This set contains the first three Hannibal Lecter movies, Manhunter, Silence of the Lambs, and its direct sequel Hannibal. Manhunter, which was made in 1986 and starred Brian Cox as Hannibal Lecter and William Petersen as Will Grahm. It is basically the Red Dragon story that would be remade years later with Hopkins in the role of Lecter with a much different tone and feel. There are some that think Manhunter is the best movie adaptation of any of the Thomas Harris novels, but I generally prefer the Hopkins movies, probably because I saw Silence of the Lambs first.
Silence of the Lambs was the classic 1991 film that starred Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling, a young FBI agent who used Lecter's knowledge to help capture a serial killer named Buffalo Bill, played by Ted Levine. It was definitely more of a thriller than it was a horror movie. There are some gory parts, but nothing akin to say the Saw franchise. It is much more of an edge-of-your-seat psychological thriller than it is anything else.
Hannibal is the sequel to Silence of the Lambs, with Julianne Moore taking over the role of Clarice trying to track down Lecter, as was his last surviving victim, Mason Verger, played by Gary Oldman. While this does have the psychological thriller element to it, it is much gorier than Silence of the Lambs was. While I think Moore did a good job as Clarice, it was definitely not the same without Jodie Foster in that role, and I think the movie suffered somewhat because of it.
The A/V quality of the movies is good, but none of them got a high-quality HD upgrade. As far as extras go, there are trailers on Manhunter and Hannibal, but that is it. Silence of the Lambs carries over the extras from its initial DVD release, including a picture-in-picture commentary track on the movie that includes interviews with the cast members as the movie plays. Then there are several behind-the-scenes and making-of documentaries that range from about 8-minutes to over an hour. Then you get a bunch of deleted scenes, outtakes, trailers, and TV spots for the movie. So, there are a lot of good extras for that movie, but little to nothing for the other two, which is a shame.
Overall, this is a good collection. Of course, Silence is largely considered one of the best movies of all time. It is interesting to see the original Manhunter movie given that it was never a widely acclaimed movie, especially for those of us who were way too young to see it when it first came out. Hannibal is a good movie, but nowhere near as good as Silence. So, those are things that you should take into consideration when deciding whether to get this set or just get Silence on its own.
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