I finally got around to watching “Silence of the Lambs” yesterday afternoon, and I have two questions.
First, can someone deliberately swallow his tongue and so (I presume) asphyxiate himself? I thought that Epilepsy Awareness taught us that epileptics no longer have to be turned on their sides when they have a seizure “so they don’t swallow their tongues”. But can someone do this on purpose?
Second, Hannibal Lecter picks the lock on his handcuffs using a metal thingie that he salvaged from the doctor’s ballpoint pen, and he does it with his hands behind his back, not even looking. Is it really that easy? If so, why does the FBI even bother with cuffs? I would think that in the situation in the movie, the cops would have been better off if Lecter had been tied up with a piece of clothesline.
Or are we just looking at a couple of dramatic conventions here? I’m aware that Thomas Harris was writing a potboiler, not a work of non-fiction.
When you turn the key in a pair of handcuffs the little metal stub on the key pushes a little lever inside the cuffs to unlock them.
A freind of mine had a pair of handcuffs that were designed to practice picking the lock. The keyhole was about 3 times normal size, but everthing else was in the same place. Even with these it was difficult to unlock them with anything other than the key. In the movie Hannibal is supposed to be some kind of super genius, so it is probably possible (but very difficult) to unlock handcuffs with a piece of metal behind your back.
It can be done. The real trick is not dexterity so much as power. It takes a heck of a lot of leverage to push on the little switch, leverage usually provided by the turning force of the key. I’ve done it, but it was hard. And I wouldn’t want to try it behind my back.
The movie cheated slightly by having Hannibal use the pen part as is. In the book, Hannibal had some time earlier managed to steal and hide a small metal part from a pen, and had modified it for use as a lockpick.
In the books, we learn some interesting things about Dr. Lecter. He is immensely strong, and has an extra, working finger on one hand. He also has an eidetic/photographic memory, so if he had ever seen a cutaway of the lock mechanism on a pair of cuffs, he’d have a mental picture of it for reference.
In the book, Dr. Lecter has been concealing the pen thingie in his mouth for a very long time. He delivers a post-hypnotic suggestion to the examiners who search him, and as everyone knows, it’s not a good idea to get one’s fingers anywhere near the Good Doctor’s jaws, as he is prone to biting.
However, you should help a person having a seizure to roll to one side, if you can do so without harming them. It is possible that they might choke on their saliva, and aspirate. This can cause pneumonia, or even death.
A good set of handcuffs, properly used, cannot be unlocked by the person wearing them. Good handcuffs don’t have a simple chain, they have three sets of links so they can’t be twisted around. You handcuff the person behind his back with the keyhole facing away from his hands. There’s also a small button you push which locks the teeth in place. This is done as a safety precaution to prevent the handcuffs from tightening and injuring the wearer’s wrists. At this point you could hand the person the key and he’ll be unable to use it.
FWIW, I work part time as a locksmith to pay the rent (I’m a college student.) I don’t know everything about the trade, but I do occasionally get paid to pick locks, so I pretend that qualifies me as an expert
While I’ve never seen the locking mechanism in a pair of handcuffs (well, except for “home use cuffs”), I’ve seen pretty much all the basics and, AFAIK, none of them can be picked using only one piece of metal.
Any lock pick set will contain several varieties of two seperate and necessary pieces, the tension wrench and the rake (unless you get into tubular or other nonlinear locks, but that is neither here nor there).
I suspect that handcuffs are on a disk tumbler setup, which vary a lot in ease of picking.
Anyhow, I won’t go into detail on the technique, but I would be shocked to see someone pick a decent lock in good condition with part of a pen.
