Hannibal (2001) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error Living in exile, Hannibal Lecter tries to reconnect with now disgraced FBI agent Clarice Starling and finds himself a target for revenge from a powerful victim. Director: From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC a list of 38 titles created 26 Mar 2011 a list of 36 titles created 03 Jul 2012 a list of 45 titles created 07 Oct 2012 a list of 23 titles created 18 Mar 2013 a list of 29 titles created 18 Jul 2014 Search for " Hannibal " on Amazon.com Connect with IMDb Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. 8 wins & 16 nominations.

See more awards » Videos A retired FBI agent with psychological gifts is assigned to help track down "The Tooth Fairy", a mysterious serial killer; aiding him is imprisoned criminal genius Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter. Director: Brett Ratner After the death of his parents during World War II, young Hannibal Lecter moves in with his beautiful aunt and begins plotting revenge on the barbarians responsible for his sister's death. Director: Peter Webber A young F.B.I. cadet must confide in an incarcerated and manipulative killer to receive his help on catching another serial killer who skins his victims. Director: Jonathan Demme Former FBI profiler Will Graham returns to service to pursue a deranged serial murderer named "the Tooth Fairy" by the media. Director: Michael Mann An American seminary student travels to Italy to take an exorcism course. Director: Mikael Håfström Explores the early relationship between the renowned psychiatrist and his patient, a young FBI criminal profiler, who is haunted by his ability to empathize with serial killers.

Stars: Hugh Dancy, Mads Mikkelsen, Caroline Dhavernas An attorney, intent on climbing the career ladder toward success, finds an unlikely opponent in a manipulative criminal he is trying to prosecute. Director: Gregory Hoblit A covert counter-terrorist unit called Black Cell led by Gabriel Shear wants the money to help finance their war against international terrorism, but it's all locked away. Gabriel brings in convicted hacker Stanley Jobson to help him. Director: Dominic Sena Two NYC cops arrest a Yakuza member and must escort him when he's extradited to Japan. Director: Ridley Scott The vampire comes to England to seduce a visitor's fiancée and inflict havoc in the foreign land. Director: Francis Ford Coppola Teenage boys discover discipline and camaraderie on an ill-fated sailing voyage. Director: Ridley Scott Balian of Ibelin travels to Jerusalem during the crusades of the 12th century, and there he finds himself as the defender of the city and its people. Director: Ridley Scott Edit Storyline The continuing saga of Hannibal Lecter, the murdering cannibal. He is presently in Italy and works as a curator at a museum.

Clarice Starling, the FBI agent whom he aided to apprehend a serial killer, was placed in charge of an operation but when one of her men botches it, she's called to the mat by the Bureau. One high ranking official, Paul Krendler has it in for her. But she gets a reprieve because Mason Verger, one of Lecter's victims who is looking to get back at Lecter for what Lecter did to him, wants to use Starling to lure him out. When Lecter sends her a note she learns that he's in Italy so she asks the police to keep an eye out for him. But a corrupt policeman who wants to get the reward that Verger placed on him, tells Verger where he is. But they fail to get him. Later Verger decides to frame Starling which makes Lecter return to the States. And the race to get Lecter begins. Written by rcs0411@yahoo.com The silence will be broken.

See more » Genres: Rated R for strong gruesome violence, some nudity and language | See all certifications » Parents Guide: 9 February 2001 (USA) See more » Also Known As: The Silence of the Lambs 2 See more » Filming Locations: $58,003,121 (USA) (9 February 2001) Gross: Did You Know? Trivia There is a vegetarian cookbook on top of the fridge in the "dinner scene" toward the end of the movie. It's visible when Hannibal pushes Clarice against the fridge. See more » Goofs In the opening scene, Verger asks Barney questions about Starling's relationship with Lecter that imply it's their first discussion on the subject, yet Verger subsequently tells Barney to "keep all those items from your personal treasure trove coming," implying that they meet on a regular basis. See more » Quotes [apparently about to cut Starling's hand off with a cleaver] Hannibal Lecter : This is really gonna hurt. See more » Crazy Credits After the credits, we hear Lecter say "Ta ta, H.", the closing line of the post-script in his letter to Clarice.

See more » Connections Performed by The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra (as City of Prague Philharmonic) Courtesy of Silva Screen Records (Edinburgh, United Kingdom) – See all my reviews I like this film a lot, but of course it suffers - as all sequels do - by comparison to its predecessor, in this case 'Silence of the Lambs' The main reason for having a sequel at all was to showcase again the character of Hannibal Lecter, a monstrous creation everyone wanted to see more of after the first film. It could have bombed badly therefore if writer and actor had let us down by failing to catch the magic again. It was after all a decade after the original was made. But they don't, and Anthony Hopkins turns in another delicious performance as the man with the evil intent cloaked in inestimable, menacing charm. Julianne Moore drew the short straw in having to re-create the Clarice Starling role that had been so memorably played by another actress. She does well in my opinion, but inevitably we keep thinking 'where is Jodie Foster?', and this lends her portrayal a lack of credibility which is entirely unfair.

Gary Oldman's Mason Verger is suitably loathsome and manages to make Lecter seem almost like the hero in their battle of wits. If there is a weak link, Ray Liotta's Krendler seems a bit misplaced. The direction deserves special mention. The lush, beautiful settings are mocked by the horror of what is happening in them and the perfectly-selected atmospheric music stayed in my mind long after the film had ended. Once again, the film lacks realism, but as with the original, it doesn't matter. Of course things like this don't really happen - but so what? It's a film. Get over it! I was prompted after seeing it to read the books, and the right decision was made in changing the ending of this story from that written by Thomas Harris. We were subsequently treated to another look at Lecter in a decent prequel movie, 'Red Dragon,' but I will not be alone in hoping that some day we will see yet more of him in a further instalment. Unlikely I suspect - but not impossible. 55 of 81 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?

Yes Hannibal (film) | Hannibal Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia Ray Liotta as Paulinus Krendler Giancarlo Giannini as Chief Inspector Rinaldo Pazzi Željko Ivanek as Dr. Cordell Doemling Hazelle Goodman as Evelda Drumgo Frankie R. Faison as Barney Matthews Ivano Marescotti as Carlo Deogracias Francesca Neri as Allegra Pazzi Danielle de Niese as Beatrice Synopsis (contains spoilers) Edit The film takes place ten years after the events depicted in The Silence of the Lambs. In the opening scene, Barney, one of Hannibal Lecter 's minders at the Baltimore hospital, talks to a disfigured and paraplegic man, Mason Verger, about the conversations Barney had with Lecter and Lecter's relationship with Clarice Starling. Barney then shows Verger a boxed object he's brought with him: the leather restraining mask used to cover Lecter's face when he was being transported. Barney asks for a price of $250,000 for it and Verger eagerly accepts.

FBI agent Clarice Starling is in Washington DC, leading a raid to arrest an HIV-positive drug dealer named Evelda Drumgo. Though Starling has laid out precise plans to the arresting team, the raid is horrifically botched when one of the agents rushes Drumgo and her gang after Starling orders them to stand down because Drumgo is carrying an infant. A massive gunfight breaks out and most of Drumgo's gang are killed, along with a few of the agents. When Clarice orders Drumgo to surrender, Drumgo whips out a machine pistol and opens fire, hitting Clarice. Clarice responds reflexively and shoots and kills Drumgo, splattering the infant with her blood. Clarice, who had been wearing a bulletproof vest, recovers the child and washes it off with a nearby hose. Starling is disgraced by Justice Department official Paul Krendler, whose romantic advances Starling had rejected years earlier. As a result of the publicity surrounding the drug raid, Starling and her past connection to escaped serial killer Hannibal Lecter comes to the attention of one of Lecter's victims, Mason Verger who is also a wealthy, sadistic pedophile.

Verger, Lecter's fourth victim, was left horrifically disfigured and paralyzed by a past encounter with Lecter, still seeks revenge for what occurred. He uses his political influence to have Starling assigned to the Lecter case once again in the hope that this will draw Lecter out of hiding. Verger claims to have new information about Lecter (an X-ray), which he is willing to disclose only to Starling, and she is sent to his estate to collect it and interview him. Upon her arrival, Verger tells Starling about his history with Lecter. They met when Lecter was assigned by a court as Verger's therapist after Verger's conviction on multiple counts of child molestation. Verger invited Lecter to his pied de terre. While showing Lecter his noose used for auto erotic asphyxiation, Lecter offered Verger an amyl popper. In reality, it was a cocktail of hallucinogenic drugs. Lecter then convinced Verger to cut off his face and feed it to his dogs, then snapped his neck with the noose.

Verger is now bedridden and confined to his secluded mansion, but with the assistance of his personal physician Cordell and other minions, he is pursuing an elaborate scheme to capture, torture and kill Lecter. In Florence, Italy, Chief Inspector Rinaldo Pazzi of the Questura is investigating the disappearance of the curator of the Capponi Library, a Renaissance palace that serves as a repository of rare books, historical documents, and art treasures. In the course of his investigation, Pazzi meets the new curator: "Dr. Fell," who is actually Hannibal Lecter. As Verger surmised, Lecter soon learns of Starling's public disgrace and reassignment to his case, and he sends her a letter that is at once sympathetic and mocking. The letter contains no apparent clue to Lecter's whereabouts, but Starling detects a strange fragrance upon it. She takes it to a perfume company, where the experts inform her that the writer used a very expensive skin cream that could have been sold in only a few shops in the world, one of which is in Florence.

Starling contacts the police departments of the cities where the shops are located, including Pazzi's department, asking for copies of any surveillance tapes made by cameras installed in the shops. When Pazzi sees one of his men making a copy of such a tape for Starling, he recognizes "Fell" in the tape and decides to find out why the FBI is interested in him. Pazzi accesses the FBI's database of fugitive criminals and learns that "Fell" is Hannibal Lecter. He also learns that Verger is offering a reward of $3 million to anyone who assists him in capturing Lecter in lieu of turning him over to the FBI (who offer a $250,000 reward). Hoping to collect the larger bounty, Pazzi makes contact with Verger's people and agrees to help them kidnap Lecter. Starling, meanwhile, has received the surveillance tape from Florence, has recognized Lecter, and has learned that Pazzi has been using the FBI's database to check on Lecter. She calls Pazzi and warns him against trying to capture Lecter himself, but Pazzi ignores her warning. Pazzi coerces a local pickpocket into wearing a cheap bracelet and attempting to rob Lecter.

The pickpocket follows Lecter through the streets of Florence. When he reaches for Lecter's wallet, Lecter grabs him by the wrist (and the bracelet) and slyly stabs the man in the upper leg, severing his femoral artery. Pazzi finds the thief and takes the bracelet from him, leaving him to bleed to death on the street. Pazzi sends the bracelet with Lecter's prints to Verger who has them confirmed as Lecter's. Pazzi and Verger's men try to kidnap Lecter after his scheduled evening lecture on the poetry of Dante to a group of scholars at the Palazzo Vecchio, but their plan goes badly awry. Lecter interrogates Pazzi, forcing him to answer several questions by threatening to kill and eat Pazzi's wife. Lecter murders Pazzi by first slashing open the man's abdomen and then throwing him off an upper floor balcony with a noose around his neck, disembowelling him in the process -- the same fate of one of Pazzi's ancient ancestors. Lecter then escapes, slashing the throat of one of Verger's henchmen, deciding to return to the United States to renew his acquaintance with Starling.

Frustrated by the failed attempt to kidnap Lecter, Verger tries to draw him out of hiding once again by getting Starling into more trouble. He bribes Krendler to accuse her of withholding a note she received from Lecter. The ploy works, and Starling is suspended from duty. Verger's men keep her under surveillance in the hope that Lecter will contact her. Lecter, meanwhile, has been watching her and also watching Krendler. Lecter then buys china and crystal for an elaborate meal and also steals surgical equipment from a hospital. He takes everything to a secluded lakefront house that he has learned belongs to Krendler. Lecter then contacts Starling, luring her to Washington's Union Station for a meeting. Verger's men follow her there. As Starling looks for Lecter among the crowd of travelers and shoppers at the station, she and Lecter converse by cell phone.

He expresses his admiration for her and his sympathy for the shabby treatment she has received from the FBI, at one point suggesting that he might force the people who have disrespected her to "scream apologies." Having spotted Lecter, Verger's men capture him in the station's parking lot despite Starling's efforts to stop them. Starling makes a fruitless attempt to expose Verger's scheme to the FBI. Meanwhile, Verger's men transport Lecter to the Verger estate. Verger greets Lecter and graphicallly describes his plan, he plans to watch Lecter being eaten alive by a herd of vicious wild boars that Verger, an expert at swine breeding from his days in the family meatpacking business, has prepared especially for the purpose. Verger taunt Lecter, saying he probably wished that he fed the rest of him to the dogs. Lecter replies that he much prefers Verger in his current state. When the FBI refuses to act on her report that Verger has kidnapped Lecter, Starling goes alone to Verger's estate.

She intervenes as Verger's henchmen are about to unleash the pigs on Lecter, shooting the men and freeing him, but she is shot and wounded in the shoulder. Lecter then rescues her from the animals. When a furious Verger orders his physician Cordell to shoot Lecter, Lecter persuades Cordell (who has always hated his master) to throw Verger into the pen with the hogs instead, and Verger dies in the very manner in which he had hoped to kill Lecter, Lecter having assured Cordell he will take the blame for the deed. Lecter takes Starling to Krendler's lakefront house and treats her bullet wound. She awakens in an upstairs bedroom, dressed for a formal occasion. On her way downstairs, she finds a phone and calls the police. Instead of taking their advice and leaving the house to wait for their arrival, she looks for Lecter downstairs. She finds him in the dining room where he has set the table as if for an elegant dinner party, watched by the seated Krendler, who has been heavily drugged.

As Starling looks on, horrified, Lecter removes the top of Krendler's skull, cuts out part of his brain (the part that Lecter says is "associated with good manners"), sautés it in a pan by the table, and feeds it to the dazed Krendler. Clarice is horrified, pleading with Lecter to stop and saying she'll give him the details of the FBI's profile on him so he can escape. When Lecter wheels Krendler back to the kitchen to clear up after the "meal," Starling attacks him with a silver candlestick but is easily overpowered. Lecter traps her hair in the fridge. He asks her, "Tell me Clarice, would you ever say to me, 'Stop ... if you loved me, you'd stop'?" To which Starling replies, "Not in a thousand years." Lecter replies with, "That's my girl," then kisses Starling. Just as he is about to leave, thinking he's won, he hears a click and sees that Starling has handcuffed his wrist to her own. When she refuses to provide the key, Lecter pins her wrist to a table and brandishes a meat cleaver.

He raises it and says, "This is really going to hurt." Next we see Starling outside the house, looking for Lecter, who escaped just before the police cars arrived. Both her hands are intact. The last scene is of Lecter on an airplane. One of his arms is in a sling. His hand is not visible. He is preparing to eat the boxed meal he has brought with him, and the small boy sitting next to him asks about the food. Lecter opens the container to reveal several kinds of food, among which is what appears to be part of Krendler's brain, cooked and sliced. The boy asks to try some of the food, and Lecter allows him to, after saying that his mother always told him to try new things. Gallery Bach Movie - Hannibal (The Silence of the Lambs 2) Thomas Harris (novel "Hannibal"); David Mamet (screenplay); Steven Zaillian (screenplay) Actors: Anthony Hopkins (Hannibal Lecter); Julianne Moore (Clarice Starling); Gary Oldman (Mason Verger); Ray Liotta (Paul Krendler); Frankie Faison (Nurse Barney - as Frankie R.

Faison); Giancarlo Giannini (Insp. Renaldo Pazzi); Francesca Neri (Allegra Pazzi); Zeljko Ivanek (Dr. Cordell Doemling); Hazelle Goodman (Evelda Drumgo); David Andrews (FBI Agent Pearsall); Francis Guinan (FBI Asst. Director Noonan); James Opher (DEA Agent John Eldridge); Enrico Lo Verso (Gnocco); Ivano Marescotti (Carlo); Fabrizio Gifuni (Matteo) Description: Hannibal returns to America and attempts to make contact with disgraced Agent Starling and survive a vengeful victim's plan. Part four in the Hannibal Lecter Quadrilogy. Having escaped the asylum in "Silence of the Lambs," Dr Lecter goes into hiding in Florence, Italy. Back in America, Mason Verger, an old victim of the doctor's, seeks revenge. Disfigured and confined to a life-support system, he plans to draw Lecter out of his hiding place, using the one thing he truly cares for: Clarice Starling.

(James McManus) After having successfully eluded the authorities for years, Hannibal peacefully lives in Italy in disguise as an art scholar. Trouble strikes again when he is discovered leaving a deserving few dead in the process. He returns back to America to once again make contact with now disgraced Agent Clarice Starling who is suffering the wrath of a malicious FBI official/rival as well as the media. Meanwhile, Hannibal must survive the advances by a disfigured and vengeful victim he first came in contact with years ago as a patient. He finds himself being tracked down not only by his wealthy victim and his henchmen but also by Agent Starling and the American authorities. (MonkeyKingMA) Yes, he's back, and he's still hungry. Ten years after The Silence of the Lambs, Dr. Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lecter (Anthony Hopkins, reprising his Oscar-winning role) is living the good life in Italy, studying art and sipping espresso.

FBI agent Clarice Starling (Julianne Moore, replacing Jodie Foster), on the other hand, hasn't had it so good--an outsider from the start, she's now a quiet, moody loner who doesn't play bureaucratic games and suffers for it. A botched drug raid results in her demotion--and a request from Lecter's only living victim, Mason Verger (Gary Oldman, uncredited), for a little Q and A. Little does Clarice realize that the hideously deformed Verger--who, upon suggestion from Dr. Lecter, peeled off his own face--is using her as bait to lure Dr. Lecter out of hiding, quite certain he'll capture the good doctor. Taking the basic plot contraptions from Thomas Harris's baroque novel, Hannibal is so stylistically different from its predecessor that it forces you to take it on its own terms. Director Ridley Scott gives the film a sleek, almost European look that lets you know that, unlike the first film (which was about the quintessentially American Clarice), this movie is all Hannibal. Does it work? Yes--but only up to a point.

Scott adeptly sets up an atmosphere of foreboding, but it's all buildup for anticlimax, as Verger's plot for abducting Hannibal (and feeding him to man-eating wild boars) doesn't really deliver the requisite visceral thrills, and the much-ballyhooed climatic dinner sequence between Clarice, Dr. Lecter, and a third unlucky guest wobbles between parody and horror. Hopkins and Moore are both first-rate, but the film contrives to keep them as far apart as possible, when what made Silence so amazing was their interaction. When they do connect it's quite thrilling, but it's unfortunately too little too late. (Mark Englehart, Amazon.com) Anthony Hopkins is "perverse perfection" (Rolling Stone) in his return to the role of Dr. Hannibal Lecter, the sophisticated killer who comes out of hiding to draw FBI agent Clarice Starling (Julianne Moore) into a high-stakes battle that will test her strength, cunning and loyalty. Ten years after "The Silence of the Lambs," Hannibal Lecter returns to the table.

He is played, once again, by Anthony Hopkins, who seems both more placid-as you would expect, for the doctor has been enjoying his freedom-and more particular in his cravings. Lecter is in Florence, where he is suspected by a local detective (Giancarlo Giannini, the best and most rumpled thing in the movie). Also on the trail is Clarice Starling (Julianne Moore), who is now an outcast within the F.B.I. Huntress and prey finally meet; indeed, we are given to understand that they can barely keep away from each other. What spoils the harmony is the vengeful presence of Mason Verger (played by an uncredited star), one of Lecter's less decorous victims. The screenwriters, David Mamet and Steven Zaillian, do a good job of sifting the dross from Thomas Harris's novel, and the director, Ridley Scott, gets elegant value from what remains. The locations are lush, the reworked ending could not be neater, and the special effects were apparently devised by an abattoir. There's just one problem, and it's insurmountable: this is not a scary movie.

You may gawp or flinch, but your pulse, like that of Dr. Lecter himself, will stay disappointingly slow. (Anthony Lane, Copyright ן¿½ 2006 The New Yorker) Language: Hannibal (2001) - Official Trailer - YouTube Hannibal (2001) - Official Trailer Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. The interactive transcript could not be loaded. Loading... Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Uploaded on Mar 9, 2011 Having escaped the asylum in "Silence of the Lambs," Dr Lecter goes into hiding in Florence, Italy. Back in America, Mason Verger, an old victim of the doctor's, seeks revenge. Disfigured and confined to a life-support system, he plans to draw Lecter out of his hiding place, using the one thing he truly cares for: Clarice Starling. Part 4 of the "Hannibal Lecter" Quadrilogy.

Released on 2001 Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Julianne Moore, Gary Oldman, Ray Liotta Category Why was a sequel of Silence of the Lambs not made? - Quora Quora A sequel to the film was made: Hannibal (2001) There were also three prequels: Written Apr 13, 2015 Silence of the lamb had two sequels Hannibal (2001)AND Hannibal Rising (2007) film and prequel Red Dragon (2002)made out. No other film in this series was able to match the level set by Silence of the lamb. But Red dragon and Hannibal have enough to satisfy the needs of lector fans. I feel once Jonathan Demme moved away from the Hannibal project, it went in another direction. Compared to Silence of the lamb, Hannibal is more violent and grotesque. I think whatever wrong with the film came from the book and Ridly Scott did a good job in holding it together considering the fact Jonathan refused the project for being too violent. Red Dragon was a decent job. It does give us a sense of déjà vu, But never the less a neat film.

The other one I don't even want to talk about. The Silence of the Lambs (1991) - News NEWS 28 November 2001 | WENN | See recent WENN news » Hollywood bosses are giving ageing Welsh actor Anthony Hopkins a face-lift. Producers behind the Silence Of The Lambs and Hannibal prequel Red Dragon are using digital technology to make Hopkins appear younger in the movie, which is set years before the smash hit movies. Visual technology will be employed to clear away wrinkles and age spots from Hopkins' face, making him appear up to 20 years younger than his 63 years. Red Dragon begins shooting next year. » 22 November 2001 | WENN | See recent WENN news » Julianne Moore has become the latest celebrity model for make-up giant Revlon. The stunning redhead, who turns 40 next month, will join Halle Berry , Melanie Griffith and Rhea Durham as a spokesmodel for the brand. The Oscar-nominated actress is expected to get $3 million for a year's contract - the same amount she got for playing Clarice Starling in the Silence Of The Lambs sequel this year.

Cheryl Vitali, Revlon's executive vice president says, "She is a major celebrity, and celebrity is part of the Revlon heritage. Women find her appealing and likable. She's beautiful, modern and glamorous; she's a mom and has a significant other. She's the complete package and is highly inspirational to women. She's an ageless, timeless beauty." Julianne and her husband Bart Freundlich are expecting their second child next summer. » 15 October 2001 | WENN | See recent WENN news » Anthony Hopkins is a secret patron of impoverished students -- he sent a struggling actor $2,900 to help with his acting classes. The Silence Of The Lambs Oscar-winning actor gave British soap opera actor Samuel James Hudson the check in response to a letter begging for help. Brookside actor James reveals, "When I was a struggling student, I wrote to Sir Anthony asking if he could help me out with my grant of $10,160 a year. I was living on the breadline. Back came a cheque for $2,900.

When further study became impossible I returned the check, but it came back with a note telling me to give it to another actor who needed help." The young actor, who will soon star in British TV's Heart Of The Valley, has yet to meet his generous benefactor, but would love to thank the thoughtful legend in person. James says, "I've never met Sir Anthony, but I hope one day I will -- just to thank him. I've heard he quietly funds other students -- what a man, and what a heart!" » 30 May 2001 | WENN | See recent WENN news » Mission: Impossible II stunner Thandie Newton is back at work - just seven months after having a baby. The actress started work five months earlier than planned, despite promising herself a year off to look after her child. She is currently in Paris filming The Truth About Charlie , a re-make of the Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn 1963 thriller Charade . The former Cambridge University graduate stars opposite Mark Wahlberg in the film, which is directed by Silence Of The Lambs auteur Jonathan Demme .

Thandie spends the rest of her time looking after her daughter Ripley, who was born at her London home in September last year. » 22 March 2001 | WENN | See recent WENN news » Movie pretty boy Jude Law is being lined up to play the young Hannibal Lecter. Studio bosses are said to be keen to recruit the fine-boned British actor to star in a remake of the original Hannibal film, Manhunter . The film, based on Red Dragon, the first of the Thomas Harris books to feature the cannibalistic serial killer, was filmed in 1986 with Brian Cox taking the lead role of the fiendish villain. Ted Tally , who wrote the screenplay for The Silence Of The Lambs , is working on the script and is thought to be keen to snap up the British actor. » 7 March 2001 | WENN | See recent WENN news » Hollywood's biggest names are set for a shock thanks to a damning new report in Los Angeles magazine. The embarrassing article reveals the real reasons why certain stars didn't get roles in Mick Jagger's new film The Man From Elysian Fields .

According to the forthcoming 'acting' issue, Julia Ormond was turned down because she's "totally boring, " ER star Julianna Margulies because, "I don't think she means anything, " and James Coburn because he "doesn't quite seem intellectual." The comments come from behind-closed-doors meetings between producers and casting agents. Meanwhile, reports from the set of Hannibal suggest Calista Flockhart and Hilary Swank were turned down for the Silence Of The Lambs sequel because they were deemed too skinny and Angelina Jolie and Cate Blanchett were considered too tall for the part of Clarice Starling. » 16 February 2001 | WENN | See recent WENN news » Jeremy Irons has shocked radio audiences by comparing gory movies to ancient Greek tragedies. Irons who turned down the role of cannibal DR. Hannibal Lector in The Silence Of The Lambs was speaking on Australian radio this week. He said, "I don't think we need to be too worried about gory, horrendous stories, they have been around forever. I think a bit of tongue in cheek is probably required to see [ Hannibal ].

But just remember it's only a movie and if it is very gory, so are some of the Greek tragedies - eating their sons baked in pies, cutting out eyes." » 12 February 2001 | WENN | See recent WENN news » Anthony Hopkins uses his terrifying Hannibal Lecter character to terrify kids he meets in elevators. The actor admits he's thrilled that people are scared of him now that he's back as Lecter in the Silence Of The Lambs sequel Hannibal - and he's using their fear to have a little fun. Hopkins first saw the movie with an audience Thursday in New York and admits he deliberately increased tension in the audience. He says, "I crept in and sat at the back and watched everyone jumping. At one point I leaned forward and whispered, `Are you enjoying the film?' in Lecter's voice. The person in front was terrified." And Hopkins is also finding he only has to stand in elevators to scare the wits out of hotel guests. He explains, "This woman and her son got in and I was standing towards the back of the lift.

Her son said it reminded him of Hannibal Lecter's glass cage in Silence of The Lambs and at that point the lady turned round, saw me and screamed. The poor boy was terrified. He's probably scarred for life." » 8 February 2001 | WENN | See recent WENN news » Sir Anthony Hopkins has revealed the secret inspiration behind his famed Hannibal Lecter character - it's a cat. The 63-year-old Welsh actor, who first terrified audiences with his performance as the cannibalistic serial killer in The Silence Of The Lambs is now back on the big screen in the film's sequel Hannibal . Hopkins, who got to roam around the streets of Florence during filming, says his character has a deliberately feline quality. Hopkins says, "I got to move around a lot more this time, and I sort of modelled my walk on a cat's. I like cats, and I love the way they pad around.

I wanted to get that feel when Lecter is padding very quietly and stealthily in the shadows around the streets of Florence." Fans of Lecter's famous slurping tongue sound and remarks about Chianti are set to be disappointed - in Hannibal, Hopkins doesn't slurp once. He explains, "I didn't want to repeat the tongue thing. I didn't want to do the old tricks again; it would be boring. I came up with some new things for him to say, like 'Goody, goody', 'Okeydokey, ' 'Tah-dah' and 'It's to die for.' It makes the audience laugh." » 19 January 2001 | WENN | See recent WENN news » Welsh actor Sir Anthony Hopkins is refusing to reprise his Oscar- winning role as Hannibal Lecter in a prequel to Silence of the Lambs, The (1991) . The star believes he has taken the role as far as it will go - even though he has been offered a reported $20 million to carry on the vicious slaughtering.

Producer Dino De Laurentiis is keen to make another thriller based on Thomas Harris ' first book containing Lecter, Red Dragon. But Hopkins has said to close friends, "I think we've gone to the line with Hannibal, with the jokes and the gore. I think people would think we were being greedy if we went on any further." Red Dragon was previously adapted into the movie Manhunter (1986) by director Michael Mann with British actor Brian Cox in the lead role as the flesh-eating killer. De Laurentiis insists, "Everyone wants to see what happened before Lecter was originally caught. There is room for more than Harris put in his first novel. The entertainment factor is still very high, as is the demand." » 11 January 2001 | WENN | See recent WENN news » The mastermind behind Hannibal (2001) thinks his human-flesh eating anti-hero is something of a comedian. Gladiator (2000) director Ridley Scott says the psychotic Dr. Lecter character, portrayed by Anthony Hopkins , is always looking to "get a laugh" even when he's about to pounce on another helpless victim.

Scott says what struck him most when he saw the first manuscript for the new film were the humor and charm of the man. He says, "Hannibal's not just a ruthless killer. Absolutely not. Thomas Harris 's book is genuinely full of wit and I hope we have translated that into the movie. I shall be very disappointed if I hear that people aren't smiling - when they're not screaming!" And Scott is ecstatic at the performances in his new movie - including that of Julianne Moore , who replaced Jodie Foster in the lead role. "Julianne is simply sensational and Anthony Hopkins is quite terrifying when he puts his mind to it. What's weird about Tony is that you're chatting to him one moment over a cup of tea and then you're watching him through a camera and feeling your hair stand on end. He was brilliant in Silence of the Lambs, The (1991) . So he's brilliant again." » 4 January 2001 | WENN | See recent WENN news » Even though his latest film is not yet released, plans for legendary horror character Hannibal Lecter's return to screen are already in place.

Screenwriter Ted Tally , who won an Oscar for Silence of the Lambs, The (1991) , is now working on the screenplay for Red Dragon, the Thomas Harris book which first introduced Hannibal Lecter to the world. Tally, who passed on writing the screenplay for the soon-to-be- released sequel Hannibal (2001) because he found the book's violence excessive, is altering the plot of Red Dragon to feature more of Hannibal Lecter because, he says, Anthony Hopkins is willing to return yet again in the role. The writer says his interpretation of Red Dragon will feature Lecter running loose after an escape from prison, but he will, "never show Lecter eating people. It's just too gross. I just imply it." Some fans are already against the idea of "ruining" the book, claiming there's already a very solid adaptation of Red Dragon, Manhunter (1986) , written and directed by Michael Mann , and another is not necessary.

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Hannibal Lecter | The Silence Of The Lambs Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia The Silence Of The Lambs Wiki Share I Ate His Liver With Fava Beans Hannibal Lecter is a fictional character in a series of suspense novels by Thomas Harris.Lecter was introduced in the 1981 thriller novel Red Dragon as a brilliant psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer. The novel and its sequel, The Silence of the Lambs, feature Lecter as one of the primary antagonists after the two serial killers in both novels. In the third novel, Hannibal, Lecter becomes a protagonist. His role as the antihero occurs in the fourth novel, Hannibal Rising, which explores his childhood and development into a serial killer.The first film adapted from the Harris novels was Manhunter (based on Red Dragon) which features Brian Cox as Lecter, spelled "Lecktor". In 1991, Anthony Hopkins won an Academy Award for his portrayal of the character in The Silence of the Lambs.

He would reprise the role in Hannibal in 2001 and in a second adaptation of Red Dragon made in 2002 under the original title.In 2003, Hannibal Lecter (as portrayed by Hopkins) was chosen by the American Film Institute as the #1 movie villain.[1] In June 2010, Entertainment Weekly named him one of the 100 Greatest Characters of the Last 20 Years.[2]Contents [hide] 1 Character overview2 Appearances2.1 Novels2.2 In film2.3 In television3 Real-life models4 See also5 References6 External linksCharacter overview[edit] Red Dragon firmly states that Lecter does not fit any known psychological profile. In the film adaptation of The Silence of the Lambs, Lecter's keeper, Dr. Frederick Chilton, claims that Lecter is a "pure psychopath"; however, in the novel, Dr. Chilton calls Lecter a sociopath.

Lecter's pathology is explored in greater detail in Hannibal and Hannibal Rising, which explain that he was traumatized as a child in Lithuania in 1944 when he witnessed the murder and cannibalism of his beloved younger sister, Mischa, by Lithuanian Hilfswillige. One of the Hilfswillige members claimed that Lecter unwittingly ate his sister as well.All media in which Lecter appears portray him as cultured and sophisticated, with refined tastes in art, music, and cuisine. He is well-educated and knows several languages. He is frequently depicted preparing gourmet meals from his victims' flesh, the most famous example being his admission in the film adaptation of The Silence of the Lambs that he once ate a census taker's liver "with fava beans and a nice Chianti". He is deeply offended by rudeness, and frequently kills people who have bad manners—or, as he calls them in Hannibal, "free-range rude".

Prior to his capture and imprisonment, he is a member of Baltimore, Maryland's social elite, and a sitting member of the Baltimore Philharmonic Orchestra's board of directors.In The Silence of the Lambs, Lecter is described through protagonist Clarice Starling's eyes: "small, sleek, and in his hands and arms she saw wiry strength like her own". The novel also reveals that Lecter's left hand has a condition called mid ray duplication polydactyly, i.e. a duplicated middle finger.[3] In Hannibal, he performs plastic surgery on his own face on several occasions, and removes his extra digit. Lecter's eyes are a shade of maroon, and reflect the light in "pinpoints of red".[4] He has small white teeth[5] and dark, slicked-back hair with a widow's peak. He also has a keen sense of smell; in The Silence of the Lambs, he is able to identify through a plate glass window the brand of perfume that Starling wore the day before.Appearances[edit] Novels[edit]In the backstory of Red Dragon, FBI profiler Will Graham initially consults Lecter about a series of murders and realizes that Lecter is the culprit.

Lecter realizes that Graham is on to him, creeps up behind him and stabs him, nearly disemboweling him, but not killing him. Lecter is convicted and incarcerated in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, under the care of Dr. Frederick Chilton, a pompous, incompetent psychologist whom Lecter despises. Some years later, Graham comes out of retirement and consults Lecter in order to catch another serial killer, Francis Dolarhyde, known by the nickname "The Tooth-Fairy". Through the classifieds of a tabloid, The National Tattler, Lecter provides Dolarhyde with Graham's home address, enabling Dolarhyde to disfigure Graham and attempt to kill his family. At the end of the novel, Lecter sends Graham a note saying that he hopes Graham isn't "too ugly".In the 1988 sequel The Silence of the Lambs, Lecter assists an FBI agent-in-training named Clarice Starling in catching a serial killer known as "Buffalo Bill".

Lecter is fascinated by Starling, and they form an unusual relationship in which he provides her with a profile of the killer and his modus operandi in exchange for details about her unhappy childhood. Lecter had previously met Buffalo Bill, the former lover of his patient (and eventual victim) Benjamin Raspail. He does not reveal this information directly, instead giving Starling vague clues to help her figure it out for herself. Lecter eventually stages a dramatic, bloody escape from captivity and disappears. While in hiding, he writes one letter to Starling wishing her well, and another to Chilton swearing gruesome revenge. Chilton disappears soon afterward.In the third novel, 1999's Hannibal, Lecter lives in a palazzo in Florence, Italy, and works as a museum curator under the alias "Dr. Fell". The novel reveals that one of Lecter's victims survived: Mason Verger, a wealthy, sadistic pedophile whom Lecter had drugged and mutilated during a therapy session. Verger offers a huge reward for anyone who apprehends Lecter, whom he intends to feed to feral pigs specially bred for the purpose.

Verger enlists the help of Rinaldo Pazzi, a disgraced Italian police inspector, and Paul Krendler, a corrupt Justice Department official and Starling's boss. Lecter kills Pazzi and returns to the United States to escape Verger's Sardinian henchmen, only to be captured. Starling follows them, intent on apprehending Lecter personally, but is instead also taken captive. After escaping the trap, Lecter convinces Verger's sister Margot to kill her brother as revenge for raping her when they were children, and leaves a voice mail message taking responsibility for the crime. He then rescues the wounded Starling and takes her to his rented lake house to treat her. During her time there he keeps her sedated, attempting to transform her into his dead sister Mischa through a regimen of classical conditioning and mind-altering drugs. One day, he invites her to a formal dinner where the guest and first course is Krendler, whose brain they consume together. On this night, Starling tells Lecter that Mischa's memory can live within him instead of taking her place. She then offers him her breast, and they become lovers.

The novel ends three years later with the couple living in Argentina.Harris wrote a 2006 prequel, Hannibal Rising, after film producer Dino De Laurentiis (who owned the cinematic rights to the Lecter character) announced that he was going to make a film depicting Lecter's childhood and development into a serial killer with or without Harris' help. (Harris would also write the film's screenplay.) The novel chronicles Lecter's early life, from birth into an aristocratic family in Lithuania in 1933, to being orphaned, along with his beloved sister Mischa, in 1944 when a German Stuka bomber attacks a Soviet tank in front of their forest hideaway. Shortly thereafter, Lecter and Mischa are captured by a band of Nazi collaborators, who murder and cannibalize Mischa before her brother's eyes; Lecter later learns that the collaborators also fed him Mischa's remains. Irreparably traumatized, Lecter escapes from the deserters and takes up residence in an orphanage, where he is bullied by the other children and abused by the dean. He is adopted by his uncle Robert and his Japanese wife, Lady Murasaki.

After his uncle dies, Lecter forms a close, pseudo-romantic relationship with his step-aunt; during this time he also shows great intellectual aptitude, entering medical school at a young age. Despite his seemingly comfortable life, Lecter is consumed by a savage obsession with avenging Mischa's death. He kills for the first time as a teenager, beheading a racist fishmonger who insulted Murasaki. He then methodically tracks down, tortures, and murders each of the men who had killed his sister, in the process forsaking his relationship with Murasaki and seemingly losing all traces of his humanity. The novel ends with Lecter being accepted into the Johns Hopkins Medical Center.In film[edit]Red Dragon was first adapted to film in 1986 as the Michael Mann film Manhunter, although the spelling of Lecter's name was changed to "Lecktor". He was played by actor Brian Cox.[6] Cox based his performance on Scottish serial killer Peter Manuel.[7]In 1991, Orion Pictures produced a Jonathan Demme-directed adaptation of The Silence of the Lambs, in which Lecter was played by actor Anthony Hopkins.

Hopkins' Academy Award–winning performance made Lecter into a cultural icon. In 2001, Hannibal was adapted to film, with Hopkins reprising his role. In the film adaptation, the ending is revised: Starling attempts to apprehend Lecter, who escapes after cutting off his own hand to free himself from her handcuffs. In 2002, Red Dragon was adapted again, this time under its original title, with Hopkins again as Lecter and Edward Norton as Will Graham. Hopkins wrote a screenplay for a Hannibal sequel, ending with Starling killing Lecter, but it was never produced.[8]In late 2006, the novel Hannibal Rising was adapted into the film of the same name, which explained Lecter's development into a serial killer. In the film, which was finished by 2007, eight-year-old Lecter is portrayed by Aaran Thomas, while Gaspard Ulliel portrays him as a young man.

Both the novel and film received generally negative critical reviews.[9]In television[edit]Main article: Hannibal (TV series)In February 2012, NBC gave a series order to Hannibal, a television adaptation of Red Dragon to be written and executive-produced by Bryan Fuller.[10] Mads Mikkelsen plays Lecter,[11] opposite Hugh Dancy as Will Graham.[12]Fuller commented on Mikkelsen's version of Lecter: "What I love about Mads' approach to the character is that, in our first meeting, he was adamant that he didn't want to do Hopkins or Cox. He talked about the character not so much as 'Hannibal Lecter the cannibal psychiatrist', but as Satan – this fallen angel who's enamoured with mankind and had an affinity for who we are as people, but was definitely not among us – he was other. I thought that was a really cool, interesting approach, because I love science fiction and horror and – not that we'd ever do anything deliberately to suggest this – but having it subtextually play as him being Lucifer felt like a really interesting kink to the series.

It was slightly different than anything that's been done before and it also gives it a slightly more epic quality if you watch the show through the prism of, 'This is Satan at work, tempting someone with the apple of their psyche'. It appealed to all of those genre things that get me excited about any sort of entertainment."[13]The pilot episode aired on NBC on April 4, 2013 and amends the original continuity so that Lecter and Graham first meet during the FBI's hunt for the "Minnesota Shrike", Garrett Jacob Hobbs. Throughout the first season, Lecter acts as Graham's unofficial psychiatrist, and comes to think of him as a friend. Nevertheless, Lecter manipulates Graham into believing he is mentally ill and deliberately prevents him from learning that he suffers from encephalitis, all so he can study Graham's behavior. In the final episode of the first season, "Savoureux", Lecter frames Graham for his crimes — but not before Graham realizes that Lecter is the killer he has been hunting. The series also introduces Abigail Hobbs, for whom Lecter feels a paternal affection until he is forced to kill her, and Dr.

Bedelia Du Maurier, Lecter's psychotherapist, who suspects that Lecter is hiding something from her.Real-life models Thomas Harris has given few interviews, and did not explain where he got inspiration for Hannibal Lecter until mid 2013. He revealed that the character was inspired by a real-life Mexican doctor and murderer he met while visiting a prison in Monterrey in the 1960s, as a 23-year-old reporter.[14] The doctor was serving life after murdering a victim and putting them in a small box. Harris, who would only refer to the surgeon by the fake name "Dr Salazar", described him as a “small lithe man with dark red hair”. He added: “There was certain elegance about him.” [15]Harris had gone to interview Dykes Askew Simmons, a US citizen on death row for murdering three young people, but he ended up also speaking to "Salazar", who saved Simmons’ life after a guard shot him during an escape bid.

The doctor revealed his dark side as he began discussing Simmons’ disfigured face, tormented upbringing and how attractive his murdered victims had been.In a making-of documentary for the film version of Hannibal Rising, Lecter's early murders were said to be based on murders that Harris had covered when he was a crime reporter in the 1960s. In 1992, Harris also attended the ongoing trials of Pietro Pacciani, who was suspected of being the serial killer nicknamed the "Monster of Florence". Parts of the killer's modus operandi were used as reference for the novel Hannibal, which was released in 1999.

In an interview on Inside the Actors Studio, Hopkins said that he used the characteristics of Katharine Hepburn and HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey as inspiration for his performance.[citation needed]According to David Sexton, author of The Strange World of Thomas Harris: Inside the Mind of the Creator of Hannibal Lecter, Harris once told a librarian in Cleveland, Mississippi, that Lecter was inspired by William Coyne, a local murderer who had escaped from prison in 1934 and gone on a rampage that included acts of murder and cannibalism.In her book Evil Serial Killers, Charlotte Greig asserts that the serial killer Albert Fish was the inspiration, at least in part, for Lecter.[16] Greig also states that to explain Lecter's pathology, Harris borrowed the story of serial killer and cannibal Andrei Chikatilo's brother Stepan being kidnapped and eaten by starving neighbours (though she states that it is unclear whether the story was true or whether Stepan Chikatilo even existed).[17] Hannibal gave Silence Of The Lambs fans a sequel crazier than they expected / The Dissolve October 11, 2013 features / Forgotbusters

 Hannibal gave Silence Of The Lambs fans a sequel crazier than they expected by Nathan Rabin Forgotbusters re-examines movies that were among the top 25 grossing films the year of their release, but have receded culturally, in order to explore what originally attracted audiences to them, and why they failed to endure.

Ridley Scott’s lush 2001 adaptation of Thomas Harris’ Hannibal was both a beneficiary and a victim of its predecessor’s success. The triumph of Jonathan Demme’s Oscar-festooned 1991 adaptation of Harris’ Silence Of The Lambs—and the public’s enduring fascination with its flesh-eating psychiatrist villain, Hannibal Lecter—all but ensured that the film would be a runaway hit. And, sure enough, Hannibal was a smash, grossing more than $165 million domestically and more than $350 million internationally, numbers that don’t include home video, where it also enjoyed substantial popularity. But Silence Of The Lambs’ phenomenal success also ensured Hannibal would reside in the earlier film’s shadow, a poor relation at best, a crass desecration at worst. I tend to write about movies like that an awful lot here at Forgotbusters: movies based on stars or properties so ubiquitous and popular that the films’ success was preordained, no matter how bad or forgettable they were.

In that respect, a better name for this column might be Inevitabusters or Regretbusters, since in many cases, the culture has halfheartedly spent the years since the films’ initial release pretending we didn’t make these films huge hits. Silence Of The Lambs was itself a continuation of an ongoing story, and the second film to prominently feature Hannibal Lecter following 1986’s Manhunter, which cast Brian Cox as the epicurean-minded madman and William Petersen as obsessed FBI agent Will Graham. Manhunter was as inspired and brilliant in its own way as Silence Of The Lambs, but it was such a pronounced commercial failure that Demme didn’t have to worry about competing with audiences’ memories of a film few people had seen at the time. Cox’s take on Lecter (who was named Hannibal Lecktor in Manhunter for reasons no one seems to understand) was substantially different than Anthony Hopkins’. It was a chillier, more restrained and detached performance. But in the minds of moviegoers, studios, and the public at large, Hopkins essentially originated the role.

Hopkins’ Lecter captured the public’s imagination and transformed the doctor into a household name, a legendary monster and a comic figure whose propensity for devouring human flesh “with fava beans and a nice chianti” became the fodder of late-night jokes and even a parody titled Silence Of The Hams, starring Dom DeLuise as the Lecter figure. Silence Of The Lambs made Hannibal Lecter an insanely lucrative name destined to make the money hairs on studio executives’ necks go woo-woo- woo , but it also made him a joke. When Billy Crystal was wheeled out by “orderlies” at the beginning of the Academy Awards in 1992—where the film triumphed in many of the major awards—wearing a replica of Lecter’s famous mask, it was the year’s most obvious joke . And like most obvious jokes delivered by Crystal, it was rapturously received, even as it pointed out just how defanged and comic the famous villain had become. We live in such an anti-intellectual society that Hannibal Lecter might very well be our most beloved intellectual, with the possible exception of Adlai Stevenson and/or Niles Crane.

A character conceived as a terrifying villain was instead embraced as a charismatic antihero, and the popular subject/dispenser of cannibalism-themed jokes. The public loved Lecter more than is probably healthy, and angrily demanded more of his ongoing adventures in fine dining and vivisection. There was such a fever for more Lecter movies that the great Italian vulgarian Dino De Laurentiis bought the film rights for Hannibal, Harris’ 1999 Silence Of The Lambs sequel, for $10 million before the book was even released, and that’s back when $10 million was still a lot of money. The demand for more Hannibal The Cannibal was so extreme that Stephen King’s glowing New York Times review of Hannibal —which refers to Lecter as “the greatest fictional monster of our time”—includes the sentence, “Were I the book’s editor, I would argue very strongly for flap copy consisting of only three words: HERE IT IS.” There were a few problems, however. The book was long and packed with incident. Also, the book was frothing-at-the-mouth insane.

It took the kind of perverse liberties with characters more common to the anything-goes world of fan fiction than the high-stakes world of mass-market publishing and big-budget studio filmmaking, where commercial considerations are paramount, and people have very concrete ideas about how established characters should behave. To give a sense of the novel’s pulpiness, one of its supporting characters is a lesbian bodybuilder named Margot Verger, who works for her grotesquely disfigured, violent pedophile older brother Mason—even though he molested her as a child—because she needs to procure some of his semen so she can impregnate her lover and make her claim on the Verger estate. Margot ultimately anally violates Mason with a cattle prod, then murders him by shoving his beloved pet eel down his throat. When it comes to the novel’s gauntlet of outrageous characters and lurid subplots, Margot is the rule rather than the exception. This is comic-strip Grand Guignol, a literary giallo that delights in pushing the limits. Understandably, Margot didn’t make it into the film version of Hannibal, but plenty of similarly bizarre stuff did, including a scene where a man eats pieces of his own brain.

Bear in mind that this happened in the sequel to a novel whose film adaptation won all five major Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Screenplay. (Adapted, in this instance.) The Academy said Silence Of The Lambs represented the pinnacle of the art form, and Harris followed up its source material with a novel involving characters like Margot. Silence Of The Lambs was also fundamentally pulp involving a cannibalistic serial killer and a second serial killer who murdered women and was sewing their skins into a suit, but the filmmaking elevated it to the level of art, and those Academy Awards and the caliber of the cast and crew gave it tremendous prestige. Then Harris took the tony moneymaking franchise in a lurid, hyperbolic direction, daring the filmmakers who threw $10 million his way to follow his strange, jagged, excessive path. In the novel’s most controversial twist, Hannibal Lecter, mass murderer and foodie, and Clarice Starling, straight-arrow FBI agent, become lovers. And that only happens after Lecter unsuccessfully attempts to brainwash Clarice into believing she’s his beloved, long-dead sister.

And after the two of them dine on the brain of one of Clarice’s still-living colleagues. (It should be noted that he’s a real jerk, and consequently deserves it.) That’s an awful lot to process, just as an audience member. It’s hard to imagine how Jodie Foster must have felt about Clarice’s curious evolution. It may have struck her as a bit of an odd turn, and also a bizarre violation of everything the character represented as a strong, independent feminist role model. The novel was so extreme that in a town that worships success, nearly the entire original creative team behind Silence Of The Lambs declined to return. According to a piece in The Guardian, Demme found the novel excessively “lurid,” while original screenwriter Ted Tally just found it excessive. There are conflicting reports as to why Foster said no. De Laurentiis claims she simply demanded too much money, whereas in a 2007 interview with Total Film, she said the character of Clarice meant so much to her and Demme that they didn’t want to do anything that would “trample” on her.

So the seemingly plum role was given to another great actress, Julianne Moore; Hopkins recommended her after working on Surviving Picasso with her. Moore and Foster have similar personas. They’re both brilliant at playing damaged, fragile women with tremendous inner strength. That seems to make each of them perfect for the role of the conflicted Clarice Starling. Hannibal claims she holds the world record for the female FBI agent who’s shot and killed the most people. (Who even knew the Guinness folks were monitoring it that closely?) And yet she radiates anger and uncertainty. She’s all the more heroic for constantly having to overcome her fear. Foster was perfect for the role. The vulnerability she brought to the part was a big part of what made the film so resonant. She defined the character to such an extent that when Moore communicates in clipped, brusque cadences in a Southern drawl, she seems to be imitating Foster’s performance rather than playing the character Harris wrote.

Moore’s borrowing of Foster’s mannerisms is distracting in the early going, and then the character essentially disappears from the narrative for long stretches while the focus shifts to male characters, only to reappear in the climax as a damsel in distress who needs Lecter to save her. At one point, Lecter even carries Clarice in his arms in a near-perfect replication of the famous image of Kevin Costner carrying Whitney Houston in The Bodyguard. That’s a pretty twisted, unfortunate fate for one of the greatest, strongest heroines in film. Foster probably opted out of reprising her career-defining role because she was understandably wary of a sequel to Silence Of The Lambs that doesn’t have much use for Clarice Starling as anything other than a catalyst to get Hannibal Lecter back in action. But while De Laurentiis encountered a level of “nos” seemingly unthinkable for a big-budget, wildly anticipated sequel to a movie that won so many Oscars, he scored the only “yes” that mattered when Anthony Hopkins agreed to return. There would be no Hannibal without Hopkins. Lecter is the film.

Hopkins doesn’t make his first appearance until well into the proceedings, but he dominates Hannibal to such an extent that it somehow feels like he’s in every scene; the character’s shadow hangs heavy over every moment, even when he’s completely absent. It’s the Poochie Effect in action: When Hannibal isn’t physically onscreen, everyone has to be talking about him, or at the very least, thinking about him. Clarice and Hannibal don’t reconnect physically until late into the third act, but in many of her early scenes, she’s seen listening to tapes of Hannibal talking, inserting his legend into scenes where it wouldn’t make sense for him to be present. When Moore stubbornly fails to make the role her own, it’s probably because there’s almost always an invisible heart-shaped thought bubble floating above her character’s head, with a glamour shot of dreamy Hannibal Lecter inside it. At least in her first scene, Clarice has reason to think about things other than that brilliant Hannibal Lecter and her endlessly fascinating student/mentor, father/daughter, deranged cannibalistic serial killer/driven FBI agent bond with him.

The film introduces Clarice in a high-stakes, PTSD-inducing raid that goes awry. It climaxes with her fatally shooting a machine-gun-toting drug dealer, splattering her blood and viscera all over the infant she’s carrying. Clarice’s public disgrace over organizing the botched raid attracts the attention of Lecter, who has been hanging out in Europe incognito. Hannibal and Clarice’s relationship often takes the form of a warped courtship, and when he writes witheringly to Clarice about how the botched raid will lead to her dying useless and unimportant like her white-trash mother, it feels like a love letter, or at least pop-culture’s most extended and elaborate instance of “ negging .” Cruelly exploiting Clarice’s fear of ending up like her parents is simply Hannibal’s way of letting her know he still thinks about her. Hopkins plays Lecter as a man whose incredible contempt for every facet of humanity is only matched by the exquisite, almost sensual pleasure he derives from expressing that hatred. But he’s also a moralist, in that he feels transgressions should be punished in the most extreme manner imaginable.

When Hannibal kills people in Hannibal, it’s because they’ve done something wrong—or, in the case of arch-nemesis Mason Verger, done everything wrong. A man of infinite wealth, power, and depravity, Verger (Gary Oldman) also had the misfortune to have Hannibal Lecter assigned as his court-appointed therapist. Lecter prompted Verger to take a popper one debauched evening, then suggested he carve off his own face with shards of broken glass and feed it to his dogs, which I can’t help but feel violates the Hippocratic Oath. Verger regrettably followed Lecter’s suggestion, leading him to so grotesquely disfigure himself that he now sports what appears to be a small porcelain doll head where his face should be.

He’s a hideous ghoul of a man, but he retains a sense of humor about the experience, quipping to insane-asylum attendant Barney Matthews (Frankie Faison, returning from the first film) about his unfortunate exercise in homemade facial surgery, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” As Verger, Oldman delivers the line with a hilariously incongruous glibness that embodies the film’s approach to its source material. By giving an almost inconceivably grotesque tableau a winking punchline, the film harnesses the nightmare-inducing power of Harris’ novel while maintaining a certain ironic distance. If a dude who carved off his own face with shards of jagged glass in a drug-induced haze can laugh about the experience, why shouldn’t we? “The public loved Lecter more than is probably healthy, and angrily demanded more of his ongoing adventures in fine dining and vivisection.” Verger uses his connections to get Clarice back on the Lecter case in hopes that her involvement will lure him out of hiding and expose him to Verger’s minions, who want to collect on a $3 million bounty for his capture.

Lecter, meanwhile, is hanging out in Florence, where he meets put-upon Rinaldo Pazzi (an entertaining Giancarlo Giannini), a corrupt law-enforcement agent who figures out Lecter’s true identity and sets out to collect the reward for himself, with bleak consequences. Clarice’s sexist, boorish, utterly loathsome colleague Paul Krendler (Ray Liotta) also sets out to collect the bounty and ends up suffering an even more sinister fate for his greed. The luridness of the source material puts the filmmakers in a tough place tonally. If they play up the craziness to the hilt, they risk making an insane fan-fiction parody of Silence Of The Lambs—kind of like following up a world-beating classic like The Exorcist with a world-class mind-fuck like The Exorcist II: The Heretic. But if they don’t acknowledge the premise’s outrageousness, even in watered-down form, they risk making a stone-faced camp classic where all the laughs are unintentional. So the filmmakers choose a surprisingly effective middle path by approaching the material not as pulp, but as opera, where a certain level of craziness is expected, even demanded.

In one of the film’s morbid running jokes, Verger regularly checks in with the folks tending to the farm where his man-eating killer sows are being raised, in order to make sure that they’re sufficiently blood-crazed. Verger wants to make absolutely sure that when he finally succeeds in luring his arch-nemesis into their midst, the psychotic wild sows don’t all start cuddling with Hannibal, assuming he’s their new mommy. That would be a terrible waste of a diligently cultivated evil scheme. The filmmakers give the film an epic scope, as dueling supervillains Lecter and Verger act out a gory game of revenge in a vast, cruel universe far beyond the petty ministrations of the law or the dictates of conventional morality—a sick, decadent, unmistakably European world where spectacular beauty collides with unthinkable depravity. Hopkins’ Lecter had unmistakably devolved into shtick by this point, but it’s a good shtick, even when the character veers into self-parody.

At his weakest, Hannibal Lecter comes off like the thinking man’s version of Jigsaw from Saw, another effete hyper-moralist in a madman’s garb, given to windy proclamations about the fundamental nature of the world and its inhabitants, delivered from a place of wholly unearned moral superiority. At other times, he comes off like a homicidal J.D. Salinger, a famed recluse whose every appearance and utterance is a source of enduring fascination to a world that imagines he possesses some strange, secret knowledge beyond the comprehension of lesser souls. It’s a testament to how deeply, thoroughly insane Hannibal is that Verger wanting Hannibal to be devoured by man-eating sows isn’t even its pulpiest element. No, that curious distinction belongs to a scene where Hannibal lobotomizes Krendler and serves him parts of his own brain. It’s astonishing that an ending where Verger is devoured by the very pigs he bred to eat Lecter, and an FBI agent eats bits of his own brain, actually represents a dramatically watered-down version of the book’s ending, which entailed hot Lecter-on-Starling action, brainwashing, and cattle-prod sodomy.

Hannibal didn’t repeat its predecessor’s triumph at the Academy Awards, but making a movie based on Harris’ novel that was both palatable to a mainstream audience and surprisingly entertaining is an impressive accomplishment in its own right. Harris’ Hannibal took beloved characters further than even the Oscar-winning likes of Foster, Tally, and Demme were willing to go. Scott’s version pulled back from its source material’s delirious extremes, but it’s still strangely affecting, even unnerving. Perhaps that’s why the film doesn’t tend to get talked about too much these days, even as the Hannibal Lecter money train kept rolling happily right along, first with Brett Ratner’s Red Dragon, then with the film prequel Hannibal Rising, and now with NBC’s Hannibal TV series. Even for fans of a book, film, and now television series about a cannibalistic serial killer, Hannibal was a bit much. That isn’t the kind of thing that wins Oscars, but in our jaded day and age, it’s certainly something. Up next: Jack

Question: What was the title of the 2001 film that was a sequel to The Silence of the Lambs?
Answer: Hannibal