REEL CRITIC:Taking the bite out of ‘Hannibal’

Once upon a time, monsters such as Frankenstein, Dracula and the Wolf Man scared the wits out of movie audiences. But as each character appeared in numerous sequels, the law of diminishing returns took over. They turned into comic punch lines when appearing in the great, though not scary, “Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein.”

The super-creepy Hannibal Lecter now joins that illustrious company as a once-fearsome monster reduced to a big-screen joke in the also not scary, and, sadly, humor-free “Hannibal Rising.”

The story is as follows: In 1944 Lithuania, the Lecters — Mom, Dad, young Hannibal and his little sister Mischa — are forced to flee the family castle after the Nazis overrun it. The family settles in a house deep within the forest.

However, that respite is quickly scorched when Mom and Dad are killed in a Russian vs. Nazi firefight. This leaves Hannibal and his beloved sister Mischa all alone in the house. Soon, a murderous pack of Nazi mercenaries arrive at the house looking for a place to hide. They take Hannibal and Mischa captive.

Winter hits hard, there is no food to be had and the mercenaries are crazed with hunger. To Hannibal’s lifelong horror these very bad men decide to kill and eat Mischa. After the mercenaries dine on Mischa soup, the house is bombed and Hannibal escapes. The remainder of the movie is about how, years later, the teenaged Hannibal tracks these men down one by one, exacting his bloody revenge, thus becoming the infamous “Hannibal the Cannibal.”

Gaspard Ulliel has the misfortune to be cast as “Hannibal Lecter.” There is not much he does with the role, and honestly, it is a no-win situation. He is reduced to a freeze-frame re-creation of Anthony Hopkins-like creepiness from “The Silence of the Lambs.”

Basically, his motivation for the entire movie is, “He ate my sister.” Not even the presence of the exquisitely luscious Gong Li as Lady Murasaki can distract Hannibal from “He ate my sister.”

Well, it certainly distracted me, as she was the reason I even showed up for the movie. That, and the hope that maybe the once-great author Thomas Harris could have written a suspenseful tale to at least resemble his earlier efforts. Unfortunately he did, but that earlier effort was the dismal “Hannibal.”

The movie is rife with horror-movie clichés and unrelenting sadism. There is little, if any, real suspense, as we all know Lecter is going to survive whatever unimaginative close encounter he gets into with the mercenaries and police on his trail. Come on, he has more movies to appear in.

“Hannibal Rising” is, like the almost-as-bad “Hannibal,” a further dilution of both Jonathan Demme’s Academy Award-winning “The Silence of the Lambs” and Michael Mann’s epic “Manhunter.”

This is probably not the end for Hannibal Lecter, as he may have more box office left in him. I have a title for you: “Harold & Kumar Meet Hannibal Lecter.”