IN THE AIR TONIGHT

You can almost taste the iron in the air from the aftermath of bloody crime scenes in Michael Mann's 'Manhunter' (1986) where the atmosphere of murder hangs like a dark crimson moon and where there's simply no escaping the hot, sweet and sticky fly-paper air of summer that pervades throughout.

I've often thought that in so many ways Phil Collins's 'In The Air Tonight' captures the exact same balmy vibes as 'Manhunter' - that eerie, late night, alone-with-your-thoughts isolation where all your senses are on perpetual high alert and where distinguishing between your own paranoia and reality becomes almost impossible. Perhaps it's no coincidence that Mann's 1980's TV series 'Miami Vice' famously featured the song to help "heighten the nocturnal tension" in the episode 'Brother's Keeper' that kick-started Season One and although the track doesn't feature in 'Manhunter' it feels as if it's undeniably part of the same universe.

Mann, of course, is a master of shooting at night and capturing somnambulistic lonely soul type of characters drifting like vampires through the cities of America. They could be criminals, cops or serial killers but somehow they're all connected by the same nocturnal frequencies and come alive while the rest of the world is sleeping, energised by the darkness of night.

The protagonist of 'Manhunter', Will Graham (William Petersen), is a former FBI criminal profiler who has evidently suffered from a mental breakdown resulting in his early retirement after being attacked by cannibalistic serial killer, Hannibal Lecter (Brian Cox). Reluctantly brought out of retirement by his former FBI superior, Jack Crawford (Dennis Farina), Will Graham begins to look into a new case involving a serial killer who goes by the name of 'The Tooth Fairy' due to the vicious bite marks he leaves on his victims. Graham's unique ability to understand the psychopathic mind makes him a rare asset to Crawford in this dangerous cat and mouse game where the hunter can quickly become the hunted.

In many ways there is a clear symbiosis of Will Graham's dark, haunted psychology that bleeds into every frame of the film and makes it seem at times as if the entire story is some type of fever dream which has derived from the character's own paranoid imagination and which we, the audience, experience almost directly through his eyes.

For this very reason, 'Manhunter' finds its way into your bones in a way that chills like few other films of the serial killer genre.