The Silence Of The Lambs
Dr Hannibal Lecter became one of the most despicable, chilling characters to ever hit the big screen when he appeared in Academy Award-winning thriller The Silence Of The Lambs.
What’s even more disturbing is that author Thomas Harris’s inspiration for the terrifying character was real-life doctor and murderer Alfredo Trevino.
Thomas was a 23-year-old roving reporter when he met Trevino, to whom he gave the fictional name Dr Salazar, in a Mexican prison in 1963.
He was serving 20 years for murdering and chopping up his gay lover in a “crime of passion”.
Thomas become fascinated by the surgeon, who police reported had injected his lover with some kind of anaesthetic to sedate him, dragged his body into the bathtub and slit his throat with a scalpel.
He chopped his victim’s body into tiny pieces and buried the flesh and bones in a small box. The body parts were unearthed by the victim’s suspicious uncle. Dr Salazar was also suspected of killing and dismembering several hitchhikers.
The evil doctor’s criminal mind inspired the creation of Thomas’s most famous character, cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter, in his novel, which was later brought to the big screen.
Thomas described Trevino as “a small, lithe man with dark red hair. He stood very still and there was a certain elegance about him”.
He explained that while writing his novel, he needed to create a character with a “peculiar understanding of the criminal mind”.
Thomas became part of cinematic history when Sir Anthony Hopkins portrayed his violent psychopath Lecter and delivered the immortal line to FBI agent Clarice Starling, played by Jodie Foster, “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.”
The American Film Institute named Lecter the number one movie villain of all time.