First You Covet, Then You Take!

The Silence of the Lambs is certainly worth a re-visit on DVD.

It is a beautifully rendered movie encapsulating the use of psychology in the solving of serial murders. A bonus-the hauntingly crafted music score that follows you throughout the movie to evoke suspense amidst the mayhem.

I append from Wikipedia - the interesting story plot.

Promising FBI Academy student Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) is pulled from her training at the FBI Training Facility at Quantico, Virginia and dispatched by Jack Crawford, head of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit to Baltimore, Maryland, tasking her with presenting a VICAP questionnaire to the notorious Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant forensic psychiatrist turned cannibalistic serial murderer currently incarcerated.

After learning the assignment bears some relevance to the Bureau's pursuit of vicious serial killer Buffalo Bill, Starling travels to the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. The hospital's director Dr. Frederick Chilton leads her through the bowels of the hospital and past security checkpoints to Hannibal Lecter, a sophisticated, courteous and cultured man restrained behind thick glass panels and windowless stone walls.

Although the initial conversation is full of pleasantries, Lecter grows impatient with Starling's attempts at "dissecting" him with the questionnaire and viciously rebuffs her with an eloquent, surgical psychoanalysis before sending her away. As a battered and defeated Starling departs, maniacal patient "Miggs" in the adjacent cell flings fresh semen onto her hair and face, enraging Lecter who calls Starling back and offers a riddle containing information about a former patient. The solved riddle leads to a rent-a-storage lot where the possessions of a missing Benjamin Raspail are found, including a jar containing his severed head. When Starling returns to Lecter to inquire about Raspail's remains, Lecter links Raspail to Buffalo Bill and observing the hope in her eyes, offers to help profile Buffalo Bill if she can have him transferred to another facility away from the venomous, careerist Dr. Chilton.

Hours and miles away, Buffalo Bill abducts Catherine Martin, the daughter of United States Senator Ruth Martin. Days later, Starling is pulled from Quantico and sent with Crawford to a funeral home in the Midwest, where the body of Bill's recently-discovered sixth victim resides. Initially uncomfortable with the surroundings because of her childhood memories of her father's funeral, Starling helps perform the autopsy on the victim and extracts the chrysalis of a Death's-head Hawkmoth from the victim's throat. Back at Quantico, as news of Catherine Martin's abduction sweeps the country and amid the heightened stakes, Crawford authorizes Starling to offer Hannibal Lecter a fake deal promising a transfer to an upstate New York Federal penitentiary should Lecter provide information about Buffalo Bill that results in the rescue of Catherine Martin.

Rather than consider the terms, Lecter begins a game of quid pro quo with Starling, offering a comprehensive list of clues and insights into Buffalo Bill's mind in exchange for events from Starling's traumatic childhood. Unaware to both Starling and Lecter, Dr. Frederick Chilton listens in on the conversation and after revealing Starling's deal as a sham, offers to transfer Lecter to another facility in exchange for consenting to an exclusive, in-depth psychological profile and helping the authorities rescue Catherine Martin, alive. Lecter agrees, and following a flight to Tennessee, meets with Senator Martin, where he surrenders Buffalo Bill's real name, physical description and past addresses. As the FBI begins the manhunt, Starling travels to Tennessee and confronts Lecter in his special cell in the local courthouse, where Starling confronts him about the false information he gave the Senator. Lecter refuses Starling's pleas and demands that she finish her story surrounding her worst childhood memory.

After recounting her arrival at a relative's farm, the horror of discovering their lamb slaughterhouse and her fruitless attempts at rescuing the lambs, Lecter rebuffs her, leaving her with her case file before she is escorted out of the building by security guards and Dr. Chilton. Later that evening, Lecter escapes from his cell and attacks his two guards. In the courthouse lobby, the local police notice elevator activity and hear gunshots and storm Lecter's cell, discovering one of his guards barely alive and the other disemboweled and strung up on the walls. Paramedics transport the survivor onto an ambulance and speed off while a SWAT team searches the building for Lecter. As the team discovers a body in the elevator shaft, the survivor in the ambulance peels off his own face, revealing Lecter in disguise, shortly before killing the paramedics and escaping to the airport.

After being notified of Lecter's escape, Starling pores over her case files, analyzing Lecter's annotations, clues and riddles before realizing that the first victim, Frederica Bimmel, knew Bill in real life before he killed her. Crawford sends Starling to investigate the victim's hometown, Belvedere, Ohio, where she discovers that Bimmel was a tailor, and that dresses in her closet have templates on them identical to the patches of skin removed from Buffalo Bill's victims. Realizing that Buffalo Bill is a capable tailor transforming himself into a woman by fashioning himself a "woman suit" of real skin, she telephones Crawford, who is already on the way to make an arrest, revealing that Lecter's notes cross-referenced with the Johns Hopkins Hospital database revealed Jame Gumb, a man living outside Chicago who was denied sexual-reassignment surgery. Crawford instructs Starling to continue interviewing Bimmel's friends while he leads a Chicago SWAT team to Gumb's business address in Calumet City, Illinois. Starling's interviews lead to a house owned by one Mrs. Lippman, whose door is answered by a man claiming to be "Jack Gordon." As Starling interviews Gordon, she notices a fluttering Death's-head Hawkmoth, the chrysalis of which was found in Bill's murder victims. Starling, realizing Gordon is James Gumb, draws her weapon just as Gumb ducks out of the living room and disappears into his basement. Starling pursues him, discovering a screaming Catherine Martin in the dry well and a fetid rotting corpse in a bath tub just before the lights in the basement go out, leaving her in complete darkness. Gumb, wearing night vision goggles, stalks Starling as she blindly wanders the basement before preparing to shoot her. Starling, hearing the machinations of his revolver, swivels around and fires repeatedly, shooting and killing Gumb.

Days later at her FBI Academy graduation party, Starling receives a phone call from Hannibal Lecter in the Bahamas, assuring her that he will not pursue her and that he expects the same courtesy from her. While interested in speaking with her further, he reveals that he's "having an old friend for dinner," before hanging up and following Dr. Frederick Chilton, who has just arrived in the country, through the streets of the village.

A real tongue in cheek in a cat and mouse film.

Enjoyable thrills and spills. Have fun!

Heartsong