Reviews of The Silence of the Lambs

The Silence of the Lambs review

Posted : 2 weeks, 6 days ago on 8 December 2009 07:47 (A review of The Silence of the Lambs)

This film really scared me because of the psychotic Dr. Hannibal Lecter. There are a lot of close camera angles towards Lecter that actually show Lecters true colours. It is mostly because Lecter tries to manipulate Clarice by questioning her about her past and childhood. Buffalo Bill makes me feel really scared aswell because of his psychotic intentions for the women he kills. This film touched me a lot too because it teaches us about self discovery which is what Clarice achieves with herself. When Clarice confronts Buffalo Bill it becomes a very tense and a scene that makes The Silence Of The Lambs one of the greatest thrillers of all time. Most people would say that this film is a scary horror film just like Psycho and Jaws but I dont think it is like it is a really tense thriller. Well, it is like a psychological thriller.


Sir Anthony Hopkins delivers one of the greatest performances in film history as Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Anthony makes Lecter his own character and has made Lecter an extremely fearful character that everybody would fear. Hopkins doesnt just make Lecter a scary psycho that has a taste for human flesh but also a man who you dont want inside your head. He will haunt you even though he is inside a prison cell. Hannibal will question someone a bad memory about their past or anything else. If that person doesnt want to answer, Hannibal somehow finds a way to do this. Anthony Hopkins deserved his Oscar for his performance but personally I think it was luck because he did not win neither BAFTA nor Golden Globe. Jodie Foster delivers another outstanding performance and is another on the list of greatest performances of all time. Jodie makes Clarice a very emotional and a quite powerful and stubborn woman who will get what she needs to get. When Clarice is with Lecter and she talks to him, she sort of looks tortured because he manipulates her and tries to scare her but she doesnt let him scare her. Jodie and Anthonys on screen partnership in this film is one of my favourite partnerships of all time. I also really liked Ted Levine as Buffalo Bill because Ted had everything that a psychopath should have. Ted has that evil style who would do anything to get what he wants. But the one thing that is ever so dark about Ted with Buffalo Bill is Teds extremely deep and booming voice. Because of that, Buffalo Bill makes a terrifying character also just like Hannibal Lecter.


Jonathan Demme became a very unknown director at the time of this film but after this film was released, he became even better known afterwards. Also, after he directed Oscar winning film Philadelphia (Best Actor for Tom Hanks). The Silence Of The Lambs wouldnt have been any better that it already is if Demme was directing it. I liked The Silence Of The Lambs the most of the Hannibal Lecter films not because it won Oscars including Best Picture but because it had that very new style that nobody has ever seen.


It isn't just a really tense thriller that seems like a horror film but it is also quite a depressing and dramatic film too. This is my favourite from the Hannibal Lecter series. This can affect people about self discovery and learning who they really are inside. This film didnt disappoint me at all. This film is nothing more than a masterpiece and a dark thrilling phenomenon that will always be remembered as one of the greatest thrillers of all time.

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Dated

Posted : 2 months, 1 week ago on 19 October 2009 07:15 (A review of The Silence of the Lambs)

I do like this film, really. It has a very good villain in Buffalo Bill, who really feels very sick and twisted, and I as a viewer really did feel bad feelings towards him. It's a rather black/white-way of doing a serial killer-story, but that's what I consider Silence of the Lambs to be: the culmination of the clichéd serial killer hunt. The thing it does differently though is that instead of visiting a low-life crackhead for information, the main character squeezes it out of another serial killer; Hannibal Lecter, played by Anthony Hopkins, is a very sly son of a bitch who is always looking for the best way for him to return to his cannibalistic ways. The film also handles it's female protagonist very well; she often takes not of the fact that she is a woman in a man's world, and we clearly see her determination in succeeding in this realm of men and big guns with nothing but a hidden accent and quick wits. However most of the problems with Silence of the Lambs aside from being a tad too clichéd and predictable come from it visually being from the 60s or something. Jonathan Demme, the director, clearly has a hard-on for the overt use of facial close-ups, and that's all we see during dialogue scenes in the entire film. This diminishes the intelligent writing and good performances a lot, making the film as a whole feel mored or less dated depeding on the number of films the viewer has watched.

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The Silence of the Lambs review

Posted : 4 months, 3 weeks ago on 10 August 2009 02:41 (A review of The Silence of the Lambs)

This is one of the movies I always wanted to see. From all the movies related to Hannibal Lecter it's the main one and the one I never watched. It's an interesting story about a serial killer, I mean, two and their behavior and the whole journey of a FBI student trying to catch him.
It wasn't the movie I was expecting to watch. I must say I imagined that it was totally different but I couldn't help loving it. It's a great movie, with great actores and full of good scenes that makes you not stop watching for anything, plus has a smart scrit that gives you little details and clues of what's happening. It needs to be watched again and again.

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silence of the lambs

Posted : 7 months ago on 30 May 2009 07:17 (A review of The Silence of the Lambs)

it...s a nice movie,but in last in hannibal not exciting...but i like this.this is my favorite .i like anthony hopkins and jodie foster,julianne moore...

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Silence is golden...

Posted : 1 year, 1 month ago on 23 November 2008 04:38 (A review of The Silence of the Lambs)

Murray: Is it true what they're sayin', he's some kinda vampire?
Clarice Starling: They don't have a name for what he is.

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.

Jodie Foster: Clarice Starling

Anthony Hopkins: Dr. Hannibal Lecter

The events in this film occur after the events in Manhunter(1986). 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.
The film originally was going to be released in the fall of 1990. However, Orion pictures, which distributed the film, decided instead to delay its release until January 1991 so that it could concentrate all their efforts in promoting Dances with Wolves (1990) for Oscar consideration.
Silence of the lambs is one of the masterpieces of the last decade. And does it have its reasons. First of all, it's entirely dependent on the terror that gnaws all the way to the mind of the viewer. The decline of the Human Being is magnificently chiseled with one liners that amusingly depict the killers and psychopaths state of mind and approach us carefully into a nature that is deformed, evil and sick of the Man's putrefaction.

The main spectacle is drawn between Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins. Both entirely relevant to the movie, they produce a bright contrast and with their performances they nail the feelings right and expose one of the best duels on movie history. This duel, although, is not conventional. Clarice Starling will use Hannibal Lecter's profound knowledge of the criminal mind to capture the infamous Buffalo Bill. But Hopkins will play a game in which their personalities will engage in a retroactive combination, in a "quid pro quo" mind spar: she will have to expose her most profound, hidden secrets to Lecter, so he can also dispatch on his pleasure of analyzing the suffering of others. Both of them reveal all of their character's whole personality with their eyes: Foster is in constant pressure, scared but facing hell with courage and Hopkins shows human emptiness in his eyes, windows to what is a world full of deprivation.
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.
Anthony Hopkins described his voice for Hannibal Lecter as, "a combination of Truman Capote and Katharine Hepburn."

Hannibal Lecter: Why do you think he removes their skins, Agent Starling?
[sarcastically]
Hannibal Lecter: Enthrall me with your acumen.
Clarice Starling: It excites him. Most serial killers keep some sort of trophies from their victims.
Hannibal Lecter: I didn't.
Clarice Starling: No. No, you ate yours.

Ted Levine is truly scary. You get the impression that he is the true Buffalo Bill, twisted and perverse. He shows absolutely no human, recognizable aspect. He is a terrible villain.
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 hers. 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.

Easily one of the best and most sophisticated crime thrillers I've seen, The Silence of the Lambs is a masterful stroke of a movie. To begin, the performances are what really shine here. Both Foster and Hopkins are award-worthy. Jodie Foster is completely believable in her role as the intelligent heroine, and really has the audience sympathizing with her. On the other hand is Lecter, wonderfully played by Hopkins - his character is one scary guy, I definitely wouldn't want to be near him. Their chemistry in the film is amazing, and the conversational scenes between them, both of them separated by bars or a glass wall, are tense and brilliantly acted. The performances all around are simply top-notch.

Hannibal Lecter: A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.

The plot itself is an intriguing one at that, and I liked the relationship that was formed between the FBI agent and the serial killer - it's all really interesting. Then, there's the serial killer that is the sole reason that Clarice has any relation to Lecter - because Lecter has information that could help her. The gender-bending Buffalo Bill is shown throughout the movie, kidnapping women, and the viewers get an insight into his bizarre world, mostly shown in his underground "chamber" under his house, where he skins and stores his victims, dead and alive, and wears their skins. The finale in the pitch-black basement/lair between Clarice and Buffalo Bill is genuinely terrifying, and will surely have you on the edge of your seat.

Interesting to know also 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.

A last concluding 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.

Interesting Goofs

Factual errors: A forensics expert's opinion of the autopsy scene: over 8 errors were made. Among them: the body was fingerprinted without collecting evidence under the victims fingernails, and the ink would have destroyed the evidence. You cannot get fingerprints off a body if it is in that condition.
Miscellaneous: In flashbacks, young Clarice Starling has brown eyes. However, when she is older, Agent Starling's eyes are pale blue.
Revealing mistakes: As the forensics come to take photos of the victim's body, the "corpse" visibly blinks as the hands touch its face.

''Well, Clarice - have the lambs stopped screaming?''

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Classic

Posted : 1 year, 7 months ago on 14 May 2008 12:32 (A review of The Silence of the Lambs)

On the short list of classic psychological thrillers, this film propelled the Lecter-esque archetype into popular culture, leaving a permanent mark upon film and literature.

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Absolutely brilliant!

Posted : 1 year, 8 months ago on 2 May 2008 03:14 (A review of The Silence of the Lambs)

"Believe me, you don't want Hannibal Lecter inside your head."

Michael Mann struck moderate success with a 1986 thriller entitled Manhunter. This film introduced us to a brilliant psychiatrist/cannibalistic serial killer named Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lector. First played by Brian Cox, the role was then filled by actor Anthony Hopkins.

Based on a novel of the same name by Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs is one of the greatest movies of all time and one of the world's most effective thrillers. If you have never seen this absolute classic thriller that redefined the serial killer genre you have no idea what you're missing out on.

Clarice Starling (Foster) is a brilliant FBI agent-in-training who is assigned to assist in the hunt for a serial killer known as Buffalo Bill who has been kidnapping, murdering and skinning young women. The head of the FBI Behavioural Sciences section Jack Crawford (Glenn) sends Clarice to a mental institution to confide with once-renowned Dr. Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lector (Hopkins). It is hoped that Lector will provide a detailed profile of Buffalo Bill and perhaps aid in his capture. Lector only agrees to help if in return Clarice feed facts about her life to his morbid curiosity just for his own amusement.

The Silence of the Lambs is a stunning, taut, intelligent thriller that was an unexpected hit when it was first released. The film also made a successful trip to the Oscars; becoming the third film to clean up the top 5 Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay. Surely this profitable Academy Awards evening should be enough motivation to warrant multiple viewings.

The Silence of the Lambs is also quite a terrifying experience. It's not the kind of horror you'd find in a typical slasher flick; it's a psychological thriller that makes the audience petrified of the grim characters, and it's played exceptionally well on the underlying modern fear of the lethal human predator with no conscience, remorse or perceived reason. Hannibal Lector looks normal on the surface, but is revealed to be twisted and disturbing on the inside. It's also the macabre images present in the basement of a serial killer that adds to the film's terrifying nature. It will give you the creeps.

The film is also held together by the extremely strong interaction between Lector and Clarice. It's no wonder that both of them received Oscars. Anthony Hopkins cannot be even slightly faulted as the twisted psychiatrist. This was truly a career-changing role of Hopkins. I personally prefer Hopkins as Lector over Brian Cox. Although Cox did a great job, he just wasn't as creepy or spine-chilling as Hopkins' sublime portrayal. It's a close call, though. Jodie Foster's performance also holds the movie together. She always seems so vulnerable with an outward show that suggests a tough-spirited character. Foster always looks somewhat scared whenever she has a conversation with Lector - or even so much as glances at him.

Jonathan Demme's direction is masterful. I'm not sure if it was the direction or the editing - either way, the film is highly suspenseful and effective. Especially towards the climax. Demme keeps the dialogue taut and interesting; receiving engaging performances from the spirited cast.

The Silence of the Lambs is entertaining, smart, effective, imaginative, gory and scary with a high level of intelligence. The thriller genre does not get any better than this!

This is the film that redefined serial killer movies. I have enjoyed viewing this film after multiple screenings and the DVD will continue to be replayed. The Silence of the Lambs can't be missed at any cost.

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