Classic Horrors Club

Professor Stephen Turner tells his class that he’s been interested in the phenomenon of obedience to authority. He asks what makes ordinary men and women follow orders to harm, maim, and kill other human beings. In The Tenth Level (1976), he then proceeds to perform experiments to learn more about it.

At the end of the movie, words appear on the screen:

The story is fiction,
But it happened.
The experiment is real…
And the results are the realest of all.

The Tenth Level is indeed based on the real life experiments of psychologist Stanley Milgram, who measured the willingness of his participants to obey an authority figure who ordered them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal moral codes. The results were astounding: 65% of the subjects (“teachers”) administered up to 450 volts of electricity to “learners” who gave incorrect answers to a series of questions, even when they previously stated that they would never harm another person.

While you ponder the ethics of the experiment, I’ll add that the “teachers” were never inflicting pain at all. The “learners” were plants, moaning and groaning on cue. The “teachers” only thought they were causing pain. The fictional Turner and his colleagues seem to think letting the “teachers” in on the secret afterward made everything OK. It did not. In fact, it caused an extreme reaction from, and subsequent psychological trauma for, a subject named Dahlquist (Stephen Macht.)

The Tenth Level was shot on videotape and, after nearly a year of securing sponsors, aired on CBS as a “teleplay.” The subject matter was controversial, particularly with implications relating to the Holocaust. Much of the film depicts the aftermath of Turner’s experiments, during which a board of his peers conducts a hearing. However, it’s the detailed recreations of the experiments prior to that that provides true terror.

Recreations can be effective, but The Tenth Level needs a little more fiction. Centered on Turner, we’re meant to view the proceedings from his eyes. However, we don’t know enough about him as a person. The very second scene of the movie tells us that he’s too selfish to be married, hence his divorce. But what drives him; what causes him to remain emotionless until he finally takes responsibility for his actions?

Like the participants who shifted their responsibility for inflicting pain to the administrators because they were the ones making them to do it, Turner uses a form of peer pressure to distribute responsibility among his colleagues. Again, what are his motivations? It doesn’t seem to be fame or fortune. It seems to be a genuine interest in the science, but that’s supposedly what any mad scientist would claim.

There’s no doubt it’s a thought provoking subject. However, a documentary about it would be horrifying enough. The hearing in The Tenth Level decreases the impact. We identify with the subjects and unbearably suffer with them. This begs the question, what would you do if you were in their shoes? It’s a rhetorical question, though, because you might do something entirely different.

You can watch The Tenth Level by visiting @ClassicHorrorsTV on YouTube, then navigating to the TV Terror Guide: 70’s TV Movies playlist.