The Silence of the Lambs
Barry Forshaw
Abstract
The 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs, based on Thomas Harris's bestseller, was a game-changer in the fields of both horror and crime cinema. FBI trainee Clarice Starling was a new kind of heroine, vulnerable, intuitive, and in a deeply unhealthy relationship with her monstrous helper/opponent, the serial killer Hannibal Lecter. Jonathan Demme's film skillfully appropriated the tropes of police procedural, gothic melodrama and contemporary horror to produce something entirely new. The resulting film was both critically acclaimed and massively popular, and went on to have an enormous influence ... More
Keywords: Thomas Harris, horror cinema, horror film, crime cinema, Clarice Starling, Jonathan Demme, gothic melodrama, contemporary horror, Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2013 | Print ISBN-13: 9781906733650 |
| Published to Liverpool Scholarship Online: February 2021 | DOI:10.3828/liverpool/9781906733650.001.0001 |
