Silence of the Lambs

       If I help you, Clarice, it will be "turns" with us too. Quid pro quo. I

            tell you things, you tell me things. Not about this case, though.

                     About yourself. Quid pro quo. Yes or no?

The movie begins 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 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 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 meanwhile then abducts Catherine Martin, the daughter of United States Senator Ruth Martin. 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 false 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. 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 Tenessee. 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. Lecter refuses to give her a real name 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 escapes custody by using a pen left by Chilton to pick the locks. he kills a few gaurds and escapes in an ambulance. Meanwhile Starling follows the clues left by Lecter and it takes her to Bill's first victims home in Ohio. This victim was a tailor, and Starling surmises that 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 on James Gumb at his business address, and that Starling should continue with hisinterviews. However when her questions lead her to a house she suspectes that the man who answers the door is Gumb...and upon further inspection Catherine Martin is found in the basement........

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