The Silence of the Lambs

The Silence of the Lambs is a 1991 American psychological horror thriller film directed by Jonathan Demme and written by Ted Tally, adapted from Thomas Harris's 1988 novel of the same name. It stars Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling, a young FBI trainee who is hunting a serial killer named "Buffalo Bill" (Ted Levine), who skins his female victims. To catch him, she seeks the advice of the imprisoned Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), a brilliant psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer. The film also features performances from Scott Glenn, Anthony Heald, and Kasi Lemmons. The Silence of the Lambs was released on February 14, 1991, and grossed $272.7 million worldwide on a $19 million budget, becoming the fifth-highest-grossing film of 1991 worldwide. It premiered at the 41st Berlin International Film Festival, where it competed for the Golden Bear, while Demme received the Silver Bear for Best Director. It became the third and most recent film (the other two being 1934's It Happened One Night and 1975's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) to win Academy Awards in all the major five categories: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay. It was the first (and to date only) horror film to win Best Picture. The Silence of the Lambs is regularly cited by critics, film directors, and audiences as one of the greatest and most influential films. In 2018, Empire ranked it 48th on their list of the 500 greatest movies of all time. The American Film Institute ranked it the sixty-fifth greatest film in American cinema, as well as the fifth-greatest and most influential thriller film, while Starling and Lecter were ranked among the greatest film heroines and villains. The film is considered "culturally, historically, or aesthetically" significant by the U.S. Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2011. A sequel, Hannibal, was released in 2001, followed by two prequel films, Red Dragon (2002) and Hannibal Rising (2007).

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How are you?

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Did you get any bad guys today, Daddy? -No, angel, they all got away. -Aw, shoot.

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FBI! Hands up! Don't move! Turn around! Hands behind your back! Thumbs up.

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You're dead, Starling.

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Johnson, good job. Good entry. Good commands. -Starling, where's your danger area? -In the corner, sir. -Did you check the corner? -No, sir. That's the reason you're dead.

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3109.

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3109. Breaking doors or windows to enter or exit.

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Rule 404...

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-Clarice, phone. It's the guru. -Crawford? -Yeah. -Thanks, Ardelia.

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-Starling? -Sir?

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Miggs is dead.

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Dead? How?

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The orderly heard Lecter whispering to him all afternoon, and Miggs crying. They found him at bed check. He'd swallowed his own tongue. Starling?

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Yeah, I'm still here, sir. I just... I don't know how to feel about this.

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You don't have to feel any way about it. Lecter did it to amuse himself.

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Look, I know it got ugly today, but you mentioned a name at the end. Mofet. Any follow-up on her?

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Well, Lecter altered or destroyed most of his patients' histories prior to capture, so there's no record of anyone named Mofet. But I thought the "yourself" reference was too hokey for Lecter, so I figured, he's from Baltimore, and I looked in the phone book, and there's a "Your Self Storage" facility, right outside of downtown Baltimore, sir.

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Unit 31 was leased for 10 years, prepaid in full.

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The contract is in the name of a Miss Hester Mofet.

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So nobody's been in here since 1980?

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