Readers, happy Monday! Last week you may recall CT handed me the keys to the Marvel universe because she gave me Thor. As much as my immediate instinct was to run headlong into The Avengers cackling gleefully as I went... We've already talked the Marvel movies and I couldn't think of anything to tell you about how and why we love them that we haven't already covered. So instead I wanted to talk about a movie that began my love for horror films. I'm following Anthony Hopkins to The Silence of the Lambs.
I know that some people would argue that this movie counts as a thriller and not a horror. Those people are narrow-minded and there's no room in my life for that kind of thinking. This movie holds so many of the quintessential horror conventions (Gruesome murders, terrifying psychopaths, kidnapped girls held in murder houses) and manages to present them without ever really focusing on them. The story stays grounded by focusing on the investigation into the killings rather than the acts of murder. As a result the killer that everyone remembers from The Silence of the Lambs is not Buffalo Bill, it's Hannibal Lecter. You can credit that to both Anthony Hopkins chilling performance and the wonderful character work that Thomas Harris put in when he created everyone's favorite cannibalistic psychiatrist.
The other character that really sticks out in this story is Agent Clarice Starling. Every guy in this movie underestimates her in some way. Her boss hits on her thinking she will be willing to sleep her way into a promotion, Hannibal tries to write her off as an ambitious small town girl, and Frederick Chilton assumes that the only reason she is sent to interview Dr. Lecter is that she's pretty. All of these guys underestimate Clarice, and she sees it, accepts it, and then quietly gets on with the business of solving the string of murders at the heart of the story. Because she's a total boss. If Agent Starling and Agent Scully had ever gotten together America would have turned into a crime-free utopia somewhere around 1995.
The other part of this movie, and the one that I really feel pushes it right into pure horror is the character of Buffalo Bill. Because to create one of the scariest villains of fiction, Harris had to combine three separate serial killers. Just stealing traits from one didn't create the sense of pants soiling terror he was after. So this is a guy who kidnaps women and keeps them in his basement so he can make a skin suit from real women skin and also he keeps moths as pets. For no reason other than people with bug fetishes are rightfully awful. This character still has the full ability to leave me checking my closets before I go to bed.
Good luck getting to sleep after watching this one...
Little C
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