evanskey.com

The other day I was shopping through the super radical discounted DVD section at my local Hollywood Video and I got the distinct pleasure of overhearing the following conversation between the teenage clerk and the scary white trash customer…

WT Customer: What do think of this one?

Clerk: Hannibal Rising! Ooh, that one scared me… and you know what? it’s a true story too!

WT Customer: Really?

Clerk: Yeah not the other ones, just the first one… Silence of the Lambs is true. Well that and his whole childhood.

WT Customer: I guess I should watch this then. It makes them scarier when it really happened.

Well that’s about as close to the actual conversation as I can remember. I wanted sooo bad to interject but just couldn’t bring myself to it. By this point, I just wanted my movies and then to get out of there as fast as I could.

Here are some interesting things I should have pointed out to Clerk and WT Customer:

Hannibal Lechter/Lektur is not real. Yes the character was very very loosely based on Ed Gein, so loosely based that if it were a knotted rope I wouldn’t trust it to support me from any tall buildings. Ed Gein, by the way, was the notorious serial killer from the 1950s who was also used as inspiration for Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but Hannibal is not… was not… or ever will be real.

Regarding the films, the actual release order of the “Hannibal” movies is as follows

1. Manhunter (directed by Michael Mann and in which a brilliant Brian Cox plays the notorious Hannibal Lektur)

2. Silence of the Lambs

3. Hannibal

4. Red Dragon (a remake of Manhunter)

5. Hannibal Rising

Oh well, ignorance is bliss I guess or maybe in this case ignorance actually scared the bejesus out of me.