10 Horror Movie Moments More Important Than You Realised
1. Hannibal Lecter's Deliberate Blinks - The Silence Of The Lambs
One of the oft-repeated claims about Anthony Hopkins' Oscar-winning performance as Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs is that the actor never blinked on-screen while playing the part, in an attempt to enhance the psychopath's inherently unsettling presence.
It's a claim that's even been perpetuated by Hopkins himself in interviews, despite the fact that it's patently not true.
Even the most casual, cursory examination of Hopkins' 20-ish minutes of screen time throughout the masterful horror-thriller will confirm that he does indeed blink, albeit markedly less so than your average person.
It's clear from watching Hopkins' scenes that the actor chose his blinks carefully, using them as exclamation marks to punctuate the meaning of whatever's going on.
As such, we see Lecter blink emphatically after dropping the iconic "fava beans and a nice Chianti" one-liner, and he also blinks with a slow deliberation during the "quid pro quo" scene as Clarice (Jodie Foster) tells the story of her father's murder.
It's something you probably didn't consciously pick up on, but your brain likely did, that Lecter blinked only in a calculated, periodic way that seems almost inhuman. It adds yet another level of creepiness to an already all-timer cinematic skin-crawler.