THE SPLATTERPUNK REALITY OF THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS

Blog manager Tom went to see the 35TH ANNIVERSARY SCREENING of THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, and it brought him back in time, to the heyday of splatterpunk.

A young F.B.I. cadet must receive the help of an incarcerated and manipulative cannibal killer to help catch another serial killer, a madman who skins his victims.

Director Jonathan Demme

Writers Thomas Harris & Ted Tally

Stars Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn

I saw THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS on its opening weekend in 1991 at Aviation Mall in Glens Falls/Queensbury NY. At the time I was a college student majoring in broadcast journalism, unsure of where his life would take me. This was the same time period I’d discovered splatterpunk horror. As a result, the Silence of the Lambs came out at the precise, exact time it needed to in my life, being a motion picture that personified all I loved about splatterpunk. Is THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS splatterpunk? Prose wise, no. It’s a police procedural featuring a violent serial killer. without any clear message other than SERIAL KILLERS ARE CRAE CRAE, HMMMKAY? Yet the motion picture embodies everything I loved about splatterpunk in that era, and I forgot how much it did so until this past weekend.

Fathom Events are awesome. They provide a slew of re-screenings of classic films and you always tend to notice something you missed before. Like in JOHN CARPENTER’S THE THING, where you can see all of Doc Copper’s jewelry clearly for the first time in my memory. This screening of THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS is no different, and sold out. We started with an introduction by the venerable Leonard Maltin, who reminded us of the film’s accolades, and they’re not just quotes like “It puts the lotion on its skin” or “I’m having an old friend for dinner” or “Fava beans and a nice chianti.” Oh, no. This bad boy has clout for a horror film (if it is that? Or is it a thriller?).

The violence presented in THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS is explicit and disturbing to behold… worthy of most any splatterpunk offering, because it could be real. What’s telling is how we aren’t shown the violence Buffalo Bill performs on his victims, we only see the end results. Offscreen horrors are insidious, allowing our own imaginations to determine what occurred and that is often worse than any director could put on film. This makes Lecter’s scenes of violence, the only ones we truly behold, all the more horrifying as we enter the film’s third act and tells us the training wheels are off.

The best splatterpunk isn’t supernatural, it’s all too real. Ghosts don’t scare us, right? But people? They sure as fuck do. We’ve all had our doubts about psychologists, too. Everything about this film lends to credibility. But more than this, it’s gritty and lived in and real and that’s the real reason it works. The buildings are grimy. You can smell the mold and mildew on the screen. THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS takes the realism aesthetic we saw in previous films, like THE FRENCH CONNECTION, and makes it the industry norm. Without THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS we don’t have the first SAW and we don’t have SE7EN.

The one thing I did notice, like Doc Copper’s jewelry, was Jodie Foster’s eye freckles. They’re weird and fuck with your head a little, but ultimately they’re nothing to complain about. I guess if I had any bitches, it would be about the presentation itself. The film’s screen ratio and resolution. It looked to be a TV print, as we had a couple feet of blank screen to either side. It was not in high def, either. And though this bothered me at first, I think if it had been remastered and brightened up, it would have taken away from the nostalgia experience. Which made me worry about another aspect of THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS…the villain, Buffalo Bill.

We all have seen it, the film’s serial killer wearing a corpse’s scalp and tucking his junk while telling his reflection that he’d fuck him. Going in, I was worried Jamie Gumb/Buffalo Bill hadn’t aged well. In today’s era, transphobia is at an all time high. Ironically, many properties from going back twenty years or more are a reflection of that time, when sexual orientation phobias were also peak and reflected in cinema. You must remember that the 80s and 90s were also the height of the AIDS epidemic, so phobias were just as real. I’m happy to say my fears were unwarranted. THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS is not transphobic. It repeatedly tells you Jamie is not trans, that he’s a psychopath, in nearly every conversation regarding this character.

There’s so many more reasons as to why this film is so good, from the quality of its source material to the actors and production. It may not be splatterpunk, but it sure does embody the feel and grit of like SAVAGE SEASON from Joe R. Lansdale, David J. Schow’s THE KILL RIFF, and Rex Miller’s CHAINGANG series. The film is tense, it is brutal, it is honest, and as a result it is a classic and deserving of its achievement of sweeping the Oscars. THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS may just be the best horror film of all time, JAWS and THE EXORCIST notwithstanding. If you haven’t seen it in a minute, I suggest you revisit the world of Clarice Starling and Dr. Hannibal Lecter, with your choice of wine and protein (wink).

PLEASE NOTE: The views and opinions of the staff of Memento Mori Ink do not necessarily represent those of Memento Mori Ink or Crystal Lake Publishing. Thank you for understanding.