The Silence of the Lambs/Nightmare Fuel

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • The whole serial killer plot. The part with Catherine in the well, where the camera pans up and you see bloody trails and the severed fingernail from the last girl who tried to climb out and failed, scares me even after seeing that film several times.
    • The book has the added note that Catherine remembered reading about a girl's broken fingernails before that in an article about Buffalo Bill and realizes who has her.To add to the scene, Ted Levine's completely inhuman and mocking screams just pile on the horror.
  • "It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again." Unless you insert inappropriate laughter...
  • The scene where Hannibal beats the prison guard to death.
    • Including a later scene where other guards storm the prison room and find said prison guard suspended in a backlit crucifixion position with a big hole in his stomach, innards missing Together with the music, a Revolting Moment of Awesome... Hell, the whole part was terrifying. While transporting the surviving guard (whose suffered severe facial lacerations) in the elevator, blood start dripping down and the realize he's on the roof of the the elevator. After he ignores the warnings of the SWAT team on the floor above, they shoot him in the leg without him even flinching. As soon as the open the hatch from inside the elevator, it cuts to the ambulance, where the guard sits up and we find out Hannibal had taken his clothes, and was using his face as a mask.
  • Agent Starling trying to find her way around in the dark, with the villain just behind her, mockingly reaching out and not quite touching her.
  • The creepy storage garage, in which Starling finds a man's severed, pickled head wearing makeup.
  • The poster itself. A Nightmare Face comprised of nothing but a pair of yellow eyes and a large yellow moth. Although it's justified considering that the face is Foreshadowing one of the methods the serial killer uses on his victims.
  • The SWAT team and security officers finding LT. Boyle crucified to Lector’s cell.