According to The Guardian, before The Silence of the Lambs, serial killers in film had been "claw-handed bogeymen with melty faces and rubber masks. By contrast, Lecter was highly intelligent with impeccable manners," and played by an actor with "impeccable credentials".[88]
When The Silence of the Lambs was re-released in the United Kingdom in 2017, the British Board of Film Classification reclassified it from an 18 to a 15 certificate. The film's co-producer Ed Saxon said audiences had become desensitized and that the film had become less shocking.[88] However, the BBFC's Craig Lapper felt that audiences had instead become used to procedural crime dramas with serial killers as dramatic tropes, and suggested that The Silence of the Lambs had created interest in these themes.[88]
