"Compulsion" Review

 

by Daniel White

Orson Welles gives a gripping performance in Compulsion (1959). It almost justifies his receiving top-billing over the film's true stars, Dean Stockwell and Bradford Dillman. The real lunacy is why Diane Varsi's name is listed second after Welles. As Ruth Evans, a sympathetic classmate to our two homicidal, nutty Nietzcheans, she barely registers. Directed by Richard Fleischer, Compulsion is an extremely well-made flick. A thinly-veiled account of the infamous Leopold and Loeb thrill kill in 1924 Chicago, it adheres closely to the facts.

Stockwell and Dillman expertly play Judd Steiner and Artie Strauss, two wealthy lads who, when the film begins, have already committed the "perfect crime." Murdering a younger neighbor, their plans to make it look like a kidnapping go awry when the boy's body is discovered. As in the actual case, these two "geniuses" quickly get caught when a pair of easily identifiable glasses belonging to Steiner are discovered where the victim's body has been dumped. Their guilt established, it's up to masterful trial lawyer Jonathan Wilk (Welles) to save the two deluded, arrogant, bumbling brats from the hangman.

Welles is wonderful as Wilk (despite being saddled with an atrocious make-up job), who, in reality, was the famed Clarence Darrow. He holds our attention, and in his rousing summation, delivers a compelling and convincing rebuttal to capital punishment. What makes this movie worthwhile is its willingness to tell the near-truth, despite a fabricated, ludicrous subplot between Varsi and Stockwell.

Distributed by Twentieth Century Fox, with an excellent E. G. Marshall as the state's attorney, Compulsion is currently available on YouTube.