“The Silence of the Lambs” (1991) actors from left are Anthony Hopkins, Jodie Foster and Scott Glenn. IMDB photo

Why, after all these years, have we never forgotten one of the darkest villains in movie history?

MOVIE INFO

“SILENCE OF THE LAMBS”
Police Procedural, Psychological Drama, Psychological Thriller, Serial Killer, Crime, Drama, Thriller
A young F.B.I. cadet must receive the help of an incarcerated and manipulative cannibal killer to help catch another serial killer, a madman who skins his victims.
Length: 118 minutes
Rating: Severe violence, gore, frightening and intense scenes, moderate sex, nudity and profanity
Director: Jonathan Demme
Writers: Thomas Harris, Ted Tally
Stars: Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn

Here is “Silence of the Lambs” again, after opening with little fanfare on Feb. 14, 1991, and grossing $14 million to become the number one film in box offices across the country. Anthony Hopkins quietly put his debonair stamp on the role of Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a character who invades our nightmares right up to this day.

Thirty-three years later, as this reviewer sits here on a dark August morning, a man in a white suit and Panama hat saunters down the street partially seen between the trees.

Or did I imagine seeing him? And why did a chill creep through my sweater?

That is the power with which director Jonathan Demme, working from the novel by Thomas Harris and Ted Tally’s script, keeps old movie fans looking over their shoulders whenever Anthony Hopkins (who usually only pops up on our screens in benign, comic and elderly roles far removed from this flesh-eating, well-dressed character) appears.

Even as an elderly Pope in “The Two Popes,” when he turns and smiles at the camera we grip our rosaries. All of the power of this great actor, with only 28 minutes on screen in this film, went into his bevy of other characters.

And then there is Jodie Foster, who started her career as a child. As Clarice Starling, a crisp, new FBI agent, walks down the stone hall of a jail for the criminal insane to interview Dr. Lecter, who sits behind thick protective glass, we walk with her, still gripping the arms of our chairs.

Foster, who has floated though a splendid 50-year career, sits there with notebook in hand, asking questions with a throat full of phlegm and fully protected. We still, to this day, jump back when Dr. Lecter makes a simple move, and move back from our chairs. That, after more than 30 years, shows us the power of these two actors facing each other through panels of glass.

And then there are the phone calls, and the scene in the dark basement of “Buffalo Bill’s” (a terrifying Ted Levine) basement where Clarice walks to the pulse of the Howard Shores score and Tak Fujimoto’s camera-swallowing darkness.

You can watch “Silence of the Lambs” on your television in the safety of your living room, or sit in the enormous darkness of Waterville’s Maine Film Center, where it opens Aug. 23 for one week, and keep looking over your shoulder.

J.P. Devine of Waterville is a former stage and screen actor.