Smooth Criminal (Short Film)

Set in a 1930s speakeasy, the video casts Michael as a sharp-suited figure who walks into a smoky club and turns it into a stage. The style borrows from old Hollywood musicals, especially the elegance of Fred Astaire, but adds a hard modern edge. The song's story of a woman attacked in her apartment plays out through mood and motion rather than plot. The central set piece is a dance built around impossible balance, a piece of movement engineered to look like magic on screen and later staged live with hidden mechanics.

Directed by Colin Chilvers, the sequence was created for the 1988 anthology film Moonwalker, then edited into a standalone video. The club set, white suit, and fedora gave it a period gangster glamour. Its most famous effect is the anti-gravity lean, in which Michael and his dancers tip far forward past the point of falling. On film this was done with wires; for live shows Michael and his team later patented a special shoe that locked into a slot in the stage, letting performers lean without support.

Michael strides into a dim jazz club and takes command of the room. Over the course of the number the club's patrons join him, and the atmosphere shifts from menace to spectacle. Gunfire and threat linger at the edges, tying to the song's tale of the wounded Annie, but the video keeps its focus on style and control. The hero moves through danger untouched, ending the sequence as coolly as he entered.

This is one of Michael's most celebrated routines. Alongside the anti-gravity lean, it features tight group formations, hat tricks, spins, and a machine-gun sharpness of movement in the white suit. The choreography mixes vintage swing elegance with modern popping, and its images, the fedora tilt and the forward lean, rank among the most iconic in his career.

The lean became a signature illusion of his live shows and a widely imitated stunt. The suit-and-fedora look defines the Bad era for many fans. The sequence's craft, from its period design to its engineered choreography, is studied by dancers and filmmakers, and it remains one of the most recognizable set pieces in music-video history.