Someone I know sent me a link to this webpage and I thought that others here would get a real kick out of it. This is the best movie review that I have ever read.

http://www.bettybowers.com/hannibal.html

As I sat in the noiseless theater, I watched as Anthony Hopkins removed a man's brain from his cracked skull and prepared to eat it as if it were a spoonful of a deliciously robust cassoulet. The audience shrieked and groaned. Many turned their heads in disgust. As Mr. Hopkins raised the quivering human organ to his lips, only one thought crossed my mind: thank God Hollywood has finally produced a film that reflects traditional Christian values!

After a seamy stream of vile movies this year displaying bouncing breasts and naked buttocks of both genders, I can't tell you how refreshing it was not to have to face filthy nudity and, instead, sit back and enjoy a movie so unflinchingly grounded in the Lord's Good Book. At every turn, Hannibal makes thinly veiled references to the Bible with neither shame nor hesitation. As Hannibal Lecter tastes the fragrant cranial stew, every True Christian in the audience was, no doubt, just like me, reciting the Lord's own words:

Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.

John 6:54-55

Since it was the Lord Himself who began the whole concept of eating flesh and drinking blood, no True Christian will be the least bit alarmed to see this perfectly ordinary event depicted in film. Indeed, I found the reaction of the so-called Christian couple we attended Hannibal with rather telling. Nancy Schaeffer, my dear sister in Christ, when I leaned onto the floor and asked her why she had fainted, said that she found the film "revolting, disgusting and bloodthirsty." Isn't it sad when you have an epiphany and realize that your dear friends are going straight to Hell? I told Nancy with much Christian love that she was obviously not a Real Christian, but one of those Feel-Good New Age "Jesus is Love" Hallmark Greeting Card Faux-Christians whom Jesus and I despise. Here, she had pretended to be a Christian, but had been caught in her prevarication by a weak stomach! After all, anyone who is bothered by mayhem and carnage has obviously never actually made it all the way through a Bible. And if they haven't made it through a Bible, Jesus and I don't want them.

For example, Nancy objected to the scene where Hannibal feeds a chunk of Gary Oldman's face to a dog. This scene was quite clearly in reverent homage to when our loving Lord had dogs devour sinners. (1 Kings 14:11; 1 Kings 16:4 -- and, in case the grisly point was not yet clear, 1 Kings 21:24) I found Nancy's objection nothing short of spitting in the face of our Lord. The very worst atrocities in Hannibal were rather tame compared to our Blessed and Merciful Lord commanding parents to eat their own children (Deuteronomy 28:53) or reminding us that "happy is he who smashes the heads of little children on rocks!" Psalms 137:9. (Parents should bear in mind the Lord's nuanced distinction: when killing children for sport, have them go to the rocks, but when stoning a child for disobedience, have the rocks go to them!)

	The first thing that signaled appropriate Christian morality was the absence of actresses with unacceptable lifestyles. While the Lord virtually reveled in hacking people to pieces in the Old Testament, He had no patience for homosexuality. So, naturally, Miss Foster was apparently told that her type would be unsuitable for the portrayal of a godly F.B.I. agent. George W. Bush is in the White House and this is not, after all, the J. Edgar Hoover story!

If anything, the movie was not really gory enough to qualify as truly Christian entertainment. Yes, there was blood, but it was rather contained and coagulated. Nothing like my favorite scene in Psalms 58 where the Lord, in a mood, smashes people's teeth and cuts them up into little pieces so that the righteous may rejoice and wash their feet in the blood! Now, there is a dance number even "Singing In the Rain" can't touch! (But not suitable for open-toed shoes, even Gucci.)

Further, in the Lord's Book, people are not just relegated to the fairly tame spectacle of eating other people's flesh, as was the case with the relatively timid Hannibal. God, always more original than any Hollywood screenwriter, has people eat their own flesh and get drunk on their own blood! Isaiah 49:26. And when the Lord tells his followers to cut people open, He doesn't suggest evil old men like Gary Oldman, but young pregnant women! Hosea 13:16 Truly, when it comes to unexpected plot twists, the Lord knows how to keep them in their seats!

	"And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God." Revelation 19:13 Hannibal Lecter, in disguise as Tom Wolfe

So, you see, compared to the Lord's touch for grisly mayhem, Hannibal is about as shocking as Little Women. The film is, nonetheless, a wonderful vehicle for ferreting out your True Christian friends who have memorized all of their Bibles from the hellbound trash who only read the prissy "Jesus Love Me" parts! If anyone you attend Hannibal with either faints, throws up or complains, they clearly have no stomach for the far more outrageous undertakings of our Blessed Lord. In such sad circumstances, you must do as Mr. Bowers and I did with Nancy and her husband – drop them off at their home, rebuke them with earsplitting ferocity – and, of course, never speak to them again. One can only hope that they develop a stronger stomach when they are in Hell.

I recommend this lovely film for all ages.