Movies
[Vintage Video] Watch ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ Become Only Horror Film to Ever Win Best Picture
Silence of the Lambs was released on this day in 1991.
Many film fans prefer to call Silence of the Lambs a thriller or perhaps even a crime drama, but let’s be real here: it is, at the end of the day, a horror movie. I recently spoke with filmmaker Joe Lynch about this, and he summed it up better than I ever could: “I get how it could be seen as non-horror,” he told me, “but that movie is straight up Gothic Horror using crime film tropes.”
The bummer of some horror fans refusing to accept Silence of the Lambs as a horror movie? It takes away from the film one of its biggest and most awesome claims to fame: it is, to date and probably forever, the only horror movie to EVER be crowned Best Picture at the Academy Awards.
At the 1992 ceremony, Silence of the Lambs not only won Best Picture but pretty much swept the whole damn night. It became, at the time, only the third film in Oscar history to conquer the “big five” categories; Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster won Best Actor and Best Actress, Ted Tally won Best Adapted Screenplay, and Jonathan Demme won Best Director.
The film was also nominated in the editing and sound categories.
Mind you, other classic horror films like Jaws and The Exorcist were nominated for Best Picture, and many horror movies have been nominated in other categories over the years, but in the 89-year history of the Academy Awards, Silence of the Lambs is the only one that ever took home the golden statue for Best Picture. So please. Call it what it is: an exceptional horror movie.
Check out vintage videos of all the film’s Oscar wins below!
After pulling in $28 million at the worldwide box office this month, director (and star) Dev Patel’s critically acclaimed action-thriller Monkey Man is now available to watch at home.
You can rent Monkey Man for $19.99 or digitally purchase the film for $24.99!
Monkey Man is currently 88% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, with Bloody Disgusting’s head critic Meagan Navarro awarding the film 4.5/5 stars in her review out of SXSW back in March.
Meagan raves, “While the violence onscreen is palpable and painful, it’s not just the exquisite fight choreography and thrilling action set pieces that set Monkey Man apart but also its political consciousness, unique narrative structure, and myth-making scale.”
“While Monkey Man pays tribute to all of the action genre’s greats, from the Indonesian action classics to Korean revenge cinema and even a John Wick joke or two, Dev Patel’s cultural spin and unique narrative structure leave behind all influences in the dust for new terrain,” Meagan’s review continues.
She adds, “Monkey Man presents Dev Patel as a new action hero, a tenacious underdog with a penetrating stare who bites, bludgeons, and stabs his way through bodies to gloriously bloody excess. More excitingly, the film introduces Patel as a strong visionary right out of the gate.”
Inspired by the legend of Hanuman, Monkey Man stars Patel as Kid, an anonymous young man who ekes out a meager living in an underground fight club where, night after night, wearing a gorilla mask, he is beaten bloody by more popular fighters for cash. After years of suppressed rage, Kid discovers a way to infiltrate the enclave of the city’s sinister elite. As his childhood trauma boils over, his mysteriously scarred hands unleash an explosive campaign of retribution to settle the score with the men who took everything from him.
Monkey Man is produced by Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions.
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