Horror in the 90s: 'The Silence of the Lambs'

Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Directed by Jonathan Demme

Written by Ted Tally

Starring Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn

Release Date February 14th, 1991

Box Office $272 million dollars

In many respects, The Silence of the Lambs is the most successful horror movie of the 1990s. The film is the second highest grossing horror movie of the decade, behind only David Fincher's Seven, but it also swept the Academy Awards, winning Best Actress for Jodie Foster, Best Actor for Anthony Hopkins and Best Picture among other awards. Oddly enough, it's this remarkable level of success and respectability that causes many to dismiss the idea that The Silence of the Lambs is a horror movie. Horror movies are supposed to be shown in drive ins or on late night cable television. Horror Movies do not sweep the Oscars and, in fact, aren't allowed in the hallowed halls of respectable Hollywood.

And yet, there should be no question that we are watching and adoring a horror movie. Clarice Starling, for all of her respectable traits and awards pedigree, is a terrific example of the Final Girl archetype. Yes, she's dressed up with a terrific actor in Jodie Foster and built with a respect for women that the horror genre typically lacks, but nevertheless, the final moments of Clarice's search for the big bad of The Silence of the Lambs casts Clarice as a tremendous example of the Final Girl, the survivor who lives to tell the tale of what happened with the killer.

A lot of people who claim they don't like horror movies want to knock down the notion that The Silence of the Lambs is a horror movie out of their stubborn belief that they don't find such films entertaining. On the other side, there are hardcore horror fans who don't want to accept The Silence of the Lambs as a horror movie because it is too respectable, too beloved. It's a horror film for the normies who wouldn't last but a few minutes watching a 'real' horror movie. The Silence of the Lambs also appears to lack in the kinds of transgressive bad taste that is also a hallmark of 'real' horror movies.

The Silence of the Lambs opens on FBI Trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) running through the woods, alone. It might seem like nothing but there is a heft to this image. A woman running alone through the woods is a classic horror movie scenario. Whether you are talking about Friday the 13th or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, when you place a woman in the context of being alone running through the woods, the echoes of horror movies of the past are evoked whether intentional or not. That this scene is upended with the visual information that this woman is running an obstacle course is a misdirection that is also a hallmark of good horror filmmaking.

The credits are playing over the visual of Clarice Starling running through the woods. The credits are in bold block letters that dominate the screen. This will irritate some viewers who see the credits as intrusive, ugly or distracting, but I think there is a logic to this choice. Because the credits font is so large it makes the star look smaller, less visually important in comparison. Part of the story of The Silence of the Lambs is how Clarice Starling will grow into the role of a formidable FBI Agent. She will grow from a greenhorn rookie to a seasoned FBI veteran before our eyes as her many skills in deduction, investigation, and physicality are tested and proven to be impressive.

It might seem like a stretch but I believe that the large block credits font in The Silence of the Lambs was intended to make Clarice look small, insignificant, and distorted because the movie is about her growing into her role as a strong female character and growing into her place in the world of the FBI, a place that becomes becomes clearer, more in focus as the story plays out. It's a subtle choice but it manages to underline Clarice's arc without openly commenting on it. It's exceptional visual filmmaking.

Clarice Starling is called off the obstacle course to meet with Special Agent Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn), the agent in charge of the biggest murder investigation of the moment, the case of a man known as Buffalo Bill. Jack Crawford is recruiting Clarice because she was in one of his courses and showed a strong interest in profiling suspects. But there is an ulterior motive at play as well as Crawford wants to send the untested and unknown young female agent to meet with a crafty serial killer who may or may not have key information related to Buffalo Bill. Crawford posits that an eager, young, attractive female agent might be the key to getting the serial cannibal murderer, Hannibal Lecter to open up.

It's a big risk but a necessary one. Hannibal Lecter is known for getting inside the head of anyone who tries to sneak past his intellectual defenses. Lecter is downright mythical in his knack for causing emotional and physical pain to his victims. Luckily for Clarice, her base innocence and curiosity plays to Lecter's rare sympathies. He will still toy with the young and vulnerable agent but with her seeming lack of a larger agenda and her willingness to open up to him, Clarice forges a connection to Hannibal the Cannibal that will be key to solving the Buffalo Bill murders.

The dynamic between Lecter and Clarice and between Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster is the beating bloody heart of The Silence of the Lambs. The way that they lock eyes, the way Foster appears to physically confront Lecter with eye contact before shrinking away, it's a mini-arc in the midst of Clarice's overall arc that runs from the beginning to the end of the movie. The mini-arc has Clarice starting out as a meek shrinking violent desperately trying to establish a presence to Clarice cleverly prodding and investigating Lecter to get one final key piece of information and doing so based on her newfound skill and strength as a budding investigator and profiler. It's a case of show, don't tell. We are shown just how much Clarice has grown since the movie began via her intuitive investigation of Hannibal Lecter.

Operating in the background is Buffalo Bill whose presence is limited until the third act when he becomes Clarice's final boss battle. Buffalo Bill is the final obstacle to Clarice's self actualization. Overcoming Buffalo Bill, stopping him from killing anyone in the future, forces Clarice to jump up from being a rookie to a veteran investigator with a keen eye, strong instincts and the physical carriage and bravery needed for an important and life threatening confrontation. The ways that Jonathan Demme sews aspects of Bill into the movie are ingenious, he's a presence in myth who becomes real as the story goes on and his crimes are investigated and eventually solved.

So, I couldn't find exactly the right place to put this in the recap and review but I wanted to mention a key moment of show, don't tell, filmmaking in The Silence of the Lambs. It's a moment that is often overlooked because it is so disgusting but I believe the moment is both insidious and necessary. In Clarice's first visit to Lecter at a hospital for the criminally insane, Clarice is assaulted by a man named Miggs. I say she was assaulted and she was but not in any typical sense. Miggs first whispers something heinous to Clarice as she arrives and then, as she's leaving, he's seen pleasuring himself and flinging the result into Clarice's face.

My skin crawls just writing that, so yeah, the scene is so gross but so effective. But there is more too that and it's part of the clever and necessary legend building around Hannibal Lecter. We learn in the following scene from Jack Crawford that after Clarice had left the building, Lecter had begun talking to Miggs, getting inside the crazed creeps head. Lecter taunted and frightened the already fragile Miggs' psyche until Miggs bit off his own tongue and choked on it. Lecter never lays a hand on Miggs but manages to kill him all the same. This establishes Lecter's horrifying prowess as a talker and a psychopath and it raises the stakes for Clarice as she will be placing her head in this lion's mouth for several more encounters during this case.

Miggs might have been easy prey, he was already criminally insane, but regardless, the scene demonstrates the danger of even just talking to Hannibal Lecter and that is world building, that's legend building. From then on, any conversation with Lecter carries an even greater sense of danger. A sense that is then undercut by Anthony Hopkins' ingenious performance. While establishing how dangerous he can be, Lecter also uses his murder of Miggs to communicate a bizarre moral code, one in which he demonstrates his power and his masterful control of the dynamic between himself and Clarice. He could potentially kill her by destroying her mind and she will need to be on guard while having to fence with this masterful mental swordsman.

So, what makes The Silence of the Lambs a horror movie? Part of it is the blood and guts. It's a visual commitment to visceral physical terror that carries The Silence of the Lambs through the uncanny valley from straight drama to thriller and into the territory of horror. Jonathan Demme could have leaned away from presenting blood and guts but he doesn't he uses blood and guts as yet another tool in his toolbox. He deploys blood, bodies, and violence as part of a rising and falling symphony of storytelling. First, it's a bloated corpse, then a severed head in a jar, and then it's Lecter biting off the nose of a prison guard before he wields a baton and conducts and orchestra of violence on the body of said guard.

The key piece of gore is still to come however as Lecter raises the bar on his legend with a display of dominance. After murdering his two guards, Lecter turns one of them into an art project, his skin splayed open to form wings, his insides pouring out as if pierced by the spears used to murder Jesus on the cross, and finally the body is placed on display, backlit for extra dramatic effect, looking for all of the world like a grand guinol painting of a crucified angel. This is a moment of inspired gore, a phenomenal piece of horror filmmaking in both the traditional blood and guts variety and the transgressive as that Angelic display of the guards body is a foul, cursed, and blasphemous image guaranteed to affect and offend the squares.

And then, director Jonathan Demme chooses to end the movie on a dark bit of camp. A newly escaped Hannibal Lecter dressed in a creamy white leisure suit, a bad wig, and a Panama Hat, has followed his nemesis, Dr. Chilton (Anthony Heald) to somewhere in the Caribbean. Not wanting his newfound friendship with Clarice to be over, Lecter calls to congratulate her on catching Buffalo Bill while taunting her with coming after him. The film ends with Hannibal the Cannibal spotting the fastidious and irksome Dr. Chilton and leaving Clarice with the bon mot, "I do wish I could chat longer, but I'm having an old friend for dinner."

It's an inspired ending, darkly comic and filled with dread, and leaving a bread crumb in case there may be ways to expand the story of Clarice and Hannibal Lecter in a sequel. It's an ending that left audiences in 1991 breathless and still has that effect on audiences more than 30 years later. It demonstrates, for me, the mastery that director Jonathan Demme had over this material. The confidence to end on a pitch black comic moment, the awesome, pitch perfect line delivery of Anthony Hopkins, and the helpless but determined reaction of Clarice is the perfect note to end The Silence of the Lambs on. This is a film that fully sticks the landing.

The transgressive gory imagery, the blasphemous religious overtones, and that last bit of kinky dark humor are my thesis statement on The Silence of the Lambs as a horror movie. Though the movie cannot shake the admiration of the classy who would deny its claim to horror fame, and its place as a respectable awards winner still may put off the snobbish horror fan, for me, The Silence of the Lambs is among the best movies the horror genre has ever produced.

This review/article on The Silence of the Lambs is the latest serialized piece from my in the works book project, Horror in the 90s. I'm watching more than 200 horror movies released between January of 1990 and December of 1990 to observe and examine the horror genre and its place in our culture and collective memory. It's a massive undertaking and its one that I cannot complete on my own. If you'd like to help me bring Horror in the 90s into the world, you can make a monthly pledge here on Vocal or you can leave a one time tip. You can also commission me to write about a horror movie of your choice on my Ko-Fi page, linked here. Thanks!