10 Movie Villains Who Actually Got Away With It
3. Hannibal Lecter (The Silence Of The Lambs)
Although Anthony Hopkin's eloquent psychopath Dr. Hannibal Lecter has done serious time at a hellish mental institution for his previous crimes in The Silence Of The Lambs, he gets away with many more of them scot-free.
During the movie's final act, after he's provided Clarice Starling with the info she needs to track down Buffalo Bill, the cannibalistic killer escapes from his prison by murdering two security guards and severing one of their faces to wear as a disguise.
In the movie's final scene, Hannibal, now a free man, gives Clarice a brief phone call to congratulate her on her promotion to fully-fledged FBI agent. Top of his to-do list, he tells her, is "having an old friend for dinner", a strong implication that Lecter is about to murder and devour his old rival Doctor Frederick Chilton.
The forces of good may have triumphed over the murderous Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs, but Hannibal enjoyed a victory of his own, escaping incarceration and almost certainly taking great pleasure in dispatching his bitter enemy.