Last week I was raving about The Blacklist which has been branded by the critics similar to the 1991 Johnathan Demme movie The Silence of the Lambs. That was the first thought that came to my mind as well when I watched the first episode. The relationship between Red and Lizzy just feels like very ‘Clarice and Dr. Lecterish’. The producers of the series have always denied this. But what’s so wrong with taking inspiration from the brilliant Silence of The Lambs, which is one of the best crime dramas to this date. A movie that created one of the most memorable villains in the movie history – Dr. Hannibal Lecter – played by the incredible Anthony Hopkins. And you know how I feel about James Spader, so I think he will be able to create as memorable character on the small screen.
I remember the first time I saw The Silence of The Lambs I could not sleep for a week. I was so scared that Dr. Lecter was going to come and eat my liver. You might laugh and think that ‘now, there’s a chicken’. But know this – I do not do horror or psychological thrillers. And The Silence of the Lambs falls into the latter category. The movie is so brilliant that it actually is one of my favorite movies of all time. I saw it in the movie theater when it first came out. One of my friends suggested that we should go see it. As I had not heard or read anything about it, I just asked her ‘Is it scary? Does it involve killing an animal?” (I do not cope well with animal death either!) She – being a sneaky person – assured me that this was a fun movie to see and I should have no worries about being scared. So you can just picture me frozen in time with a hand full of popcorn half way up to my mouth and my jaw dropping when the opening scene hit the screen.
The camera pans over deserted woods. The fog is lingering everywhere. Then you see only one woman jogging. The camera follows her from behind, then from the front when she stops to listen to a sudden noise made by the birds. She starts jogging again and the camera moves back and then front. Then to her feet which are pounding the ground faster and faster. All this accompanied by the eerily haunting score by Howard Shore. Don’t tell me that you don’t get a feeling that some really bad things are gonna happen. Absolutely brilliant!
In The Silence of The Lambs Jodie Foster is Clarice Starling, a student at the FBI’s training academy in Quantico. Agent Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn) of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit is her mentor. Agent Crawford is investigating a vicious killer nicknamed Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine). Buffalo Bill kills young women and removes their skin. Crawford believes that Dr. Hannibal Lecter – once a brilliant psychiatrist now a violent psychopathic serial killer – might have some insight into Buffalo Bill, so he sends Clarice on a special assignment to interview the incarcerated Dr. Lecter. Dr. Lecter is willing to help Clarice, but for a price – he wants details about Clarice’s past.
The Silence of The Lambs is based on a novel by Thomas Harris and directed by Jonathan Demme. The movie intertwines psychological study with horror and has memorable performances from Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins. Hopkins’ performance as the cannibalistic serial killer is so powerful and memorable in this movie, that you don’t realize he has only about 16 minutes of screen time. Foster does a phenomenal job as the inexperienced and eager Clarice. Scott Glenn as Agent Crawford and Anthony Heald as Dr. Frederick Chilton – who is almost as crazy as Lecter – give solid performances. Demme manages to catch the suspense masterfully. One of the best scenes of the movie is the one in which Demme uses twin frames of Clarice ringing a doorbell and FBI agents charging into a house.
I am not the only one who gets scared watching The Silence of The Lambs. Entertainment Weekly has voted it the fourth scariest film of all time and it was the first crime movie to win five Oscars.
You spook easily, Clarice?
Interested in reading books written by Thomas Harris?
What does Roger Ebert think of The Silence of The Lambs?
Has it really been 25 Years since the book The Silence of The Lambs was published?
Don’t Pick Up That Phone! ‘The 10 movie phone calls you’d better not take’ by Empire Magazine
Photos: MGM
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