The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

In Jonathan Demme's Best Picture winning film:

• one of the film's earliest scenes was the tense entry of FBI trainee agent Clarice Starling (Oscar-winning Jodie Foster) into a high-security area, with a row of underground Baltimore prison cells (where she was abused by prisoner Miggs (Stuart Rudin))
• Clarice first met with the chilling, repellent, super-intelligent, cold-eyed and intriguing Dr. Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter (Oscar-winning Anthony Hopkins) - who stood there with his head tilted and then requested that she come "Clos-er" to show her credentials
• the serial killer Lecter delivered many famous lines: "Memory, Agent Starling, is what I have, instead of a view" - "You use Evian skin cream and sometimes you wear L'air du Temps - but not today" - "You're so-o ambitious, aren't you? You know what you look like to me, with your good bag and your cheap shoes? You look like a rube..."
• Lecter told about his refined taste in cruelty - with the sound effect of sifting through his teeth as he infamously described one of his earlier cannibalistic murders: "A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chi-an-ti" - fpt-fpt-fpt''
• there were multiple scenes of the intense, seductive discussions-interrogations at his jail cell between Lecter and Clarice - including her confession about failing to rescue a lamb from the slaughter - as the camera moved in for intense close-ups
• Lecter was muzzled with a face mask restraint for his meeting on the tarmack at the Memphis Int'l Airport with Senator Ruth Martin (Diane Baker), the mother of Buffalo Bill's 25 year-old kidnapped victim Catherine Martin (Brooke Smith); he was intensely insulting to the Tennessee junior senator, asking questions such as: "Tell me, Senator. Did you nurse Catherine yourself?...Did you breast-feed her?...Toughened your nipples, didn't it?....Amputate a man's leg, and he can still feel it tickling. Tell me, Mum. When your little girl's on the slab, where will it tickle you?"; after their stark conversation, Lecter also added: "Oh, and Senator, just one more thing. (The Senator turned back) Love your suit!"
• at the Shelby County Courthouse, in the middle of the Historical Society Room on the fifth floor, a massive temporary iron cage was set up to hold Lecter; during meal service followed by a murderous rampage, Lecter lunged at Sgt. Pembry (Alex Coleman) with bloody, face-eating cannibalism, and also mercilessly beat to death the second guard Sgt. Boyle (Charles Napier) with a police riot baton; after the two brutal attacks, the camera panned over the blood-flecked food tray over to the cassette player, where Lecter relaxed afterwards to Bach's Goldberg Variations

• later, officers found the bloody and savaged body of Sgt. Boyle strung up high on the cell bars like Christ, with a carved-away abdomen. "Sgt. Pembry," with an unrecognizable, gory face, lay bloodied on the floor (and remarkably was still alive), and Lecter appeared to be missing

• the near-dead officer Pembry, overwhelmed by a seizure, was whisked away to the elevator on a stretcher and put in an ambulance to be driven away; meanwhile, SWAT team members saw a distant figure dressed like Lecter lying bloodied atop the elevator and believed that Lecter was dead; but the clever Lecter had dressed himself up as Pembry with a bloodied and lacerated face, and then had fooled the officers by disguising himself as the victim Pembry in the ambulance in order to escape - and kill the paramedic
• meanwhile, Clarice entered into the home of the serial killer Jame "Buffalo Bill" Gumb (Ted Levine) and was stalked from Bill's POV with night-goggles

• the real curtain-closing climax of the film came after Clarice graduated from the FBI Academy; she received a long distance phone call from Hannibal Lecter at-large, disguised and calling from a phone at an open-air cafe at a tropical airport terminal (in the Bahamas?). He assured her that he wouldn't pursue her: "I have no plans to call on you, Clarice. The world's more interesting with you in it. Say, you take care now to extend me the same courtesy." She responded: "You know I can't make that promise." Lecter ended their short phone call with a famous farewell line - his final words were about literally dining 'with' Dr. Chilton: "I do wish we could chat longer, but I'm having an old friend for dinner. Bye."

• Lecter noticed that his arch-nemesis, the despicable Dr. Frederick Chilton (Anthony Heald) was deplaning - Chilton was Lecter's next victim. Lecter put on a Panama hat and with his disguise, he slowly walked into the crowded, narrow street of the Caribbean village and disappeared while following Chilton.