Compulsion

Compulsion is a 1959 American crime drama film directed by Richard Fleischer. The film is based on the 1956 novel of the same name by Meyer Levin, which in turn was a fictionalized account of the Leopold and Loeb murder trial. It was the first film produced by Richard D. Zanuck. Although the principal roles are played by Dean Stockwell and Bradford Dillman, top billing went to Orson Welles. Plot Close friends Judd Steiner (based on Nathan Leopold and played by Dean Stockwell) and Artie Strauss (based on Richard Loeb and played by Bradford Dillman) kill a boy, Paulie Kessler, on his way home from school in order to demonstrate their "superior intellect". The two, who study at the University of Chicago with each having socially prominent families, also engage in stealing a typewriter from a campus fraternity house and even debate running over a drunk. They study with people such as Sid Brooks, a student working at a newspaper to pay his way forward. Strauss believes they have committed the "perfect crime", but they are caught when police find a key piece of evidence — Steiner's glasses, which he inadvertently left at the scene of the crime that Brooks discovers when assigned a beat about a drowned boy that was found in the park. Eventually, after an investigation that sees the two try to cover the crime up with wavering alibis and a lengthy interrogation, they are accused of murder. Famed attorney Jonathan Wilk (based on Clarence Darrow and played by Orson Welles) takes their case, saving them from hanging by making an impassioned closing argument against capital punishment.