A young FBI cadet must confide in an incarcerated and manipulative killer to receive his help on catching another serial killer who skins his victims.
I will never forget the first time I saw this film, I was 13 and was stopping over at a friends, we decided to watch this and not a single word was uttered throughout the whole film, we were transfixed to the screen. We were very aware that what we were watching was a classic.
This film is one I always use as an example of how you don’t need blood and guts every 2 minutes and that if done properly you can make it more slow paced but still intriguing, especially if you have the right casting, which this film has, but I will get to that later. As you probably know already this film is taken once again from the Thomas Harris bestseller of the same name, there are a few differences which is not unusual for a book to film release but it takes nothing away from the film.
As I said this film has great casting, Jodie Foster plays the character of Clarice Starling so well, she embraces the characteristics of the role, a woman making way in a man’s world, no over the top “I am woman, hear me roar” stuff, she shows she’s learning and she has weaknesses, she is human. Also the role of Buffalo Bill portrayed by Ted Levine is simply outstanding, you feel he got really into the part, maybe even a little too much, but that’s not a bad thing.
And how can we leave out the man himself, Anthony Hopkins, his portrayal of Dr. Lecter is out of this world! I’m not taking anything away from Brian Cox, they both play the role so well, it’s just Hopkins immediately grabs your attention when he’s on screen and has that special glint in his eyes that sends shivers down your spine.
The film may be nearly 2 hours long but no second is wasted, there’s no filler scenes or any un-needed dialogue, every scene is important to the story and you get so engrossed in it that time just flies by. “Silence Of The Lambs” is a true classic, and at over 20 years old it hasn’t aged badly at all.
Yes “Silence Of The Lambs” is more of a thriller film than Horror, it does have Horror elements but that’s what makes it so good, nothing is over the top, it’s just perfect. If you are one of the rare people who haven’t seen this film then i suggest you watch it A.S.A.P!
Miscellaneous facts about the film:
- Dino De Laurentiis, who had produced Manhunter, passed on Silence of the Lambs because Manhunter had flopped. He gave the rights away free to Orion Pictures.
- The Tobacco horn worm moths used throughout the film were given celebrity treatment by the filmmakers. They were flown first class to the set (in a special carrier), had special living quarters (rooms with controlled humidity and heat) and were dressed in carefully designed costumes (body shields bearing a painted skull and crossbones)
- A large part of the shoot took place in Pittsburgh. The city was chosen for its variety of landscapes and architecture, which was necessary to portray various parts of the country. Some of the film’s interior, including the Baltimore jail scene in the beginning and the ballroom scene of Lecter in his cage, were shot in Soldiers and Sailors Memorial located on Fifth Avenue in the Oakland area of Pittsburgh.
- The events in this film occur after the events in Manhunter. Although there are several characters common to both films, there are only two actors who appear in both movies. Both actors play different characters in both movies. Frankie Faison plays Lt. Fisk in Manhunter and Barney in Silence of the Lambs, and Dan Butler plays an FBI fingerprint expert in Manhunter and an entomologist in Silence of the Lambs.
- Like Casablanca, this movie contains a famous misquoted line: most people quote Lecter’s famous “Good evening, Clarice” as “Hello, Clarice.” This is not a misquote from the first movie but an actual quote from the sequel Hannibal. In Hannibal, when Dr. Lecter and Clarice (now played by Julianne Moore) speak on the phone for the first time, he does in fact say “Hello Clarice”. This is the origin for the correctly quoted movie line.
- Anthony Hopkins described his voice for Hannibal Lecter as, “a combination of Truman Capote and Katharine Hepburn.”
- Scott Glenn’s character of Jack Crawford was based on real-life FBI Special Agent John E. Douglas, an early member of the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Unit, who coached Glenn on his portrayal of a member of the BSU. Douglas, still an active FBI Special Agent during production, was in the midst of tracking Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, who was convicted of killing seventy-one women and believed to have killed more than ninety between 1982 and 1998 in Washington state.
- The pattern on the butterfly’s back in the movie posters is not the natural pattern of the Death’s-Head Hawk Moth. It is, in fact, Salvador Dalí’s “In Voluptas Mors”, a picture of seven naked women made to look like a human skull.
- Buffalo Bill is the combination of three real life serial killers: Ed Gein, who skinned his victims; Ted Bundy, who used the cast on his hand as bait to make women get into his van; and Gary Heidnick, who kept women he kidnapped in a pit in his basement. Gein was only positively linked to two murders and suspected of two others. He gathered most of his materials not through murder, but grave-robbing. In the popular imagination, however, he remains a serial killer with uncounted victims.
- At least six directors have roles in this film: Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Kasi Lemmons, Roger Corman, Dan Butler (who directed episodes of Frasier), and a cameo by George A. Romero.
- Almost all the scenes in Hannibal’s original cell have either a reflection of Hannibal or Clarice, depending on the camera’s point of view.
- When Jonathan Demme filmed the scene where Lecter and Starling first meet, Anthony Hopkins said he should look directly at the camera as it panned into his line of sight. He felt Lecter should be portrayed as “knowing everything.”
- Jonathan Demme cast Anthony Hopkins as the sinister Hannibal Lecter based on his performance as the kind-hearted Dr. Frederick Treves in The Elephant Man. (Hopkins has himself said that he felt the sharing-and-caring role of Dr. Frederick Treves a rather dull one.)
- After Lecter was moved from Baltimore, he was originally to be dressed in a yellow or orange jumpsuit, but Anthony Hopkins was able to convince director Jonathan Demme and costume designer Colleen Atwood that it would make the character seem more clinical and unsettling if he was dressed in pure white. Hopkins has since said that this idea came from his fear of dentists.
- Brooke Smith (Catherine Martin) and Ted Levine (Buffalo Bill) were actually very close on the set, making Jodie Foster refer to Brooke Smith as Patricia Hearst (meaning a woman that is actually close with her kidnapper).
- Anthony Hopkins invented the fast, slurping-type sound that Hannibal Lecter does. He did it spontaneously during filming on the set, and everyone thought it was great. Director Jonathan Demme became annoyed with it after a while, but denied his irritation.
- The filmmakers had completely prepared to go to Montana to shoot a flashback sequence depicting Clarice’s runaway attempt. But after filming the dialogue between Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins, director Jonathan Demme realized it would be pointless to cut away from their performances and announced, “I guess we aren’t going to Montana.”
- Jodie Foster, Jonathan Demme and Scott Glenn – and a few other cast and crew members – did a great deal of research at the FBI training facility in Quantico, Virginia. They studied under criminal profiling agents, learned about firearms and agent training, and sat in on a number of classes.
- The first moth cocoon found in one of the victim’s throats was made from a combination of “Tootsie-Rolls” and gummy bears, so that if she swallowed it, it would be edible.
- The film originally was going to be released in the fall of 1990. However, distributor Orion Pictures decided instead to delay its release until late January 1991 so that all the company’s efforts could be concentrated on promoting Dances with Wolves for Oscar consideration. As a result, Silence proved to be a notable exception to the conventional wisdom that films released early in a calendar year are forgotten come Oscar time – it won all five major Academy Awards, clearly vindicating Orion’s strategy for both pictures (Dances having seven wins including Best Picture).
- In preparation for his role, Anthony Hopkins studied files of serial killers. Also, he visited prisons and studied convicted murderers and was present during some court hearings concerning serial killings.
- Note Lecter’s mention of having consumed a victim’s liver with “some fava beans and nice chianti”. Liver, fava beans, and wine all contain a substance called tyramine, which can actually kill you if you’re also taking a certain class of antidepressant drugs known as MAO inhibitors. MAO inhibitors were the first antidepressant drugs developed, and were used primarily on patients in mental institutions. Lecter both worked in, and was committed to, a mental institution.
- When Ted Tally was writing the screenplay for the film, he suggested Jodie Foster for role of Clarice Starling. Foster had been lobbying hard for the part from the start but when Jonathan Demme was hired to direct the film, he felt she was wrong for the part and wanted Michelle Pfeiffer instead. Pfeiffer turned the part down because she felt the film was too violent. Demme then agreed to meet Foster and hired her after only one meeting because he said he could see her strength and determination for the part that he felt was perfect for the character of Clarice.
- Originally, the film was to open with Clarice Starling and a male FBI agent in the middle of a drug bust. They were to burst into the room and make a number of arrests, and only then would the audience be let in on the fact that it was a training exercise. However Jodie Foster was able to convince director Jonathan Demme to change this scene, as she felt it had been done so many times before. It was Foster herself who came up with the idea of opening with Starling running through the assault course. Hannibal does in fact open with a now-veteran Starling (played by Julianne Moore) participating in an actual drug-bust instead of a simulation.
- Jodie Foster spent a great deal of time with FBI agent Mary Ann Krause prior to filming and it was Krause who gave Foster the idea of Starling standing by her car crying. Krause told Foster that at times, the work just became so overbearing that this was a good way to get an emotional release.
- The inspiration for the Silence of the Lambs was the real life relationship between University of Washington criminology professor and profiler Robert Keppel and real life serial killer Ted Bundy. Bundy helped Keppel in his investigation of the Green River Serial Killings in Washington. While Bundy was executed 24 January 1989, the Green River Killings went unsolved until 2001 when Gary Ridgway was arrested. On 5 November 2003, Ridgway pleaded guilty to 48 counts of aggravated first degree murder in a King County, Washington (Seattle) courtroom.
- After working with John Douglas for some time Scott Glenn thanked him and said how fascinating it was to have been allowed into his world. Douglas laughed at this comment and told Glenn that if he really wanted to get into his world, he should listen to an audio tape of serial killers Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris torturing, raping and murdering two teenage girls. Glenn listened to less than one minute of the tape, and has since said that he feels he lost a sense of innocence in doing so and that he has never been able to forget what he heard. In fact, it has been rumored that Glenn was so disturbed that this was why he did not return to the role in Red Dragon and was replaced by Harvey Keitel instead.
- In the second draft of Ted Tally’s screenplay, the names of three characters had to be changed from Thomas Harris’s novel for legal reasons. “Jack Crawford” became “Ray Campbell”; “Frederick Chilton” became “Herbert Prentiss”; and, finally, “Hannibal Lecter” became “Gideon Quinn”.
- Despite being recently declared bankrupt, Orion still managed to stump up $200,000 for the film’s Oscar campaign.
- The first film to win the Best Picture Oscar that was widely available on home video at the time of the ceremony.
- After being cast as Buffalo Bill, Ted Levine had done a lot of research into developing his character by reading profiles of serial killers. Levine later said that he found the material very disturbing. He also went out and attended a few transvestite bars, where he began interviewing patrons, as Bill was also a cross-dresser.
- One of only three films (the others being It Happened One Night and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) to win the top five Oscars – Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, Best Picture and Best Screenplay (Adapted).
- The movie’s poster was as #16 of “The 25 Best Movie Posters Ever” by Premiere.
- Clarice Starling was chosen by the American Film Institution as the sixth greatest film hero (out of fifty), the highest ranked female on the list; Hannibal Lecter was chosen as the #1 greatest film villain (also out of fifty).
- Jodie Foster claims that during the first meeting between Lecter and Starling, Anthony Hopkins’s mocking of her southern accent was not rehearsed and that Hopkins improvised it on the spot. Foster’s reaction of horror was totally genuine, as she felt personally attacked, though she later thanked Hopkins for generating such an honest reaction.
- Entertainment Weekly voted this as the fourth scariest film of all time.
- The real-life FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit assisted in the making of this film.
- John Hurt, Christopher Lloyd, Patrick Stewart, Louis Gossett Jr., Robert Duvall, Jack Nicholson, and Robert De Niro were all considered for the role of Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Jeremy Irons turned down the offer.
- Gene Hackman bought the rights to “The Silence of the Lambs” and was planning to direct the film as well as taking on the role of either Lecter or Jack Crawford, but he withdrew after watching a clip of himself in Mississippi Burning at the The 61st Annual Academy Awards, which made him uneasy about taking more violent roles.
- Thomas Harris, author of the novel “The Silence of the Lambs”, has long been rumored never to have watched the film because he was afraid it would influence his writing. However, according to a New York Magazine profile of Harris, “The Silence of the Writer,” by Phoebe Hoban (15 April 1991), Harris saw the film shortly after it came out. (‘Harris did see Silence of the Lambs. “It’s a great movie,” he says enthusiastically. “I’ve been surrounded by it, so I wanted to see it. I admire Jonathan Demme, and we were very fortunate to have him and screenwriter Ted Tally, and we were very lucky with the cast.”‘)
- Michael Keaton, Mickey Rourke, and Kenneth Branagh were all considered for the role of Jack Crawford.
- Although when characters are talking to Starling, they often talk direct to camera, when she is talking to them, she is always looking slightly off-camera. Director Jonathan Demme has explained that this was done so as the audience would directly experience her POV, but not theirs, hence encouraged the audience to more readily identify with her.
- Anthony Hopkins has stated that he saw the character of Lecter as similar to HAL in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey; that is to say, a highly complex, highly intelligent, highly logical killing machine who seems to know everything going on around him.
- After Jodie Foster first read the Thomas Harris novel, she tried to buy the rights herself, only to find Gene Hackman had beaten her to it.
- The idea to use glass in Lecter’s Baltimore cell as opposed to traditional bars came from production designer Kristi Zea. The idea came about because director Jonathan Demme was unhappy shooting the Lecter scenes through bars, as he felt they negated the sense of intimacy between Lecter and Starling which he was trying to achieve.
- Before this movie, only two other horror films were ever so much as nominated for a Best Picture (The Exorcist and Jaws). As of 2010, The Silence of the Lambs remains the only horror film to win an Oscar for Best Picture.
- Sean Connery was director Jonathan Demme’s first choice to play Hannibal Lecter, but he turned the part down. Connery later did a similar serial-killer thriller called Just Cause, where Ed Harris plays a sort of bible-bashing, redneck rip-off of Hannibal Lecter. The film was neither a critical or commercial smash like The Silence of the Lambs was.
- When Anthony Hopkins found out that he cast as Hannibal Lecter based on his performance as Dr. Frederick Treves in The Elephant Man he questioned Jonathan Demme and said “But Dr. Treves was a good man.” To which Demme replied “So is Lecter, he is a good man too. Just trapped in an insane mind.”
- Film screenings were attended by gay rights protesters complaining that making the serial killer Buffalo Bill a transsexual was highly clichéd and a reflection of and/or pandering to public hostilities around the issue of sexual orientation diversity.
- According to Jonathan Demme, there were 300 applicants for the role of Clarice Starling.
- Buffalo Bill’s dance was not included in the original draft of the screenplay (although it appears in the novel). It was added at the insistence of Ted Levine, who thought the scene was essential in defining the character.
- Meg Ryan, Michelle Pfeiffer and Melanie Griffith were all tapped to play Clarice. However, they all turned the role down because of the disturbing subject matter.
- Selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry in December 2011 as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
- Brooke Smith entered in and out of the pit by crouching through a small door that was half her size. It was then covered with dirt to keep it out of sight of the camera.
