Three Oscars The Silence of the Lambs Should Have Been Nominated For

March 30th, 1992 was the night for The Silence of the Lambs, Jonathan Demme's masterful adaptation of Thomas Harris' psychological horror novel of the same name. At the 64th Academy Awards ceremony, this movie took the Dolby Theatre by storm, earning seven nominations and walking away with five. To date, The Silence of the Lambs holds two singular accomplishments: 1) it remains the only horror film to have ever won the Oscar for Best Picture (and one of only six to have received the prestigious nomination in history), and 2) it remains the last of three films in history to have achieved the coveted grand slam, following the romantic comedy, It Happened One Night, and the psychological darkly comic drama, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. 

By the end of the night, The Silence of the Lambs walked home with the following five, beyond-deserved major Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director (Jonathan Demme), Best Adapted Screenplay (Ted Tally), Best Actor (Anthony Hopkins), and Best Actress (Jodie Foster). Despite qualifying in most people's opinion as a... gasp, say it with me now, horror film, even the voting members of the Academy, who harbor a thinly concealed aversion to all things horror, were unable to deny the technical artistry, emotional resonance, and stellar acting that permeated this knockout and elevated it to the realm of a cinematic masterpiece, regardless of genre. As a lifelong horror fan who still longs for the acceptance of this genre and acknowledgement of its artistic merits by the Academy, I'm grateful that if any horror film could emerge with the most glamorous award in hand, in addition to four other major ones, it got to be this one.

However, there are still two other Oscars for which it was nominated: Best Editing (Craig McKay) and Sound Mixing. Regarding the former, while McKay did a phenomenal job at making all 118 minutes fly by in the most efficient, urgent manner possible, his crowning achievement was at the start of the climax, during which he employed his infamous "deceptive cutting" technique, cross-cutting between the exterior of serial killer Buffalo Bill's abandoned home in Illinois where Jack Crawford and his FBI team are gathered and armed, and the interior of his current address in Belvedere, Ohio, where young FBI trainee Clarice Starling has just arrived all alone. 

While it would be a stretch to accuse the Academy of undervaluing The Silence of the Lambs on awards night, there are still three more Oscars that it wasn't even nominated for, and without a shadow of a doubt should have been. It's about time those three overlooked nominations came to light.

1. Best Supporting Actor - Ted Levine

One of the reasons The Silence of the Lambs is my favorite horror film is because we are gifted two iconic villains for the price of one movie. How many horror films can stake that claim? While Anthony Hopkins' suave, perceptive, articulate, deceptively charismatic psychiatrist-turned-cannibalistic serial killer is the more glamorous madman closely associated with the title, he still spends the majority of the story locked safely away from civilized society, whether behind the transparent metal wall of his cell at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, or within the confines of a cage-like cell at the Memphis courthouse. Captured long before the events depicted onscreen, his raison d'etre is to give Clarice clues as to the identity and whereabouts of Buffalo Bill, a misogynistic serial killer currently on the loose. His modus operandi is to abduct young, overweight women, imprison them in a dry well stored in his labyrinthine basement, starve them for three days, shoot them, and finally skin them, his ultimate goal to craft a "woman suit" in order to escape his own tortured identity.

At first, Buffalo Bill is just a concept, a real-life boogeyman gossiped about by Jack Crawford and Hannibal Lecter. When we first meet him in the flesh, Billy is shown to be somewhat of a student of late real-life serial killer Ted Bundy, preying on soon-to-be victim Catherine Martin's kindness via wearing a sling on his arm and struggling to push a sofa into the trunk of his truck. Levine affects a harmless and endearingly pathetic demeanor, expressing gratitude for Catherine's offer to help, before quickly shedding the sheep's clothing and unveiling the wolf hiding beneath. 

The next time we catch up with Buffalo Bill, his inner nature is put under the spotlight, and Levine magnificently portrays his sadism and lack of compassion and empathy for human life. Affecting an intimidatingly masculine, husky voice with a touch of femininity to hint at his sexual confusion, Levine relishes the power he holds over his captive, referring to her as "it" in order to distance himself from her humanity, and so making it easier to, as Clarice puts it, "tear her up." When Catherine disobeys his order to put the lotion in the basket being lowered into the well, Levine replaces his soft, politely requesting tone with a sudden, loudly authoritative command. Upon seeing the broken fingernails of victims past, Catherine begins to scream in panic, and Bill, fascinated by her sounds, imitates her mockingly, going as far as to tug on his shirt as she does hers. It's a bone-chilling performance of inhumane cruelty, elevated to a whole other level of creepiness when Levine strips naked for a camera, clothed partially in a dress and inhabiting the scalp of a slain female victim, tucks his penis between his legs to simulate a vagina, and dances erotically to the tune of Q Lazzarus' "Goodbye Horses."

As terrifying as Buffalo Bill is, and as inexcusable as his actions are, Levine's greatest ability, the one that solidifies him as a phenomenal actor robbed of a supporting actor nomination, is uncovering the tortured, deeply suffering victim buried beneath his character's monstrosity. In a subversion of the cliche that most serial killers begin their "careers" by murdering animals in childhood before working their way up to human beings, Bill, whose real name is revealed to be Jame Gumb, is shown to care deeply for his pet Bichon Frise, fittingly named Precious. Once Catherine recognizes the love her captor holds for this dog, she devises a plan to snatch Precious and use her as leverage in her attempt to escape, and it's in her success where we bear witness to the real Jame Gumb. In this pivotal moment of simultaneous character development for both captive and captor, Levine strips himself emotionally raw, utterly free of shame, vanity, or self-composure. From the second he sees his beloved dog in the arms of an enraged Catherine at the bottom of his own well, Levine's entire demeanor is shattered to pieces, his sadism and hatred superseded by an expression of pure, unadulterated heartbreak and concern for Precious' well-being. Pacing back and forth, he conveys a panic not seen beforehand, and likely never felt either, until now. "Hey, don't you hurt my dog!" he shouts, his voice a mix of infuriated authority and pleading desperation. "Don't you make me hurt your dog!" Catherine retorts, and Levine's response -- "Hey, you don't know what pain is!" -- says it all in just seven words. Without learning a thing about Gumb's childhood, the pain he obviously experienced at the hands of others, beginning most likely with his parents, Levine communicates a lifetime of agony and long-festering rage that have given birth to the monster known as Buffalo Bill, all in his flawless delivery. In just one moment of someone discovering and exploiting his weakness, Levine demonstrates a shocking dimension of heartbreaking vulnerability that enables viewers to feel for him, identify with his plight (that is, if you're an avid animal lover like myself), and most impressively, see the last remaining vestige of humanity within an otherwise fatally broken soul. 

Even though his modus operandi of abduction is reminiscent of Bundy, and his postmortem activity directly inspired by Ed Gein, Levine ensures that Jame Gumb registers as an original, psychologically complex, and most of all, tragically human monster of cinematic horror.

2. Best Supporting Actress - Brooke Smith

Just as we get two terrifying madmen in the course of one nearly-two-hour motion picture, so too do we get two equally badass female heroes. It's only fair. While Foster's Clarice is certainly the more three-dimensional protagonist of The Silence of the Lambs (how could she not be, considering the story is told almost entirely from her perspective?), there's still one another young woman who supplies the gruesome procedural with a vibrant heart, and that is Catherine Martin, the daughter of U.S. Senator Ruth Martin. From the instant we meet Catherine, driving home to her apartment in the night, Brooke Smith exhibits a cheerful, innocent personality that endears us to her, singing along loudly and proudly to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' "American Girl" as it blasts on her radio. Arriving home, she speaks to her cat waiting patiently for her on the window sill, promising to feed him as soon as she gets inside. But she encounters a distraction she just can't resist immersing herself in: a seemingly injured man with his arm in a sling is struggling helplessly to move a sofa into his truck's trunk. At first she tries to ignore it, walking forward and minding her own business. But as the man's huffing and puffing intensifies, Catherine can't just look the other way. She wants to be a good person and help the handicapped, just as many of Bundy's unsuspecting victims did. 

Following her kindhearted but nearly fatal error of judgment, Catherine finds herself imprisoned and alone at the bottom of a well in a dark, dank basement, at the mercy of a madman so deprived of humanity that her cries for clemency fall on cheerfully deaf ears. Brooke Smith plays Catherine as a miniature version of Clarice Starling, vulnerable, innocent, good-natured, but enriched with an inner strength and ferocity that come to the fore only in the most dire of circumstances. At first, Catherine is merely a victim, trapped, terrified, and desperate to get out and be reunited with her mom. Smith conveys this achingly identifiable terror with a gut-wrenching emotional precision, trying in vain to reason with her captor by informing him her mother is a "real important woman" and can pay him a substantial amount of cash in return for hers. Smith hyperventilates as she delivers her lines, reverting to a childlike plea for her "mommy" before hollering at the top of her lungs in a manner reminiscent of Marilyn Burns during the dinner scene in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. 

Make no mistake, however, Catherine is no simple damsel in distress. When her pleas for freedom go mockingly insulted and her efforts at financial negotiation ignored, Smith suppresses the tears of desperation and screams of powerlessness and displays a previously unknown resourcefulness, intelligence, and uncompromising, fiery audacity that make Catherine one of the most layered and underrated badass women in the history of horror. Using the scraps of food given to her by Gumb, and remembering the adoration exhibited by him for his dog, Catherine devises a genius plan to turn the tables on her captor. Tying the rope attached to her food bucket around a bone, Catherine calls out to Precious, whistling weakly, and upon Precious responding, throws the bucket to the top of the well. When her plan initially fails, Catherine sinks temporarily back to despair, only to wipe away the tears and try again shortly after. This time she succeeds, and instead of pleading with Gumb and acknowledging his position of power by respectfully referring to him as "mister," Smith modulates her voice with an invigorating, fist-pumping fury as she replies, "Down here, you sack of shit." With the roles of captor and captive instantly reversed, Gumb is now the one pleading for Catherine's mercy, not for his own safety, but that of Precious', the only living being for whom he feels love and companionship. Smith eats up every bite of Catherine's newfound authority, preying on Gumb's one and only weakness by threatening to snap Precious' neck unless he lowers a telephone into the well right this instant. Her role may exist in the shadow of Clarice's fully fleshed out narrative, but Smith delivers a performance every bit as passionate, dimensional, heart-wrenching, and fierce as Foster's, brilliantly subverting the initial impression of her supposed "victim" character and emerging from the well triumphant, with her life as well as an emotional support animal -- missing only an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress.

3. Best Original Score - Howard Shore

The horror genre is the home to many iconic theme scores. While some manage to elicit chills without the technical aid of music (i.e. found-footage horrors that assume the appearance of a documentary), many of the best horror films involve a great theme that helps build suspense and accompanies the villains as they go about their nefarious business. Imagine watching John Carpenter's Halloween without hearing his legendary piano-synth theme throughout. When applied judiciously rather than excessively or overbearingly (even Carpenter could be accused of overdosing just a bit on his brilliantly spare score), a great piece of mood music can become another character in its own right and a sidekick to the monster inhabiting its film, portending their arrival and punctuating their horrifying actions.

Composer Howard Shore's emotionally enrapturing theme for The Silence of the Lambs might not qualify as the "scariest" in horror, but God help me, it's my personal favorite bar none. Before the first scene even commences, Demme utilizes Shore's riveting theme to invite us into the story, announcing at the outset this is no ordinary horror film about silent, masked boogeymen. Rather, The Silence of the Lambs is, at heart, about an emotionally beaten but relentlessly headstrong young woman coming into her own and becoming the survivor and hero her father would've been proud of. Howard Shore creates a theme that beautifully accentuates that underlying character-driven soul, and Demme plays it in sync with the mood of a given scene. Take the opening, for example. Playing over a placid scenery shot of the forest outside the Quantico Academy, the music is calm, slow, and peaceful, owing to the natural serenity and beauty of the outdoors. Seconds later, Clarice reaches the top of a hill and begins running vigorously as per her training. As Demme moves the camera in on Foster, her legs running faster and faster down the trail, her breath becoming heavier, the tempo steadily intensifies alongside her cardio. When Clarice experiences a flashback to her father's funeral, the notes are deeply somber and poignant, enabling us to share in her unprocessed grief. 

At once inspiring, soulful, funereal, heart-pounding, and ultimately empowering, the Shore score communicates the drive that fuels Clarice to show up to the FBI training academy every day and push past the horde of condescending, leering men who view her as little more than an attractive female figure taking up space in a largely testosterone-driven environment, and increases the breathtaking intensity with which she approaches her progressively life-threatening destination.