“Believe me,” special agent Jack Crawford warns Clarice Starling, “You don’t want Hannibal Lecter inside your head.”
Directed by Jonathan Demme, Silence of the Lambs (1991) deals with the complicated minds of people who committed unspeakable crimes. A surprisingly “quiet” movie, Demme didn’t need gory, blood-drenched scenes to leave a mark on his viewers. All he aimed for and managed to do so perfectly, was to unearth the array of psychological factors that drive criminals to act the way they do.
While Hannibal the Cannibal and Buffalo Bill aren’t real people, they were both inspired by a few of society’s most feared criminals. They were inspired by psychopathic, necrophiliac serial killers who slayed their victims in cold blood. But above all (and probably the scariest part of it all), they were inspired by people who used “the disguise of normalcy” to capture their prey.
Here’s a look into how Hannibal Lecter and Buffalo Bill came to life.