Compulsion (1959)

Directed by Richard Fleischer. Starring Bradford Dillman, Dean Stockwell, Diane Varsi, Orson Welles, Martin Milner, E. G. Marshall, Richard Anderson, Edward Binns, Robert Burton, Wilton Graff, Louise Lorimer, Robert F. Simon.

Dillman and Stockwell are a pair of preppy, cold-blooded psychopaths who plan the “perfect crime,” but the cover-up doesn’t quite go according to plan. Fictionalized version of the Leopold and Loeb case, given a lackluster treatment by journeyman Fleischer, but it’s smartly scripted by Richard Murphy from Meyer Levin’s novel in all ways but its clumsy attempts to delve into the killers’ psychology. Stockwell is chilling in one of his earliest adult roles, while Welles shows up more than an hour into the picture as the Clarence Darrow stand-in who represents the law-schoolers in their murder defense (it’s no The Third Man, but Welles does dominate once he finally arrives). Varsi, however, is as animated as mahogany, and the movie grinds its gears whenever she shows up; her scene with Milner (also stiff) is D.O.A. melodrama. A generally acclaimed crime picture, but frankly, even without the distracting long-take gimmick, Hitchcock did it better with Rope. Stockwell, Dillman and Welles “shared” a special three-way acting award handed out at Cannes.

66/100