Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #124: The Silence of the Lambs

A villain you hate to love is a hard thing to come by, but a villain you just plain love is even more of a rarity. Despite being an amoral serial killer who eats his victims, Hannibal Lecter is so charismatic he has become a part of pop culture across four films and a TV show that barred his first name. Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs (1991) was the second film to feature the character, but it is the one responsible for making him an icon of cinema thanks to award-winning performances by Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal the Cannibal and Jodie Foster as the object of what passes for his affections.

I definitely did my homework on this ghoulish story, having read the book of the same name by Thomas Harris in the late 90s and used it for a book report, much to my teacher’s surprise. Over the years I have read Hannibal the book, seen that movie, watched Anthony Hopkins revisit the role one last time in Red Dragon, and seen Brian Cox first tackle the role in Michael Mann’s Manhunter. Most recently I watched Mads Mikkelsen put his own spin on Lecter in all three seasons of Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal, a show that was most likely unrealistic, but deliciously campy and bloody. However for some good scares and thrills it is still hard to beat watching Demme’s Oscar-winning film in October for a Halloween fright fest.

The quality of Harris’ books apparently declined with the release of Hannibal Rising, unread by me, but before that one thing you couldn’t deny about the author is he has a fertile imagination for killers. You would think that a psychiatrist who eats his victims would be as bad as it gets, but in The Silence of the Lamb Hannibal Lecter is a consultant of sorts to catch an even bigger threat. Nicknamed “Buffalo Bill” by the press, this serial killer (Ted Levine) kills young women and then skins the corpses, possibly for trophies. Jack the Ripper seems somewhat quaint when compared to the world Lecter inhabits.

Desperate for leads, Jack Crawford (Scott Glen) of the FBI’s Behavioural Science Unit pulls young Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) out of training to interview Lecter in the hopes one serial killer might help to catch another. Of course the problem with interviewing a psychiatrist is that questioning people is part of his day job, hence he usually has the upper hand in their conversations, often delving into Clarice’s past. Yet Clarice is smart and stands her ground, something Crawford probably counts on, and gets Lecter to send her on a search for clues. What she probably did not expect was that said clue would be a man’s severed head with a sphinx moth lodged in its throat, which inspired the film’s poster.

The case takes on even more publicity when “Buffalo Bill’ abducts a U.S senator’s daughter. This also gives Lecter a lot more leverage to negotiate for a new prison cell away from the nefarious Dr. Chilton (Anthony Heald), and for the negotiation he is taken to the senator (Diane Baker) while wearing his iconic face mask. The man is quite like an animal: put your fingers too close to the cage and you might lose a finger, or possibly even the arteries in your neck.

Despite the fact he looks and acts like a monster, Clarice and the audience can’t help but like Lecter. He is after all a cultured man who enjoys classical music, can draw scenes from Italy by memory, and genuinely helps Clarice not only with the case, but also with a childhood trauma that involves the sound of lambs being slaughtered.

For better of for worse, Hopkins will forever be associated with the charismatic cannibal, but Foster is also worthy of praise for her performance as the young Clarice who grows a lot during the investigation, and seems genuinely scared in the scene where the killer is right behind her in a dark basement wearing night vision goggles.

Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, and Jason Voorhees ruled horror cinema in the 1980s, but they are mere caricatures when compared to the smart and well-spoken psychiatrist/cannibal of The Silence of the Lambs. Here was a horror movie that could be entertaining, chilling, and damn horrific while offering stellar performances.

Empire Magazine Greatest Movies List - #333: Grease

Nostalgia is a powerful feeling. You have some good times in a period of your life, time goes by and you feel like going back to that time period. I am guessing someone in the late 70s felt nostalgic about late 1950s high school life in America, leading to the creation of “Grease,” one of John Travolta’s first hits. The life and time are very dated today, but every now and then you still hear the soundtrack on classic rock stations. Clearly the lyricists did their jobs right. This is not my favourite musical. It’s cutesy with catchy tunes, but my top two musicals are “The Blues Brothers” and “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” If it involves car chases, Ray Charles, the Time Warp, Meat Loaf, and Carrie Fisher with a rocket launcher then count me in. I have less enthusiasm for Danny Zucko singing about his summer love for Sandy. But the movie was available for a dollar on iTunes during an evening when I had nothing to do in University, so I might as well kill two hours and ...

Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #357: The long Goodbye

Sometimes in a detective story the mystery is not half as fun as the detective stuck in the chaos of the story. Philip Marlow is one of those detectives. His name is synonymous with Hollywood noir and in The Long Goodbye (1973), he dives deep into a mystery involving a murder, then a suicide, then a missing person, and eventually a very violent gangster operating in sunny Los Angeles. One thing I love about this version is that this detective loves his cat enough to go buy him food at three o’clock in the morning. Now that is a dedicated pet lover. The late great director Robert Altman starts the action at a slow pace to introduce Marlowe (Eliott Gould) as he wakes up to his hungry cat. Here is a man who falls asleep in his clothes, always the same suit and tie, and is either constantly smoking or lighting a new cigarette. He is a friendly person, nice enough to pick up an item for his neighbours while going out to get cat food. It probably helps that said neighbours are five y...

Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #20: Blade Runner

Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) is one of those movies that gets more relevant with each passing decade. Set in a (now passed) future in which Los Angeles is overrun with people and pollution, the story focuses on artificial lifeforms clashing with their human creators. As the chase for these lifeforms progresses, writers Hampton Francher and David Peoples imply they may not be so different from the humans chasing them. If this sounds topical in 2024, imagine how relevant it will sound ten years from now. When writing these amateur reviews, I usually try to think back on the first time I watched the movie and what I felt at the time. This is tricky with Blade Runner considering there have been five versions of the film released since the 1980s. I believe the first version I did see on TV was the original theatrical version with the narration to guide the audience since executives thought that was needed. I eventually disagreed and purchased the Final Cut on Blu-Ray to see th...

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