Celluloid Serial Killers

Paul B. Kidd's Top 15 Serial Killer Movies

1.The Silence of The Lambs (1991) C-118m

Jodie Foster (right) and Anthony Hopkins

A little known fact about this extraordinary movie is that the horrific activities of the serial killer Buffalo Bill are loosely based on the exploits of a dreadful trio of real life serial killers named Ed Gein, Ted Bundy and Gary Heidnik.

Ed had a penchant for wearing human skin and made clothes out of the corpses of females he had either killed or dug up. When the cops eventually caught up with him on his farm in Wisconsin, USA in 1957, they found lampshades made out of human skin, a soup dish made out of a hollowed out human skull, a belt made of nipples and human skin slippers.

Ed said he liked dancing around at his farmyard by the light of the moon with a real women's torso, tanned like shoe leather and oiled to keep it supple, strapped around his middle.

In The Silence of The Lambs serial killer Buffalo Bill lures his victims into his van by asking them to help him lift an item of furniture as he can't lift it alone because his arm is in (fake) plaster. Once in the van the victim is knocked unconscious and whisked away to Bill's dress making dungeon to become a part of his winter collection. This method of abduction was originally used by American psychopath Ted Bundy from 1974 to 1977 when he kidnapped, raped and murdered up to 40 female college students.

In Philadelphia in 1986 Gary Heidnik kidnapped women and kept them chained up in his cellar as sex slaves, eventually murdering some of them and eating their remains. The description of Heidnik's cellar is similar to that of Buffalo Bill's in the movie though unlike Bill he kept as many as five women in there at a time, beating and torturing them regularly until one escaped and called the cops.

These were just a few of the many fascinating angles that combine to make this by far and away the best serial killer movie (and for that matter, one of the best movies in general) of all time. And that's not just my opinion. The judges awarded The Silence of The Lambs the five top Academy Awards (picture, actor, actress, director, screenplay) for 1991 making it only the third movie in history to achieve such an honour (the other two were It Happened One Night in 1934 and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest in 1975) and it comes in at No 66 in the American Film Institute's Top 100 Movies of All Time.

Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn and Ted Levine as Buffalo Bill are unbelievably good in a movie that is flawless in every detail. Hopkin's Hannibal Lecter is mesmerising, particularly when we get our initial glimpse of him in his cell as he meets FBI agent Clarice Starling (Foster) for the first time.

And they thought Psycho was scary! The Silence of The Lambs makes it look like the Wizard of Oz and Hannibal Lecter makes Norman Bates look like Mother Theresa.