we were at our block party and Julie very casually announced that she thinks they have a ghost in their unit. She described a series of strange events- a mirror somersaulted off the bathroom wall, bounced on the floor and landed in the tub as Julie was drawing a bath. The mirror and Julie were not damaged. She also mentioned strange chills, a clock that lept off the wall and skidded across the room, cheese that mysteriously flew across the room and hit Gibson, and a variety of other ghostly misdemeanors.

Cool. And better them than me.

All this started me thinking about scary movies and by far, BY FAR the scariest film I have seen in a theater is Manhunter by Michael Mann. It is a Hannibal Lecter film. He is played by the terrific Brian Cox- yet the true star of the film is not Bill Petersen, but the director Michael Mann a good Chicagoan, like Petersen and his co-star Dennis Farina. Mann styles up this film with a ton of eye candy- my guess is FBI agents don’t fly on private jets and have $1000 lamps on their desks.

The short version is that FBI manhunter Peterson has to go to Hannibal Lecter to figure out who the serial killer is. It turns out he is a man, (played by Tom Noonan) who develops Super 8mm film. He knows his victims because he has seen their home movies. He breaks into their homes, kills them and removes their eyes.

When I saw it in 1986 it scared Holy Hell out of me. I was going out with a woman who lived on the 11th floor, she kept her windows open and all that summer I swear I felt Tom Noonan was going to crawl through that window.

I met Tom Noonan a few years later. He is a really nice guy. In addition to acting he also has written and directed films- he scores them as well. Check out his film The Wife. Finally, here is an interesting side note- both Noonan and Ted Levine, who was the real bad guy in Silence of the Lambs were in Heat also directed by Michael Mann. About 10 years ago I used to play basketball with Ted Levine- he threw a mean elbow and no one would get under the basket with him because they remembered him as Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs.

While I start hanging out with different types of characters, somebody call Ghostbusters.

PeterH