Insights from the FBI’s mind hunter

The third in the “Hannibal Lecter” movies, “Red Dragon,” released April 1 as a two-disc DVD set, includes all the usual suspects: director’s commentary, conversations with leads Anthony Hopkins and Edward Norton, storyboards, scene guide, makeup application. But this director’s edition of “Dragon” has a bonus -- a mini-documentary on former FBI profiler John Douglas.

It is only fitting that Douglas be featured: He was the inspiration for the Jack Crawford character played by Dennis Farina in “Manhunter,” Scott Glenn in “Silence of the Lambs” and Harvey Keitel in “Red Dragon” (2002’s remake of “Manhunter”), and he was technical consultant on “The Silence of the Lambs,” “Hannibal” and “Red Dragon.”

The latter film, the most recent in the series, but based on Robert Harris’ first book about Lecter, sets retired FBI profiler Will Graham, played by Norton, on the trail of a vicious, psychotic murderer.

When he is stymied in his quest, his former boss, played by Keitel, urges him to enlist the aid of the notorious Hannibal “the Cannibal.”

“John’s books helped me to understand the world that Will Graham lives in,” says “Dragon” director Brett Ratner. “That knowledge made me better able to direct an accurate and realistic thriller.”

And that knowledge, as the “Dragon” DVD documentary demonstrates, came as a result of years of work and study.

Douglas was the man who created the behavioral science of criminal profiling and who has hunted, interviewed or profiled some of the nation’s most notorious murderers -- the Unabomber, Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, Richard Speck, Sirhan Sirhan, John Wayne Gacy and countless others.

But that type of caustic knowledge came with a price. “I wasn’t attacked like Norton’s character in ‘Red Dragon,’ ” the 25-year veteran of the FBI says. “But I almost died on the Green River case. My immune system got really low,” Douglas recalls. “I sensed something was going to happen to me -- I told people, ‘I think I’m getting the flu.’ ” That night, the profiler collapsed into a coma that left him paralyzed and required five months of rehabilitation.

Why, then, would anybody put himself through all of that?

“To create a profile of a serial murderer, you really have to throw yourself into the subject. You have do an analysis of the victim -- walk in their shoes. Feel what they feel. Then you have to get inside the perpetrator -- what is he feeling? What are his motivations? What kind of satisfaction does he get out of his particular brand of murderous mayhem?” Douglas pauses.

“You have to dream about all of this. That’s why, as with Norton’s character, it spilled over into [my] personal life.”

The Douglas documentary is more a one-on-one conversation with the master profiler, who lays out the motivations of serial killers, analyzes some real-life serial killers and compares them with Hannibal Lecter.

And what does Douglas thinks about “Red Dragon”?

“They made this more of a thriller. It gets you jumping.”

That from the man who knows more than a little about real-life thrillers.