The Silence of the Lambs is a 1991 Academy Award-winning film directed by Jonathan Demme and starring Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins. It is based on the novel by Thomas Harris, his second to feature Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer. In the film, Clarice Starling, a young FBI trainee, is sent to see the imprisoned Lecter in order to ask his expert advice on catching a serial killer given the name Buffalo Bill, who is abducting women and skinning them. The film won five Academy Awards including Best Picture and is the only horror movie to win the top prize.

Plot:

The movie opens with the FBI in a desperate search to find a vicious serial killer dubbed Buffalo Bill, who is abducting women and skinning them. Jack Crawford, the head of the FBI's behavioral science unit, asks his brightest pupil, Clarice Starling, to present a VICAP questionnaire to a brilliant forensic psychiatrist turned cannibalistic serial murderer named Hannibal Lecter, who was serving nine consecutive life terms at a Baltimore mental facility. Lecter had solved several serial killer cases for Crawford prior to his conviction as one himself, and Crawford is convinced that Lecter's insight could help capture Buffalo Bill.

Upon meeting Lecter in his cell, Starling is astonished to find him well mannered and seductively charming. After toying with and insulting Starling's attempts to get information from him, he refuses to take the questionnaire, knowing that Crawford had tried to entice him by sending a female agent in to ask for his help on the Buffalo Bill case. As Starling turns to leave, a patient down the block from Lecter assaults Starling with semen as she passes by his cell. Lecter becomes enraged seeing this "discourtesy", and calls Starling back to his cell, where he gives her information about one of his former patients in the form of a riddle. Solving the riddle, this information leads Starling to a rent-a-storage lot where the possessions of Benjamin Raspail (a deceased former patient of Lecter's), are contained. Hidden in Raspail's car is a severed head in a jar. It is implied that the head is that of Raspail.

Starling returns to Lecter, and confronts him about the severed head and Benjamin Raspail, whom Lecter denies involvement in murdering. Lecter then makes an offer to Starling, if she puts in a transfer for him to another facility, he will use the case file to profile Buffalo Bill. Starling agrees and the deal is made.

Buffalo Bill then abducts Catherine Martin, the daughter of United States Senator Ruth Martin (Tennessee). Bill's sixth victim is found, and her back has been skinned. Starling helps Crawford perform the autopsy, and the chrysalis of a moth is found in the throat of the victim.

With the stakes heightened, and Crawford having had Clarice propose a faux transfer to a hospital in upstate New York where he will have a cell with a window and more freedom, Clarice must play her way through Lecter's mind-games and lies. Lecter, figuring that the deal is too good to be true, demands personal information from Starling in exchange for information on Buffalo Bill (quid pro quo). Crawford had told Clarice not to tell Lecter anything personal, but desperate for Lecter's help, she ignores Crawford's warning and tells him about her worst childhood memory.

Starling tells Lecter about the death of her father, a town marshal who was killed by two burglars while on night patrol. She was sent to live on a sheep and horse ranch in Montana with cousins. In exchange, Lecter tells her about the significance of the moth found in the sixth victims throat: it symbolises change (from caterpillar to chrysalis and then into butterfly) and that Buffalo Bill wants to change too. He also tells her about Buffalo Bill's lifestyle, and how he believes that he is a transsexual. He then tells her to search the records at sex-reassignment hospitals for rejected patients based on failed psychological evaluations.

Meanwhile, it is revealed that Frederick Chilton, the asylum's chief of staff, has been secretly recording the consultations between Lecter and Starling in an attempt to finally profile the infamous Hannibal Lecter. Chilton also learns about Crawford's faux deal, and tells Lecter. In exchange, he purposes a personal deal to Lecter: if Lecter reveals Buffalo Bill's identity, he will indeed get a transfer to another facility, but only if Chilton is credited for persuading Lecter to reveal what he knows. Lecter insists that he will only give the information to Senator Ruth Martin personally in Tennessee. Pleased that he has finally gotten through to Lecter after eight years of being his warden, Chilton agrees and hastily leaves Lecter's cell.

In Tennessee, Lecter toys with Senator Martin briefly, enjoying the woman's anguish, but eventually gives her some information about Buffalo Bill: his real name is Louis Friend, referred to him by Raspail, as Raspail and Friend were lovers. With this new information, the FBI races off to save Catherine.

Starling confronts Lecter in his makeshift cell, suspecting that Lecter had given the senator a false name. She suspects that the name is an anagram for "iron sulfide" (Fool's Gold), and requests that he tell her the real name. Lecter refuses and demands that Starling finish telling him about her worst chidhood memory. Starling knows that it is the only way to get information from him, so she tells him about how she was awoken early one morning to the sound of lambs screaming as they were being slaughtered. Witnessing the horror, she attempted to save one by carrying it away, but was soon caught and the lamb was returned to slaughter. Lecter asks Clarice if she is still haunted by the sound of screaming lambs, and he wonders whether she imagines that by saving Catherine, will she finally have peace. The anxious Starling demands that Lecter give her Buffalo Bill's true name, but before he is able to, Starling is escorted from the building by Chilton and Lecter's guards. She however slips out of the guards' grasps to retrieve the case file from Lecter, and he uses the opportunity to lightly stroke her hand.

That evening, Lecter demands a second meal. During the time when Chilton was questioning Lecter at his cell in Baltimore, he had forgotten his pen in Lecter's cell. Lecter then swallowed the pen and, after regurgitating it, used a piece of it to pick the lock on his cuffs while the two police officers brought in his second meal. Now free, Lecter fatally beats and disembowels one officer, whom he then ties to the cell bars. He then kills the second officer by biting him and skinning his face. When the police and SWAT teams arrive, they believed they had found Lecter in the elevator shaft, severely wounded. Before their arrival, though, Lecter switched clothes with the second officer and used his skinned face as a mask. But, believing the second officer to be alive, they put Lecter in an ambulance and rush him to the hospital. Meanwhile, they discover that the man in the elevator shaft is actually the dead body of the second officer; during this time, Lecter kills the ambulance crew and escapes.

Starling's shock at all these events is put on hold when she realizes that Lecter has left more clues for her inside the case file of Buffalo Bill given to Lecter when he said he would do a psychological profile. With the help of her roommate, Starling realizes that there is something significant in the way Buffalo Bill's first victim was killed. Fredrica Bimmel was killed first but found third, suggesting that Bill wanted to hide her body. Starling surmises that Frederica knew Bill in personal life. Lecter had told her that Bill covets these women and that people covet that which they see every day.

Crawford sends Starling to investigate the victim's home town, Belvedere, Ohio, where she discovers that she was a tailor. Dresses in her closet have diamond-shaped templates on them, identical to the patches of skin removed from Buffalo Bill's latest victim. Starling realizes that Buffalo Bill is a capable tailor who wants to transform 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. Lecter's transsexual-surgery theory has yielded a positive ID from Johns Hopkins Hospital: a Jame Gumb just outside Chicago. Crawford is leading a strike on Gumb's business address in Calumet City, Illinois, while Chicago SWAT takes a home address. Starling is to continue interviewing Bimmel's friends.

Starling learns that Bimmel once worked for a woman named Mrs. Lippman. When Starling goes to Lippman's house, however, the door is answered by a man claiming that his name is "Jack Gordon". Starling has an idea that Gordon is actually Buffalo Bill, and his real name is Jame Gumb. Starling then sees subtle clues in the house that lead her to believe that Gordon is Gumb. Starling draws her weapon and attempts to arrest Gumb, but he abruptly scrambles into the basement, and she follows. She finds an alive Catherine Martin in the dry well when the lights go out, leaving them in complete darkness. Gumb, wearing night vision goggles, creeps up behind Starling and cocks his gun. Starling hears the click and turns around, quickly firing back, killing him. Starling calls for backup, and Catherine Martin is rescued.

During a party celebrating her graduation from the FBI Academy, Starling is startled when she receives a phone call from Lecter. He asks her if the lambs have stopped screaming, and promises her that he will not come after her, and that he expects the same courtesy. He also tells her that he is "having an old friend for dinner". Before the credits roll, Lecter is observed stalking Fredrick Chilton, who is at the same location vacationing.