Why Does The Silence Of The Lambs Work So Well As A Romantic Comedy?

Give up your heart to Hannibal the Cannibal, and there's a high chance it'll be roasted and served with a side salad before you know it. That's why he and Clarice Starling –- the detective from the classic thrillers "The Silence of the Lambs" and "Hannibal" –- could never work as a couple. And yet, in a forgotten nugget of internet brilliance from Mashable/IGN, it totally does. By way of some impressive editing, the Oscar-winning entry that introduced the world to Anthony Hopkins' portrayal of the not-so-good doctor opposite Jodie Foster's deer-in-headlights hero is transformed into a romantic comedy, and it's not hard to see how they managed it.

Even though most of Jonathan Demme's classic thriller has Foster and Hopkins on opposite sides of protective glass, the idea of these two crazy kids getting together doesn't seem impossible. After all, Lecter sees something special in Starling as she hunts for Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine), and Foster's FBI agent is clearly enamored with the prisoner she's forced to communicate with. Just like every great rom-com pairing, they're an odd couple that sees something unexpected and special in each other — it just so happens one of them is a person-eating murderer.

Interestingly, it's a relationship that's presented with even more intensity in "Hannibal," when Starling (Foster having been replaced by Julianne Moore) plays a game of seductive cat and mouse with her former frenemy. What might come as a shock for those that never read the books the films were adapted from, however, is that Clarice and Hannibal's romantic undertones are not only deliberate, but the pair does end up together in a horrifically romantic kind of way.

In the 2001 film "Hannibal," the film ends with Lecter narrowly escaping capture after Clarice handcuffs herself to him. Anthony Hopkins' doctor escapes by cutting off his own hand, but the book the film is based on ends on a much lighter but equally unsettling note. Harris' original tale details Hannibal's backstory and sees Clarice escape with Lecter (both hands intact) as they flee to Argentina and begin a new life together. So while their romance might be handled comically in this brilliantly reworked trailer, it's not far from the truth — or at least the one Harris told, even if it never made it to the big screen.

While audiences may have never gotten to see these two twisted love-birds escape for their happily ever after, Hopkins admitted that he always thought his chianti-loving character and the detective interrogating him would end up together, eventually. Speaking to IGN about the movies' unrealized romantic pairing, Hopkins said, "Other people found that preposterous. I suppose there's a moral issue there. I think it would have been a very interesting thing though."

Hopkins also expressed his thoughts about the what if ending and was all for it. "I think it would have been very interesting had she gone off, because I suspected that there was that romance, attachment there, that obsession with her. I guessed that a long time ago, at the last phone call to Clarice, at the end of 'The Silence of the Lambs', she said, "Dr. Lecter, Dr. Lecter?" Even though audiences didn't get to experience the star-crossed lovers' escape, Hopkins' comments and the remixed rom-com trailer offer some food for thought, at least.