Swoon is a 1992 film by Tom Kalin. Based on the Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb thrill killing (in which two college students murdered a child named Bobby Franks), it is the first film adaptation of the case to make the queerness of the killers explicit as well as a major film of the New Queer Cinema movement.
The film features examples of:
- Above Good and Evil: The killers see themselves as this.
- Adaptational Attractiveness: The real Leopold and Loeb weren't anywhere near as handsome as the actors who play them.
- Anachronism Stew: Some details (such as the particularly modern hairstyle of the Mother in one of the dinner scenes) are obviously not period correct, presumably intentionally.
- All Gays Are Pedophiles: This stereotype features somewhat prominently in the trial scene, in which Leopold and Loeb are accused of having raped the boy they murdered due to the way the body has decayed. In truth, they only killed him.
- Deliberate Monochrome: The whole film is in black and white, befitting the period setting. This also helps the use of old stock footage blend in with the rest of the movie.
- Depraved Homosexual: In the trial, Leopold and Loeb are played as this by the prosecution. Before they're caught the newspapers are sure that the killers were "perverts" or "dopefiends" or something else "abnormal" by the standards of the time, which also plays into this stereotype.
- Drag Queen: Men in flapper drag appear in multiple scenes.
- Florence Nightingale Effect: Appears in Nathan's fantasy, which he recalls to his therapist.
- The Flapper: Some of the costumes worn by supporting characters fit this stereotype, as do the fabulously dressed drag queens drinking and playing cards.
- Period Piece: The film is set in the 1920s.
- The Perfect Crime: The main character's think that the murder of Bobby is this, but they're wrong.
- Ripped from the Headlines: Like Hitchcock's Rope, this movie was based on the Leopold and Loeb thrill killing.
- The Roaring '20s: The setting. A much darker portrayal than usual.
- Sarcastic Confession: Nathan "jokes" to a man they encounter that he's just had the privilege of shaking hands with a murderer.
- Sex Slave: The fantasy recounted by Nathan to his therapist involves Richard being offered the option of being his slave "in every sense of the word". Nathan also dreams that he's an Egyptian king with "Dickie" as his slave.
- Sex for Services: Leopold commits crimes with Loeb in exchange for sexual favors.
- Villain Protagonist: Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb.
