From time to time in the movie world you have films that are connected but few members of the audience knows it. One of my prime examples of this is that the film “Silence of the Lambs” has a movie that is connected to it called “Manhunter” which came out five years prior. Manhunter is based upon the book “Red Dragon” written by Thomas Harris. Due to the success of The Silence of the Lambs, Manhunter was remade using the same title as the book, Red Dragon.
That is one of the lesser known connections, but one that is more popular is the many movies made based on Tom Clancy’s books. “The Hunt for Red October” is a popular movie and the Harrison Ford movies “Patriot Games” and “Clear and Present Danger” are continuations of the same story line set forward in “The Hunt for Red October”, with Alec Baldwin playing the same character Harrison Ford played in the later movies, Jack Ryan. If the name Jack Ryan sounds familiar, it should. Amazon has created a TV show based on the character.
Just a little trivia for us streaming nerds…
But I’m not writing this to promote Hannibal Lecter or Jack Ryan. Nor am I writing this to promote Thomas Harris or Tom Clancy. No. Now I’m going to talk about a similar situation that goes back even before Manhunter and The Hunt for Red October. Two books written by Clive Cussler.
Cussler’s books are mostly stories that take place in aquatic locations and his primary character is a former Navy man named Dirk Pitt. In 2005 they made a movie based on one of Cussler’s books called “Sahara” staring Matthew McConaughey as the aforementioned Pitt, but before they made Sahara, they made another movie called “Raise the Titanic” based on the 1976 book of the same name.
It’s obvious that the two movies are filmed more than 20 years apart but you can also see how they are connected as well. Dirk Pitt, played by Richard Jordan in the 1980 movie, comes across as an adventurer in much the same way as McConaughey in the later movie with being less flamboyant. I read the book, Raise the Titanic, some time ago and think that Jordan’s portrayal of Pitt is in some ways closer to the book than McConaughey’s, but in all fairness I’ve not read Sahara. Watching Jason Robards playing Admiral Sandecker you can see him being an older version of William H. Macy.
Both films don’t rate very well with critics and Rotten Tomatoes, but if you’re a fan of the movie Sahara, which frequently shows up on Streaming services like The Roku Channel or Tubi (and is currently available on Hulu) why not jump over to Shout Factory TV to watch the movie or you can install it on your Roku and watch it on your TV set. If you subscribe to Hulu you can swing over to it and continue to watch your favorite Pirate, Dirk Pitt.
