Wicked game to play: an unexpected cameo in Silence of the Lambs

I re-watched Silence of the Lambs a few weeks ago and had a few thoughts about it – including a memory-trigger of my strangely bifurcated first viewing of the film in 1991: my mother and I watched a little more than half of it together at night on cassette, and then finished it early the next morning before I left for school! A very strange thing to do with this film. We may have been awkwardly silent during the full-frontal-nudity scene where Buffalo Bill, having tucked his penis behind his legs to make himself look female, sways about in front of the camera.
 
I find I’m not too impressed any more by Anthony Hopkins’s performance as Hannibal Lecter. (I know it isn’t fair to compare the three on-screen Lecters, given that they serve such different functions in their respective films/shows – but I think Brian Cox in Manhunter has a matter-of-fact menace that Hopkins doesn’t. Mads Mikkelsen in the TV series of course gets to develop many shades of the character over dozens of episodes, so maybe *that* isn’t a meaningful comparison at all.) Jodie Foster is excellent though, and makes it easy to see that Clarice is the clear protagonist of the film (and the book), in much the same way that Will Graham is the protagonist of Red Dragon and its film versions.
 
Anyway, here’s a more unexpected observation: in the scene where Lecter escapes, there is an actor playing a SWAT team leader who I thought was the spitting image of Chris Isaak. Then I looked it up and discovered that it *was* Chris Isaak. Surprising. It’s a very brief part but he is convincing enough in it.
 
Unfortunately, now whenever I think of Silence of the Lambs, the song “Wicked Game” will play in my head…