Over the past few years, I've seen at least four different Smooth Criminal videos. The first is a regular MTV version, about 3 or 4 minutes long, the next is a weird sped up version of the same length (where everything is blurred, and you can't make out the dance moves), included on the Number Ones DVD. The third video is the Alien Ant Farm one.
However, the most famous (and probably my favourite) is the aforementioned Moonwalker clip. The segment starts with the text Smooth Criminal carved in stone for some reason. Cut to an alleyway, with Jackson's shadow on the wall. The man himself walks round the corner, opens the door of the nightclub, dispelling a weird smoke effect. He enters the building, and appears to be in Prohibition Era America.
Inside the club, he flicks a coin across the room into the jukebox (cue horribly fake special effect), and the music starts. Jacko dances around the place for a while, sings at the microphone, crushes a cue ball with his bare hands, blows chalk in a mean dude's face, and shoots a bad guy, who flies backwards, leaving a perfect outline in the wall, and so forth. It’s as bad as it sounds.
But, just when the video is getting a little too-cartoony, the overhead glass breaks, and for the next few minutes, the music stops, while Jacko stamps his foot, and everyone moans out loud (no, I don't understand it either).
The music restarts, more dancing takes place, guys with guns show up, Jackson pulls a machine gun out of nowhere, shoots them, and runs off to save (who else but) the children.
The redeeming features of the video are the dance moves (notably the impossible lean), a really funny dancing kid, plus nearly every type of Moonwalk invented - the Regular move, the Moonwalk in a Circle, Moonwalk on the Spot, and maybe the Sidewalk. All in all it's a crazy video, a pretty good song, and an entertaining nine minutes, as the video takes longer than reading this write-up (go figure). Its main purpose is to show us that Michael Jackson was once pretty cool, before he became a white woman that is.