Silence of the Lambs
| release date | January 30 1991 |
| studio | MGM |
| director | Jonathan Demme |
| writer | Ted Tally, Thomas Harris |
| starring | Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn, Anthony Heald, Ted Levine |
| tagline | Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Brilliant. Cunning. Psychotic. In his mind lies the clue to a ruthless killer. |
| site | mgm.com/hannibal/home-flash.html |
| trailer 1 | Trailer #1 |
25 Comments
I cannot beleive i’m the fist review on this movie…this IS A CLASSIC!!! if you havnt seen this movie you need to get you butt away from the computer and go rent/buy it and watch it…you should be ashamed…
Wow, I am second to be astonished for I see only one review for the movie. lol. Well, this is far from your gut spewing slash flick, far far from, my friends, but I do agree that this is a classic and classics shouldn’t go without being seen. Forget horror just for a second and believe me when I say this is one of the greatest works in film of all time. All your misconceptions of Hannibal Lecter will be put to flames. He is like a tiger–a magnificent beast we are drawn to for its beauty and majesty, but fear for its potential to kill. Wild and alluring. Whether you are drawn to him or repelled by his power, you will always look to the face of him in total awe. Jodie Foster as Clarice in this is remarkable. It’s just great. Watch it. Do it now. You don’t even have to leave your seat. Google it or something.
This is a classic, it is hard to believe there are only 2 reviews. This is as good as it gets.
Best goddamn movie ever.
perfect crime drama
One of the Greatest And Scariest Movies Ever! Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins are at their Best!
Best thriller ever with Seven…
Dr. Hannibal Lecter is my favorite movie character ever!
Brilliant movie and completely ahead of its time when it was made.
Silence of the lambs is one of the best thrillers of decades because the acting is perfect and you probably wouldn’t get acting this good ever again and the story line was top notch. It was very interesting and it wasn’t a “torture film” because there was little to no gore. Silence of the lambs is disturbing, brutal, and excellent.
Excellent
Jodie Foster is great. Anthony Hopkins is great. The deadpan directing is great. Genuinely disturbing. The best movie of its kind, all others pale in comparison including all the under achieving sequels.
Anthony Hopkins!!!! Nuff said.
great movie to see. Jodie foster and Anthony Hopkins were brilliant.
An absolute masterpiece. Hannibal Lector is a terrific character, so good in fact that many often overlook that this movie has another great villian in Buffalo Bill. Jodie Foster is great in this movie, as is the rest of the cast. Great story, very suspenseful. This movie has a great climax to.
brilliant movie anthony hopkins in amazing
buffalo bill creeps me out. great story, nice and grippping
any movie with something as good Hannibal Lecter in it is bound to be amazing
two of the greatest villains ever put on screen in one masterpiece. anthony hopkins is incredible as hannibal the cannibal lecter, and the overlooked ted levine is very creepy as buffalo bill. i think the scariest part of the movie is that buffalo bill is based off of real serial killers, such as ed gein. check out red dragon, too. not as good, but still great.STAY AS FAR AWAY AS POSSIBLE FROM MANHUNTER. ITS BAD.
this movie scared the shit outta me when i was younger and it still manages to hold that creepy feeling over the years.Wonderful acting by all with VERY memorable charecters!!!
best.thriller.ever!!!
This film was the first to sweep the top four Oscars (Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress) in decades and is probably the greatest horror thriller ever made. Reading some of these reviews I find that we have lost sight of what horror truly is. Blood and gore shock us not scare us. The truly great horror films tend to stay away from excess bloodletting but scare the crap out of us anyway. “Lambs” is a true masterpiece.
Ever since I was a little kid, I was obsessed with reading horror. I’ve read more from the genre than anyone I personally know. Being a soon-to-be-published author myself, I’ve learned more about the genre by reading than by any writing seminar I’ve ever been to. With all of that said, when The Silence of the Lambs, the novel, was released and received mass critical acclaim for being the “perfect” horror-thriller, even being the major genre-whore I am, I could really care less. Why? Simple because I’d read so many books EXACTLY like it, I had no interest. Years later, when the movie was released, I felt the exact same. This is why I’ve waited so long to view this “impossible-to-miss!” film. It was just more of the same. When I finally decided to force myself to watch it, I found my gut instinct was underestimating. The Silence of the Lambs is not only just more of the same unoriginal story that we’ve all heard so many times that it’s second nature, it’s also cheesy, immature, over-glamorized, and, in the end, completely laughable. And here is why . . .
First and foremost: The Silence of the Lambs is, unarguably, 100% unoriginal. There is not a single original–or even creative–concept in the entire runtime of the film. This paragraph of my review is not my opinion. The way I view the world has no bearing on what has or hasn’t been done in storytelling before. Saying that it’s my opinion that The Silence of the Lambs is unoriginal is equivalent to saying that it’s my opinion that the sky is blue. And just as childish. With that said, I can literally point you, scene-by-scene, to where every single idea in The Silence of the Lambs has been written and filmed in the past. From the formula, to the characters, to the situations, to the set-up: it’s all, unarguably, one giant genre cliché. And, as I said, I can point to every movie, every book that has used the EXACT scenes in the past. This isn’t just a coincidence; it’s an unabashed lack of creativity and intelligence from the writer. Just more of the same cliché Hollywood and pulp fiction conventions we’ve seen all our lives. All the standard clichés are here, folks: romantic subplot, tension at the agency, troubled childhoods, etc., etc., etc.
Hannibal Lector himself is, admittedly by the author, nothing but a mash-up of various fictional and real-life serial killers. The two most obvious fictional killers he unabashedly rips-off are Leatherface (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, 1974) and Mark Lewis (Peeping Tom, 1960). Leatherface’s actions (cannibal, wears victim’s faces) + Lewis’s mind (pretentious, psychiatrist, study’s human behavior, kills people to study reactions, gives long speeches about serial killers, has a supposed vast knowledge of the human mind) = Hannibal Lector. There is not a single character trait that Lector has that wasn’t done nearly 40 years before he was written. Again, a kindergarten lack of creativity. I honestly don’t even know how his character got past copyright laws.
Not to mention Hannibal’s cheesy persona. He pronounces “liver” with slurping sounds at the end. So did 3-year-olds, but I don’t cower in fear of them. He never actually DOES anything on-screen, except talk. And talk. And when he does talk, he talks with the pseudo-intelligence of a high-school dropout who took a semester of psychology. Why? Because his psychological knowledge is laughably limited, and sometimes incorrect all together. He’s supposed to be this oh-so-evil genius, but all he ever does is quote cliché phrases from dumbed-down Freud. He knows NOTHING about psychology. The piss-poor writers just wrote enough cliché psychobabble between his laugh-out-loud cheesy slurping sounds to make it seem like he knew at least as much about the human mind as the average middle-school student. And then, just like all over-glamorized Hollywood, every time Hannibal is on the screen they point the camera up at his face with light shining behind his head as he stares at the ceiling without blinking. That’s not good acting. That’s made-for-TV directing they use in low-budget Jesus movies. Hannibal Lector is nothing but an awkward middle-aged man who is obsessed with talking and breaking copyright laws. How is that unnerving? If I met him, I’d laugh in his face and tell him to grow up.
At root value this is a generic crime thriller. It opens up with a generic cop-meets-killer scene, and ends with a generic killer-in-the-house scene. Everything in between is exactly what you’d expect from a generic Hollywood thriller. It has NO significance whatsoever when it comes to originality. And as far as entertainment value goes, I don’t see what’s so entertaining in watching a middle-age man talk for an hour. If that entertain you, I pity you.
Oh my God! This movie TERRIFIED me! Why? Because an awkward middle-aged man pronounced “liver” like a 3-year-old.
I’ll say the same thing to those of you who gave this movie a high score as I’d say to Hannibal Lector: GROW UP.
Once again Jacques has proven that no one else in the universe should ever make a horror film or thriller and let us other brainless idiots watch it and give our thoughts on what we think might be good or crappy. So to all of you other so called horror fans like me, listen and read what the master of horror has to say because lets face it all horror movies suck balls in the eyes of the ever knowing one. And when he is published all other works of literature watch out because apparently they will be obsolete.
P.S. Silence of the Lambs is one hell of a good film.
Fantastic movie. All Hannibal movies with the amazing Anthony Hopkins are great. 10 of 10.
All hail the thriller movie King!
..
hail goddamit!
now, bow.
now kiss it’s feet and give it a 10!
one of the best thrillers ever and you know it’s oh so true!
Wow this is the penticle of psychological horror/thriller movie. I love this film and thought it was one of the best movies I have ever seen. A true classic and a genre masterpice I will always cherish.
An amazing movie
Simply, very well acted and great storyline. AWESOME ENDING!!!
LOL at Jacques…oh man it must hurt to be like him!
Excellent movie…one of the best written, well acted, and most intense thrillers ever made. An all time classic!
There are no words that can do justice to the elegance and intelligence of this film. Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster give near perfect performances with excellent direction from Jonathan Demme.
amazing
Awesomee
i liked it, thought it was very interesting and thescene were hannibal beats the crap out of the gaurds was good
pretty good horror film:)
What can one say that hasn’t been said about this classic?
Anthony Hopkins is very creepy and supremely scary as Hannibal Lector.
This movie made me read the book. The book is even better.
Classic film. One of my Favorite’s.
what can you say about a movie that is absolutely perfect? this is why horror movies are made. only one thing i have to comment on, and that is i think Ted Levine got snubbed for an oscar!! Hopkins is legendary as Hannibal, but Levine is just as scary, creepy, and even more believable because of the fact that dudes like him are really out there. this is one of the best movies to ever be made period!!
This movie fricking rock, Hopkins and Foster both show excellent acting.
One of the best movies horror genre has to offer in my opinnion.
PS: lol@Jacques
Anyone who gives this film a bad review needs an ice pick lobotomy. This movie is a classic. And there are not enough movies of the horror/thriller genre, that are this disturbing, that have gotten recognition like this has! 7 oscar nominations, which is won 5 of!! And IMDb has it as #26 on the Top 250 Movies of All Time! This movie has it all: great storyline, brilliant characters, amazing acting, EVERYTHING.
and to those who call it “unoriginal”… it was based off of Thomas Harris’s novel of the same name. So to call it unoriginal, is ignorant, because it’s an adaptation. One of the few amazing book to movie adaptations we have.
I’ve been on solid expectations on re watching Silence of The Lambs so far. I finished reading Thomas Harris’s novel of the same name. And ever since after I read Thomas Harris’s first book(His best work and it is easily the best in the Hannibal Lecter novels) and after I re watched Red Dragon(Manhunter remake) and after I also watched the original Red Dragon titled Manhunter. I was prepared to see this movie. Ok I just finished re watching the film and I have to say that this is the best Hannibal Lecter film while from the novels Red Dragon is the best in the Hannibal Lecter novels. I really like this film so far. What I did enjoy about this film is that the story is impressive and this movie has lots of impressive scares. Usually this movie has the same plot to the novel. This movie is also good because this movie won in the Oscars and Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins won awards for their performances in the film and that’s what’s great about this movie so far. This movie has a mixture of elements from the crime/thriller and horror genre. While the movie has been praised for Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins performances in the film the movie is incredibly suspenceful and twisty towards the climax of the film which makes this movie even better. I enjoyed the film so far. While Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster did a good job with their performances in the film the others were also good. Ted Levine is one scary and creepy killer at the same time and he freaks me out so far in the movie. The movie doesn’t have enough gore though but at least this movie has suspense and tension towards the climax of the movie. But is this movie better than the book. My answer is a no. Since the movie is praised by critics due to the performances of Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster in the movie. This movie falls short in many ways. Because most book to movie adaptations really fails in different ways. There are reasons on why this movie falls short and this movie falls short it’s because there are various parts missing from the novel. For those of you who read Thomas Harris’s novel the missing parts from the book include the scene when Senator Ruth Martin and Paul Krendler meets the protagonist of the film Clarice Starling in Catherine Baker Martin’s apartment. Jack Crawford told Clarice something while they’re on their way to visit Hannibal Lecter in the Baltimore State Hospital. The casino room scene where Clarice is listening to the Lecture and after the Lecture Clarice Starling looks at the TV and she sees her self on television on the part of the book where she’s not allowing the TV crew to go inside the garage in Split City Mini Storage. The scene where the news crew arrives in Split City Mini Storage. Hannibal Lecter at the Marcus Hotel is also missing and there are other reasons on why this movie falls short not only missing parts from the book. Other characters from the novel are missing also in the film and there are various changes from the book to the movie. If you want to understand some of the things in the film read the second Hannibal Lecter book or read it again if you finished it already. Overall Silence of the Lambs is the best Hannibal Lecter film out of all the Hannibal Lecter movies(While Red Dragon is the best in the Hannibal Lecter novels).
Is there anything about this gem that hasn’t been said over the years? Anyone who calls this movie bad or overrated or no Oscar material must be retarded. Superb directing, legendary acting, and overall a classic storytelling at its finest. This movie may very well be the best horror thriller of all time.
This movie is incredible. Not too high on my scare list, but to me, it’s not always the number of ‘jump out of your seat’ moments that makes a horror movie great. This movie had more than enough to make up for it as I am not easy to scare anyway. This movie had an amazing plot, impressive actors, and an impressive amount of tension to keep everyone on the edge of his/her seats. I wish I had gotten my hands on this movie a long time ago.
Watched it countless times. Movie full of dull hopeless dread and yet a great uplifting ending…that is until Clarice takes that unforgettable phonecall…
Proves Jodi Foster to be among the best movie film actors to grace the screen. Superb from start to finish. Hopkins is totally convincing as the mad genius and Ted Levine’s portrayal of Buffallo Bill is genuinely chilling.
This is hands down my favorite thriller of all time. I have always loved serial killer stories and have done many case studies on them. This movie was everything I could want it to be and more. The acting is beyond Oscar worthy and it is something that stays with you forever. I cannot say enough good things about this film and I really don’t have anything bad to say except, there is a part of me that wishes there was more blood and killing, but then again, if there were, it wouldn’t have been such an amazing thriller and story.
Such a great movie.