The Science of Monsters

Before he was a famous author, Thomas Harris was a journalist for Argosy magazine. In his early twenties, he was tasked with interviewing Dykes Askew Simmons, a murderer on death row in Mexico. During Harris’s visit to Nuevo León State Prison, he also spoke with the prison’s doctor regarding an injury Simmons had suffered while incarcerated. This exchange with the physician struck Harris as intriguing, especially when the doctor brought up rather philosophical musings about “the nature of torment.”¹ When Harris finished up his interview, he asked the warden how long the doctor had been employed by the prison. The Warden informed the young journalist that the doctor was a murderer, sharing the same fate as his patient, as he was also on death row. This man, who Harris has not named publicly, but is widely believed to be Dr. Alfredo Balli Trevino, had been convicted of the murder of his lover, Jesús Castillo Rangel. According to The Sun, in October of 1959 Balli Trevino slit his boyfriend “Rangel’s throat with a scalpel in a crime of passion before finishing him off in the bathroom. Balli Trevino cut the body into pieces and buried them to hide the grim crime.”² This poised man of science, who Harris would later describe as having “a certain elegance about him” had been the perpetrator of a brutal crime. It was this dichotomy, not unlike the good versus bad conundrum of Norman Bates, which Harris drew from when writing Red Dragon (1981). Balli Trevino served twenty years before his sentence was commuted in 1981. He spent the rest of his life, until his death in 2009, serving the poor in Monterrey, Mexico. Ironically, the man who inspired Harris to create Hannibal Lecter was known in his community for his large heart, and for not charging the sick and elderly for his medical expertise.

Harris’s novel Red Dragon, containing the first iteration of Dr. Lecter, was a successful novel that spawned a less successful film; Manhunter (1986). While Manhunter underperformed at the box office, this did not dissuade Orion Pictures from capitalizing on the wildly popular novel sequel The Silence of the Lambs (1988). Orion’s gamble paid off, the film released on Valentine’s Day 1991 to both critical acclaim and a solid box office showing.

While Dr. Lecter and Buffalo Bill represent the darker side or the “Mr. Hyde” of The Silence of the Lambs, Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) is the film’s reasonable, empathetic “Dr. Jekyll.” Foster’s performance as a newbie FBI agent on her first, crucial assignment rivals that of Hopkins’s. She won an Academy Award for her efforts, and to this day Starling stands out as one of the more well-liked and memorable horror movie protagonists. She is bold enough to challenge Lecter with his greatest weapon, his intelligence, when she says “you see a lot, Doctor. But are you strong enough to point that high-powered perception at yourself? What about it? Why don’t you—why don’t you look at yourself and write down what you see? Or maybe you’re afraid to.” It is her back and forth with Lecter, their oddly dynamic dance of wits, that catapults this movie into so many “best of” lists, horror or otherwise. The American Film Institute has consistently showered The Silence of the Lambs with accolades, including #65 in the best movies of all time, and Hannibal Lecter nabbed the top spot as the #1 villain in AFI’s 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains.

What is it about Hannibal Lecter that resonates with audiences? And particularly as embodied by Anthony Hopkins? As Brian Cox’s Hannibal Lecter in Manhunter didn’t seem to affect a similar fervor. In his study “The Devil Made Me Do It: The Criminological Theories of Hannibal Lecter” J. C. Oleson posits, “there are a number of plausible explanations for Lecter’s uncanny popularity. It has previously been suggested that the character of Hannibal Lecter may fascinate the public because he is enigmatic, fitting several models of serial homicide, while defying others. The allure of the character may also be linked to Hannibal Lecter’s status as a criminal genius.”³