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Silence of the Lambs

(Best Picture, 1991)

What Should Have Won: It was a close race, but we would've love it if Disney got their due, and Beauty and the Beast won that year.

"The Official Story": "It's about time horror movies won the Oscar."

What We Think Happened:  By critics' own admission, 1991 was hardly a stellar year in films. But if you ask us, there was that one movie that just brightened our day, and we're not talking about "cannibal" psychopaths. Beauty and the Beast was a crowning achievement for Disney, and to date, it is as close as Disney ever got to getting its due, finally. They decided, instead, to give the statuette to the story about a man who likes to eat people. To each their own taste...pun not intended.

To be fair, it wasn't like Lambs had it easy. Released on Valentine's Day, of all days, it was the long shot in the Best Picture race. Few people thought it would even be remembered by the time of Oscar Ballots, around one full year later. Add to its uphill battle, a list of very impressive other nominees: Disney's Beauty and the Beast, Warren Beatty's Bugsy, Oliver Stone's JFK, and Barbra Streisand's The Prince of Tides.

Once again we're left with the perfect mantra, that this film was good but not great. In fact, by all accounts it was a film too over the top in some places, and unintentionally humorous in the others. Comedies for years afterward parodied Hannibal the Cannibal's "mask" he was forced to wear, and with good reason. There's a lot of reactions people had to seeing Anthony Hopkins in this silly looking mask. "Scared" was not one of them.

Yet the real sad moment of Oscar night that year, was how clear it was that the Academy did not have the guts that it wished it had. They apparently felt they were very daring in giving Best Picture to a gore filled crime thriller. They instead wound up looking like nincompoops. Beauty and the Beast may have been "just a cartoon" to the old codgers in Hollywood, but it was the greater achievement. You try making a piece of classic folklore into a 1991 musical. By comparison, Silence of the Lambs relied too much on cheap "boo" style scare tactics to call it the crowning achievement in 1991. Yes; it was so popular it earned a sequel. The sequel sucked. Don't go there.

What Makes It So Embarrassing "Today":  Maybe if Disney's finest animators had a bargaining chip like a Best Picture Oscar, they would've been able to prevent their harsh treatment by Disney, just a decade later. Which is to say they would not have all been fired. Thanks a lot, "Hannibal"...!

Next : Saving Private Ryan...From a Snub.

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