Only these three movies have won all five major Oscars
The movie The Silence of the Lambs holds a very unique distinction in Hollywood.
It is the only horror movie to ever win a Best Picture Oscar.
In the film, Jody Foster plays an FBI agent named Clarice Starling who is trying to find a serial killer - so she taps the mind of an imprisoned serial killer named Hannibal Lecter, played by Anthony Hopkins.
The Silence of the Lambs has another distinction.
It is one of only three movies in history to win all five of the top Oscars:
1. Best Picture.
2. Best Actress.
3. Best Actor.
4. Best Director.
5. And Best Adapted Screenplay.
The other two are the 1934 film It Happened One Night and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
The Silence of the Lambs has yet another distinction: a prop in the film was influenced by NHL hockey.
The famous mask worn by Hannibal to curb his "cannibal" tendencies was made by a man named Ed Cubberly. Ed has made dozens of masks for NHL goaltenders. When the studio called and told him what they needed, Ed whipped up a design in five minutes. He basically cut a regular mask in half, put metal bars in the mouth area and left the fiberlass unpainted.
It was perfect. And terrifying.
But what people remember most about The Silence of the Lambs is the dialogue between Clarise Starling and Hannibal Lecter.
It was disturbing, eerie and unforgettable.
It could be argued the remarkable chemistry between Jody Foster and Anthony Hopkins is the reason the film took in that haul of Academy Awards.
There was just something mesmerizing about their conversations. Clarice Starling trying to tease out vital insights from Lecter. And Lecter trying to expose a plush treasure trove of insecurities from Starling.
The film has one more revealing distinction.
Jody Foster never talked to Anthony Hopkins during the entire filming of the movie. They did their lines together, but they never had a conversation away from the cameras.
When Foster was asked why, she said she avoided Hopkins. Adding "He just scared me." And there was the subtext filmgoers felt so viscerally.
Their conversation was so riveting on screen because they never talked off-screen.
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