THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS: You’re Not More Than One Generation From Poor White Trash, Are You?

The Silence of the Lambs (1991) – Directed by Jonathan Demme – Starring Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn, Ted Levine, Anthony Heald, Brooke Smith, Frankie Faison, Tracey Walter, Charles Napier, Roger Corman, Daniel von Bargen, and Chris Isaak.

When you take a look at a heralded movie like THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS 21 years after its release, the only way you’re going to bring something new to the table is if you offer a dramatic reassessment of the film. Like if I said, “You know, in hindsight, LAMBS is good, but it’s not that good. There’s some structural issues and the acting isn’t all that great and did it really deserve to win the Oscar for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay? No. No, it didn’t.”

Well, I’m not going to say that. Jonathan Demme’s THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS is an extraordinarily good movie, representing the absolute best in dramatic storytelling. LAMBS is every bit as brilliant now as it was back in 1991, and while I generally don’t give a flip about awards, if we’re going to have them, it’s films like LAMBS that deserve to be recognized.

The FBI is after a serial killer nicknamed “Buffalo Bill” (Ted Levine), who likes to kidnap women and then skin them before dumping the body in the river, and to assist in the investigation, Agent Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn) recruits trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) to interview imprisoned serial killer Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) to see if he can help with the investigation. It’s a bit more complicated than that as Crawford doesn’t tell Starling exactly why he’s sending her in to interview Lecter because he doesn’t want Lecter to be able to pull that information from her brain. Lecter is, of course, the smartest guy in the movie, but it’s not like everyone else is a big dummy, and one of the joys in watching LAMBS is how smart people manipulate other smart people in order to attempt to get what they want.

For all of the much-deserved praised heaped on Hopkins and Lecter, Foster and Starling are every bit as fantastic. Starling is one of the most wonderfully well-rounded characters you’ll find, and just like Lecter, she is full of contradictions. Still a trainee, Starling has limited field experience and while she’s brave, she’s also perfectly frightened at times. When we see her freak out after a patient in the psych ward tosses his ejaculate at her face and then cry when she gets to her car, it makes the scenes where she forces her way into a storage shed stronger. Foster’s Starling proves you can be a strong, independent woman and still be less than perfect and afraid.

LAMBS employs a rather unique double narrative strategy as the Lecter and Buffalo Bill plots only brush up against one another; Starling has one plot going with the hunt for Bill and another going with her developing relationship with Lecter. Crawford wants Bill’s insight, but it’s not like he’s bringing Lecter in to for a Marvel Team-Up. Crawford and Lecter have an antagonistic relationship, so the FBI man uses the trainee to be his go-between. The real story of LAMBS is the rise of Clarice Starling, but it’s not the kind of arc where she rises from nothing to everything, but rather where she simply proves she can play her part and help solve the case.

I really dig that about LAMBS. Demme and his team see no need to push things to artificially-elevated levels in LAMBS. This is a simple story about a manhunt for a kidnapped girl who’s got a few days to live before her kidnapper kills her. There’s a natural urgency to the film that doesn’t need fancy camera tricks or editing to ratchet up the intensity of the situation. Combine this with the almost diversionary chats between Lecter and Starling and LAMBS is actually a very enjoyable film about a very horrible situation.

It’s the interviews between Lecter and Starling that truly make LAMBS a special film. Lecter revels in the discussion, which allows him to use his considerable brain power to slice apart people psychologically. The scripts best moments are when Starling is trying to get answers from Lecter about Bill and Lecter is trying to dig into Starling’s past. It’s a masterful set-up and execution as Lecter is always in control, even when he’s trapped behind bars and Starling is struggling to swim even when she can barely keep her head above water. Lecter has the freedom of knowing what he’s capable of doing, and Starling is hampered by not knowing.

Lecter digs into Starling’s past in a manner that’s psychologically aggressive, using fear and shame to dig the truth out of her. He mocks her accent, mocks her attire, questions her relationship with Crawford, and pushes her to dredge up all the worst aspects of her life. Lecter’s psychological deconstruction of Starling is the best part of the movie and largely relegates the manhunt to the background. Even during the latter stages of the film, after Lecter has escaped from containment and all-but-disappeared from the movie, his presence resonates.

As Starling gets information piecemealed out to her by Lecter, the investigation continues on its way. They realize Bill keeps the women he kidnaps alive for three days so he can starve them out a bit. He wants their skin to make himself a new flesh suit because he’s f*cking crazy.

LAMBS works by highlighting one-on-one interpersonal relationships: Starling and Lecter, Starling and Crawford, Lecter and Dr. Chilton (Anthony Heald), and Bill and his latest kidnapped victim, Catherine Martin (Brooke Smith). While there are other characters in the film, it’s these four relationships that continually spin through the movie. It’s Bill who gets the best line in the movie, too. For all the verbal goodness that comes out of Lecter’s mouth, it’s Bill’s, “Put the f*cking lotion in the basket!” exclamation that I always feel like quoting for days afterward. (Not that I can; it doesn’t really work when you’re stuck in an administrative meeting to tell the idiot at the other end of the table to shut up and put the f*cking lotion in the basket. You can think it, but you can’t say it.)

Ted Levine’s performance as Bill is incredibly memorable for its outlandishness, just as Glenn’s performance as Crawford is memorable for its restraint. There’s a whole host of known actors in smaller roles peppered throughout LAMBS, too: Frankie Faison as Barney, a worker at the original hospital that holds Lecter captive; Charles Napier as a cop that Lecter murders; Roger Corman as an FBI director that gives Crawford a stern talking to; and Daniel von Bargen and Chris Isaak as members of the police team that attempts (and fails) to keep an escaped Lecter contained.

In the end, though, this is Jodie Foster’s movie. Tough and vulnerable, assured and frightened, Foster gives the performance of her career as Clarice Starling. As great as Hopkins is (and this is the performance of his career, too), it’s Foster that carries LAMBS. We might be fascinated by the monster, but it’s the protagonist who takes us home.

I wonder if THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS’ legacy hasn’t been a tad tarnished in some people’s eyes by all the craptacular sequels that followed. To this day, it’s the non-Hopkins film, Michael Mann’s Manhunter with Brian Cox as Hannibal “Lektor,” that comes closest to matching LAMBS’ brilliance. Bad sequels can’t really tarnish an original film, of course, just our perceptions of that film. If that’s happened to you with LAMBS, just go ahead and pop it in the DVD player. It won’t take long for you to remember its cinematic greatness.

THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS is, quite simply, an American masterpiece.

DEATH RACE 2000: You’re One Very Large Baked Potato

Death Race 2000 (1975) – Directed by Paul Bartel – Starring David Carradine, Simone Griffeth, Sylvester Stallone, Mary Woronov, Roberta Collins, Martin Kove, and Louisa Moritz.

It’s been an Ib Melchior kinda week.

Melchior co-wrote the screenplay for Robinson Crusoe on Mars, which I reviewed yesterday, and wrote the short story “The Racer,” which was the basis for DEATH RACE 2000. I wish I could say I planned it, but I didn’t. I rented DEATH RACE 2000 out of spite because Netflix still hasn’t sent me Cannonball Run, even after almost two months, and I’ve already watched the recent remake/boot/launch Death Race from a year or so back starring Jason Statham. (It’s pretty good.)

DEATH RACE 2000 features silly people in silly cars in a race across the country where they score bonus points by killing people.

It’s pretty awesome.

But awesome in that way that can only be achieved by being awful and enjoyable all at the same time. There’s not a single “good” performance in the entire film, except that everyone gives exactly the right performance. Which is the point. Everyone manages to be bad on exactly the same level, which results in a weird kind of cohesive performance that’s almost brilliant and certainly enjoyable from start to finish.

David Carradine stars as Frankenstein, an allegedly part-man, part-machine driver who’s survived countless vicious crashes over the years and become the most popular racer in the country. In actuality, Frankenstein (who wears head-to-toe black leather – complete with cape and mask – that makes him look not so much like Batman, but Wile E. Coyote in that suit that was supposed to make him fly) has been several different people, and Carradine’s only the latest.

Carradine’s take is to play Frankenstein as dispassionately as possible, which is to say he plays this ultimate bad-ass in as a stick of bambook swaying gently with the wind.

He drives a lizard car that actually manages to look cool next to the cars tricked up to look like a lion, German WWII plane, bull, and whatever Sylvester Stallone’s car is supposed to conjure up in your mind.

Stallone is the best part of the entire movie. His bombastic, ridiculous, over-the-top performance as Machine Gun Joe Viterbo is the perfect counterweight to Carradine’s woodenness. When his navigator gives him crap for getting beaten up by Frankenstein, Stallone cracks, “You know, Myra, some people might think you’re cute, but me, I think you’re a very large baked potato.”

What?

On one of the DVD’s bonus features, John Landis (who, according to John Landis, has a brief role in the film as one of Stallone’s mechanics) says the baked potation line was a Stallone ad-lib. Somehow that makes it even better.

Because you can’t just have a race where crazy people driving animal cars kill each other, there’s a back-plot involving Frankenstein’s navigator, Annie, played by the lovely Simone Griffeth. She’s the granddaughter of the head of the Resistance that wants to stop the race from happening. She vaguely tries to kill him and then has sex with him because he’s not what she expected.

You know, because he actually has a face and something of a conscience. Something of a conscience because he still kills people with his car, but we forgive him because he’s got a fake hand that’s actually a grenade (a “hand grenade,” get it? Ah, the ’70s) and he just wants to win the race so he can shake the President’s hand and blow the bastard sky-high.

In the funniest killing scene of the film, the nurses and doctors at a hospital line the street with all of their old patients. Annie wants to know what’s going on, and Carradine drawls, “It’s Euthanasia Day at the Geriatric’s Hospital. They do it every year.” So this year, because he’s now David Carradine under the mask, Frank kills the nurses that stand around watching and lets the old people continue to drool on their shirts.

This film relies on the dystopian American future idea, but they don’t harp on it. You’re not here to hear discourse on the decline of America, you’re here to see these ridiculous cars kill a bunch of people, have a few laughs, and see some women take their clothes off.

If that’s why you watched the movie, you win.