OVERALL

FILM

AUDIO

VIDEO

EXTRAS

ADVICE

“Good Evening Clarice.” Have two otherwise innocuous words ever sounded as creepy as they do as uttered by Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs? The Silence of the Lambs is one of the all time classic horror thrillers ever filmed and one of my favorite films. This is a film that I was anxiously waiting for release on the Blu-ray format to see what improvements a high def treatment would render both in terms of picture and sound quality over the previously released DVDs. Unfortunately, while an improvement is made, it was not as much as I had hoped.

Film

I am sure that most of you are well aware of The Silence of the Lambs story line. The film was released to theaters in 1991 and made history as only the third film to win Academy Awards for each of the top five categories, namely Best Picture, Best Director (Jonathan Demme), Best Actor ( Anthony Hopkins), Best Actress (Jodie Foster) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Ted Tally). The film stars Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling, a new FBI trainee assigned to work on the case of Buffalo Bill, a serial murderer who tortures and kills his subjects after which he skins them and uses the skin to fabricate a woman’s suit.

In order to gain an insight into the mind of such a demented killer, she is ordered by her superior, Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn) to travel to Baltimore to interview the most notorious mass murderer of them all, a former psychologist named Dr. Hannibal Lechter a/k/a Hannibal the Cannibal, known for eating portions of his victims. In addition to being a completely psychotic killer, Dr. Lechter has an incredible insight into the human mind. He begins to slowly manipulate Clarice, asking her details of her personal life in exchange for his help, all the while planning his escape from a maximum security prison.

When the daughter of a U.S. Senator from West Virginia is kidnapped, a bogus deal is hatched between the Senator and Dr. Lechter whereupon he agrees to help with the investigation into the kidnapping. However, the bogus nature of the government’s deal is communicated to Dr. Lechter by the Baltimore State Hospital’s director, Dr. Chilton. Dr.Lechter is transported to a makeshift cell in a Tennessee courthouse where he is able to escape, disemboweling one of the guards and killing several others before fleeing the country and before helping in the Buffalo Bill investigation. However, he does leave several clues for Clarice which she discovers while reviewing Dr. Lechter’s notes after his escape. In particular, she discovers a clue that leads her to a former tailor in Illinois. She travels to Illinois and while thinking she was interviewing a friend of the suspected killer, discovers that she has walked right into the home of the demented and despicable Buffalo Bill himself.

The film features an incredible performance by Anthony Hopkins, who turns in one of the creepiest and chiliing performances ever captured on film. For fans of horror and suspense thrillers, it doesn’t really get any better than this. The Silence of the Lambs is a must have for any serious film buff. Highly recommended.

Video

While I love the film, I was disappointed with the video quality on this release. The film is encoded with Mpeg-2 rather than the usual AVC or Mpeg-4 codec. While I am not really sure if the use of the older less efficient Mpeg-2 is the cause of the issues I have with the picture quality here, I am shocked to see it used to encode such an important film. The film as presented on this Blu-Ray release has a rather natural but somewhat subdued color palette. Where the encode goes wrong for me is in the areas of detail and clarity which, to say the least, are less than I expected.

The film has very mediocre blacks which results in a rather flat image, lacking much in the way of depth. In addition to this flatness, the film is very soft. With the exception of extreme close-ups, the film lacks much in the way of any detail. This does not appear to me at least to be the result of digital noise reduction as film grain appears to be properly preserved throughout the film. In any event, the film has a very soft appearance which was very disappointing. Perhaps this is a film that is in need of a restoration. It is certainly an important enough film that one would have expected a better looking Blu-ray release. The flat, soft and drab look of the film just does not match the suspenseful and on the edge of your seat tension of the film. Oh well, perhaps next time.

Audio

I was also a bit underwhelmed by the audio on this release, encoded with DTS HD Master Audio. While the overall sound fidelity was just fine, the film’s sound design just didn’t match the tension of the film. For the most part, the sound here is very front heavy with the sound emanating from the front three speakers with little engagement of the surround speakers. I felt that the surrounds could have and should have been used to much greater effect, to create an aural sense of tension that would have contributed to the already tension filled narrative. Sonically, the audio here just didn’t grab me. Dynamics, transparency and imaging are all just average. It is a shame that the audio and video quality on this release are not a match for the film itself.

Special Features

over from the prior DVD release. They include the usual deleted scenes and outtakes, TV spots and trailers as well as several featurettes. The deleted scenes are rather extensive and interesting and worth a look if you haven’t seen the prior DVD releases of the film.

The TV special The Silence of the Lambs: From Page to Screen is included as well as a featurette detailing the film’s score. Also included is a short original “making of” featurette from the film’s 1991 theatrical release. The only new extra is the Breaking the Silence feature which is a picture-in-picture feature that pops up during sections of the film and features new and rather interesting interviews with members of the cast, including Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins and Scott Glenn. The only problem with this extra is that it requires you to watch the entire film a second time to take it all in. Furthermore, it is sporadic and does not continue through the entire film as in the case with an audio commentary track. I thought that this extra could have been much better implemented than it was here.

Curiously, there is no audio commentary from the cast or the director, Jonathan Demme, which I find to be rather curious given the significance of the film. If you have one of the prior DVD releases of this film, you will find little of real interest in any of the extras included with this Blu-ray release.

Final Thoughts

As you can tell, I was a bit disappointed with many aspects of this release. I expected not only a better audio and video experience but more substantial extras as well. However, despite its shortcomings, the film looks better here than it has on any of its prior home video releases which in and of itself, is a good thing. However, it is such a great film that it belongs i the collection of any serious film fan, especially fans of horror and suspense thrillers.