Fellman's Movie Reviews

Red = Spoilers

What’s it about? Silence of the Lambs is a psychological thriller starring Anthony Hopkins, Jodie Foster, and Ted Levine about an FBI agent on the hunt for a serial killer named Buffalo Bill, who murders and skins his victims. Jodie Foster plays Agent Clarice Starling, an FBI agent still in training, who is assigned to the case. In order to catch Buffalo Bill she is ordered by her superior to try and gain the assistance of the brilliant psychiatrist, and dangerous serial killer in his own right, Hannibal Lecter. Otherwise known as “Hannibal the Cannibal” due to his penchant for eating his victims. Lecter is reluctant at first, as he toys with Clarice mentally, until a senator’s daughter falls victim to Buffalo Bill, and the time frame becomes urgent. Clarice offers him a deal to catch Buffalo Bill in return for a transfer to a nicer facility with a view and an upgrade to his current living arrangements. But only on the condition that the senator’s daughter is returned unharmed. Lecter eventually helps Clarice, even if it is in a circuitous and subtle way. In the end, Clarice ends up saving the senator’s daughter and killing Buffalo Bill. Meanwhile, Lecter makes his way out of police custody in a brilliant escape to go back on the loose to whatever devices a hyper-intelligent serial killer might desire.  

What’s good? Obviously, the acting. With Oscar award winning actors like Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster, the characters have a depth to them that is necessary for a story like Silence of the Lambs. The direction is also a very important part of the movie as well. The camera angles make some of the scenes a lot more intense as the close-up shots on the faces of Lecter and Starling during their dramatic dialogue seem that much more important than if you were just looking at them in a two-shot, talking to each other.  

What’s bad? The movie itself is fantastic. The only thing I can really say is bad is the believability of Clarice Starling as an FBI agent. She does so many things wrong, it’s easy to tell she’s still in training. Any instructor would be constantly correcting her for all the things she’s doing that could get her killed in a real-life situation.  

The acting? These are five-star performances by everyone in the picture. Anthony Hopkins plays a serial killer as if he were one. Jodie Foster’s character comes across as exactly who she should be. A small-town girl trying her best to be as tough as she can so she can make up for the loss of her father.  

The effects? There are no CGI or green screen effects in this movie. It’s all practical. There are no explosions or car chases. The blood looks like blood. They’ve been doing blood in horror movies for decades. The effects for this movie weren’t that difficult to do. It was more story driven. Effects were a side-note. 

The opening scene is so foreboding. The opening scene with Clarice running the FBI training course seems like a precursor to something horrible happening in a monster movie or something. The music in the background makes you think something is going to jump out from behind a tree and snatch her up while she’s running down the trail or something. 

She flops down the net face first. When Clarice is running the FBI training course, she jumps over the one obstacle and flips head over heels onto the net, landing on her butt. This is the exact opposite of what they teach you to do. They tell you to roll on your side with your arms on your chest, so you don’t get your limbs or even your neck caught in the net. Just another example of everything Clarice does wrong as an agent in training. 

The signs on the tree. As the camera pans back to the main building, there are signs nailed on the tree, “hurt, agony, pain, love it”. I don’t know what kind of motivation that’s supposed to be, but you shouldn’t be in pain, and you shouldn’t be loving it. What kind of masochistic craziness is going on there? 

Big pearl earrings. Why is Clarice wearing big pearl earrings while she’s running the FBI training course? I mean, even if she did wear them normally, wouldn’t she at least take them out for the rigorous training exercises that she was going through? It would make a lot more sense. 

How did they know Lecter’s heart rate? Chilton says that Lecter’s heart rate never got above 75 as he was killing the nurse that was treating him. How were they monitoring his heart rate? Why was the nurse alone with Lecter? Somebody dropped the ball on that one… 

Chilton seemed angry he had to walk downstairs. When Chilton and Clarice got to the basement and they neared Lecter’s cell, she asked to talk to him privately. Chilton was more upset that he had to walk downstairs than he was that he couldn’t listen in on the conversation.  

Anthony Hopkins as a serial killer. Anthony Hopkins was a perfect pick for Hannibal Lecter. Maybe it’s just because you couldn’t imagine anybody else playing the role. Or maybe it’s because he has the face for it. The piercing eyes and the intense gaze and a voice that’s both aristocratic and intimidating at the same time. It’s really quite impressive.  

The interaction between Lecter and Starling is intense. As far as thrillers go, the high points of the movie are when Lecter and Clarice are talking at his cell. As he interrogates her and delves into her psyche. The inflection in his voice against the fragility in hers as she unwraps her memories. It’s scenes like that that makes it easy for actors to give great performances.  

What did Lecter say to Miggs? What was Lecter saying to Miggs that made him swallow his own tongue? I mean, Miggs was clearly insane, that’s why he was in there in the first place. But what could Lecter possibly have said that could make him do that to himself? And how do you swallow your own tongue on purpose? I don’t even know if that’s possible. 

Clarice crawls under the storage container door. When Clarice is trying to get into the storage container and the door gets jammed, she goes to her car, gets a jack, and pries the door open. Then she crawls under it in an extremely dangerous move that any instructor would go “I don’t think that’s a good idea…” And yet ANOTHER example of why Clarice is not a very good FBI agent… 

Clarice uses a handkerchief to turn the page. She makes a point to take out a handkerchief to turn the page on the photo album in the car, meanwhile, she’s been going around the storage container, touching all kinds of things, and pulling things off shelves the entire time. For an FBI agent, she sure breaks a lot of rules. 

Buffalo Bill is picking up a chair by himself. When Catherine sees Buffalo Bill in the parking lot, he’s grunting and picking up a chair all by himself. It looks heavy, but how strong does he have to be to pretty much be lifting up that chair and moving it across the parking lot like that? He wasn’t dragging it or pushing it, he was literally lifting it and carrying it. 

Catherine offers to help and gets kidnapped. Catherine goes to help Buffalo Bill, and she ends up getting kidnapped and put in a hole in his basement. Just another reason you should never help anybody… 

What about her cat? Catherine was going home to feed her cat when she got kidnapped. Who’s going to feed her cat now? What happened to Catherine’s cat? Poor little kitty… 

Clarice wanted to be in on the plan. Crawford had a good point. If he had told Clarice that she had an agenda when she was going in there to first talk to Lecter, he would have detected it, and drawn it out of her, and they never would have gotten his help. Crawford had to keep Clarice in the dark so that she was as much of a tool as she was an asset.  

The smell during the autopsy. All the agents put that white stuff under their noses during the autopsy, which I can only assume is to absorb the smell of the corpse. The mortician doesn’t seem to mind though, as he doesn’t do it. He seems to have built up an immunity to the smell of rotting corpses.  

What are the rules to “bug chess”? When Clarice goes to see the entomologists, they are playing some sort of game with bugs, moving pieces around on a chess board. I would like to know the rules of this game, and how exactly they work. It seems rather chaotic if it were a real thing. 

How did Lecter get the pen? When Chilton leaves the pen on the bed, and Lecter somehow manages to get a hold of it, how? He was strapped onto the roller with restraints on. How could he move? 

The camera angles make the scenes better.  One of the scenes where the direction really shines through is where Clarice and Lecter are talking in his cage in Memphis and they are constantly showing each of them through the bars with their faces in perfect alignment with the steel, going back and forth. Clarice walks sideways and stops just at the point where you can see her face, and it cuts back to Lecter in between the bars on the other side. If it had just shown these two talking to each other without these camera angles, this scene wouldn’t have been nearly as intense as it was. 

Clarice is the one person Lecter wouldn’t kill. I feel like Clarice is the one person that Lecter wouldn’t kill because he admires her honesty and feels like she doesn’t deserve it. That deviating from his traditional role as a psychopath, he actually formed a bond with her on some level and respected her for working with him.  

Why do both cops go into Lecter’s cage? It’s honestly the cops’ fault that Lecter got free. There should have been one watching him, and one taking the food into his cage. They both took their eyes off him. Rule number one, broken. Keep your eyes on your target. That’s why there’s two of you there. They both go in, looking the same way, and Lecter gets the drop on them. Surprise, surprise. 

How did Lecter get that cop all the way up on that cage, anyway? He hung that other cop up like a Christmas decoration. But how did he get him up there? He would have needed a ladder and some sort of a pulley system or something. Unless Hannibal Lecter can fly. In which case, we’re all screwed… 

Brilliant escape plan. The simplest plans are the easiest. Hide in plain sight. He didn’t have to do any work. Just lie there and pretend to be dying and let them wheel you out of the building. Then he killed the paramedics when they got far enough away that he could escape without being detected. No fuss, no muss. 

Poor Precious. Poor Precious, she got wrapped up in all of this. She’s just a dog. She doesn’t know what’s going on. And now she’s in a hole with a broken leg? Come on. Leave Precious alone… 

Clarice is just not a good FBI agent. Clarice figures out who Buffalo Bill is, she’s staring at the string, the moth, the kitchen is practically deserted. She unclips her gun and then puts her hand BACK DOWN to her waist instead of telling the guy to get down on the floor. And then, when he tries to run away, she doesn’t just shoot him. She lets him get away. He’s killed 5 people, and he has somebody in his basement, right now. If a cop was ever going to get away with killing somebody, this would be that moment. 

She goes into the basement. Despite the fact that she knows there are other FBI on their way RIGHT NOW, she decides to go down into the basement, instead of just waiting at the door, the only exit, where she has Buffalo Bill cornered.  

She doesn’t clear the rooms. As she’s going through the rooms in the basement, she’s not clearing any of them like her instructor told her in the beginning of the movie. She’s going in, waving her gun around, and then walking back out. And then, when she leaves, she doesn’t even make sure the door is closed behind her. That’s like, an “F-” for the FBI field training exercise… 

She tells Catherine that she’s safe. She yells out to Catherine that “she’s safe”. She’s not safe. She’s in a giant hole in a dark basement. That’s very far from safe. If Starling thinks she’s safe just because she’s there, Starling needs to be a much better FBI agent than what she currently is.  

Buffalo Bill could’ve killed Starling if he wasn’t playing with her. If Buffalo Bill would’ve just hit Starling or something, he could’ve easily knocked her out in the darkness. But he had to do what all villains do and play games with their prey before they go for the kill shot. And then he took six in the chest. Which, you usually don’t survive. 

Is Catherine going to keep Precious now? When they show Catherine coming out of the house, she’s holding Precious. Is she like, going to keep Precious? Can she do that? Can you adopt the dog of your serial killer abductor? I don’t know if that would affect any adoption rules, but it would certainly make things awkward. 

I’m having an old friend for dinner. At the end of the movie, Lecter calls Starling at her graduation ceremony to ask her if the lambs have stopped screaming. And he uses the line “I’m having an old friend for dinner” as he begins following Dr. Chilton down a crowded street. Now that is just a delicious pun… 

So, if you couldn’t tell, yes, you should see Silence of the Lambs. Not only is it critically acclaimed, but it’s the only horror film to ever win Best Picture, and for good reason. And as always, keep on watching, with a smile on your face…