ABSTRACT
There are some most prominent themes in the twenty-five box office hits of the first five years of the 1990s. They are: crime and ultra-violence, continued negative portrayals of the police and military, unfavorable views of the wealthy (particularly wealthy men), supernatural and extraterrestrial phenomena, and more prominent and favorable roles for women and minorities. In Silence of the Lambs, an overwhelming number of police are assigned to guard the diabolical Hannibal Lechter. Contributing to the erosion of the institutional integrity of the police, the emphasis in the new cops and robbers films is on departmental conflict rather than on cooperation or camaraderie. The image of the military continues to decline in the films of the 1990s. Some of the 1990s movies also exemplify the earlier shift from traditional religious to supernatural themes. Basic Instinct takes the new Hollywood vision of gender relations to extremes. The film is a reversal of the typical male stalker suspense film.
