[9]

Here we have a horror film so classy, it won the Oscar for Best Picture. Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster each deliver career-defining performances as Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling, the central characters in author Thomas Harris’ perverse contemporary retelling of Beauty and the Beast. The screenplay balances their provocative banter with a well-constructed mystery surrounding the identity and whereabouts of a serial killer named Buffalo Bill. Ted Levine gives a excellent, unnerving performances as Bill, a man who kidnaps hefty gals and keeps them in a pit. It’s from that vantage point you hear the film’s infamous (and now campy line): “It rubs the lotion on its skin or it gets the hose again.”

The Secret of N.I.M.H. (1982)

July 10, 1982

[9] To save her sick child and move her home from the path of the farmer's plow, a timid field mouse seeks out a colony of hyper-intelligent rats who are the product of medical experimentation. The Secret of N.I.M.H., based…

Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

July 9, 1967

[9]

Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway star as the legendary real-life bank robbers in Arthur Penn’s volatile Bonnie and Clyde. With its anti-hero point of view and graphic violence, this film helped lead the charge for grittier, more realistic fare that cropped up throughout the ’70s. While the film certainly sensationalizes the criminals, it also humanizes them. It’s easy to see how a bored waitress like Bonnie Parker would fall for a handsome bad boy like Clyde Barrow (I mean, who wouldn’t get in a car with smoking-hot Warren Beatty?) And since the two only robbed banks, they became folk heroes to a working class destroyed by foreclosures. I also like that the film suggests Clyde is impotent. It’s refreshing to see a tough guy with flaws and foibles, and it also makes the romantic relationship more interesting than most.