Winner of the Teddy and Cligari Film Awards at the 1992 Berlin International Film Festival and the Best Cinematography Award at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival, the true-life crime-thriller SWOON comes to DVD for the time in the UK. Written and directed by first-time director Tom Kalin ("Savage Grace") and starring Craig Chester ("Adam & Steve"; "I Shot Andy Warhol") and Daniel Schlachet, the film is based on the true story of the notorious murderers Leopold and Loeb, whose heinous exploits famously inspired Alfred Hitchcock′s 1948 thriller, "Rope," and Richard Fleischer′s "Compulsion" starring Orson Welles.
In 1924 Chicago, two wealthy, exceptionally intelligent and well-educated 18 year-olds, Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, Jr, kidnapped and brutally murdered 13 year-old Bobby Franks, before stripping and mutilating his body with acid and finally concealing it in a culvert. They then sent a ransom note to the boy′s parents. Their only motivation for the killing was simply to prove to themselves that they were smart enough to commit the "perfect crime" and get away with it. But for Leopold and Loeb - gay lovers as well as longtime college buddies - one simple mistake proved to be their downfall.
A landmark work in the rise of the New Queer Cinema movement during the 1990s, Kalin′s highly stylized film is a raw, edgy, chilling and fascinating film that focuses as much on the transgressive nature of the relationship between the two killers as it does on the shocking murder and subsequent trial. Shot in black and white as a period piece with several deliverate anachronisms and idiosyncratic contemporary trappings, SWOON is a powerful and compelling work that has been hailed by Rolling Stone magazine as a "haunting and visionary film" and "a stunning debut."
