The Silence of the Hams
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 Hams are silent as a spoof.
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The Silence of the Hams (Italian: Il Silenzio dei Prosciutti) is a 1994 Italian-American spoof film starring the late Dom DeLuise as Dr. Animal Cannibal Pizza and Billy Zane as Agent Jo Dee Fostar. The film was released on June 1, 1994. The film is a spoof of the 1991 classic film The Silence of the Lambs. The film was written and directed by Ezio Greggio.
Plot
New coming agent Jo Dee Fostar (Billy Zane) is assigned to find a killer who murdered 120 plus people and gets help from Dr. Animal Cannibal Pizza (Dom DeLuise) to find out about the criminals.
Why It Needs To Stay Silent
- The story is very weak.
- False advertising: Despite being promoted as a parody of The Silence of the Lambs, it's actually more of a parody of Psycho. Apparently, Ezio Greggio only wanted to parody the latter film, but was forced to parody the former as well because it was more recent.
- The bad title is laughable.
- Lame opening scene that spoofs Psycho.
- The humor is very awkward and degrading.
- Awful and cringeworthy dialogue (e.g. when Dr. Animal asks Jo "What are you most frightened of?" and Jo replies "Anchovies". Dr. Animal then says "Good answer!".)
- The film tries to have an Airplane style of comedy, but fails on every level.
- Dull and pointless spoof ideas.
- Political humor that doesn't need to be in a spoof movie. An example is when we see people playing as George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton racing against each other in a running contest.
- The characters are unlikable whatsoever.
- There is food humor that's outlandish and dull (mentioned earlier with the "What are you most frightened of?" dialogue and one of the character's last name is Pizza).
- Dr. Pizza got his name after eating pizza that had human body parts on them, which is really unfunny and completely disgusting (thankfully we don't see him eat body parts).
- Atrocious writing and directing.
- The cameo by director John Landis as an FBI agent was pointless.
- Boring ending, with endless Scooby-Doo-type unmasking jokes that go on for way too long.
- It sets up what could have been a nice, self-deprecating ending gag, with the spirit of Alfred Hitchcock showing up to kill Antonio Motel (Ezio Greggio's character), but ruins it firstly by telegraphing the gag in the opening scene, and then having "Hitchcock" pull off his mask to reveal that he's actually Dr. Animal, who then starts laughing and gibbering idiotically.
Redeeming Qualities
- A few of the gags are funny.
- Ezio Greggio does a decent impression of Anthony Perkins, who played Norman Bates in the original Psycho.
- Mel Brooks has a nice cameo scene, which is arguably the funniest part of the movie.
Reception
The film currently holds a 0% "rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes with an average rating of 2 out of 10. However, there’s no critic consensus yet.
Box Office
The film had a $3 million budget and was released in Italy in March of 1994. The film was released on VHS in the U.S. in January of 1995. The box office return that's only available is the U.K.'s gross of £10,198.