The Tenth Level (1975)

Directed by

Charles S. Dubin

Genre

drama film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 42m

Rated

NR

Rating

5.3 of 10 from 8 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A psychology professor runs an experiment where students think they are delivering electric shocks to other subjects. He becomes disturbed by how willingly they inflict pain when told to follow orders.

tensedisturbingclinicalsoberingslow-burnunsettlingcerebraldarkthought-provoking

What happens

The Tenth Level is a 1976 American made-for-television drama film movie starring William Shatner. Inspired by the Stanley Milgram obedience research, this TV movie chronicles a psychology professor's study to determine why people, such as the Nazis, were willing to "just follow orders" and do horrible things to others. Professor Stephen Turner (Shatner) leads students to believe that they are applying increasingly painful electric shocks to other subjects when they fail to perform a task correctly, and is alarmed to see how much pain the students can be convinced to inflict "in the name of science". In the movie dramatization there were actually 25 levels of increasing voltage and pain. However, the so-called tenth level was significant in that it was always the first time in which the actual test subject heard the other (false) test subject cry out in pain. It was the TV debuts of Stephen Macht and Lindsay Crouse, and John Travolta has an uncredited part as a student. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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• The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975)
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
• The Sixth Sense (1999)
• The Happiness Cage (1972)
• Next Door (1975)
• The Conversation (1974)
• The Dream Makers (1975)
• The Brain Machine (1972)