The Plot…<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\nJudd Steiner and Artie Straus are best friends.\u00a0 It’s only natural.\u00a0 They have much in common.\u00a0 Both are from wealthy families.\u00a0 They travel in the most elite social circles.\u00a0 Both Judd and Artie have superior intellects.\u00a0 Although still in their late teens, they’re law students.<\/p>\n
Judd and Artie see everyone as less than them.\u00a0 They feel because they are so intellectually superior laws don’t apply to them.\u00a0 To that end, they have been committing small crimes just to prove they’re are so smart that they would never be caught.<\/p>\n
Then they decide to commit the ultimate crime.<\/p>\n
Murder.<\/p>\n
They pick a young boy at random and kill him.<\/p>\n
They’re confident that they left no clues.\u00a0 And even more sure that if they did, with their superior intellect, no one could trip them up.<\/p>\n
The best laid plans…<\/p>\n
Thoughts (beware of spoilers)\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\nCompulsion<\/em> is based on the real life murder trial of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. Leopold and Loeb kidnapped and murdered a fourteen year old boy.\u00a0 They did it to prove to themselves their superior intellect would allow them to commit the perfect crime.\u00a0 Their families hired Clarence Darrow to defend them.\u00a0 At the time, the case was considered the trial of the century<\/em>.<\/p>\nWhen the film came out, Leopold sued for invasion of privacy.\u00a0 Because he had written a book about the crime himself, he didn’t prevail. (Loeb wasn’t involved in the lawsuit.\u00a0 He had been killed by another prison years before.)<\/p>\n
Orson Welles received top billing but doesn’t appear on screen until 65 minutes into the 99 minute film.<\/p>\n
It’s hard for me to believe that Compulsion<\/em> wasn’t nominated for a single Academy Award<\/em>.\u00a0 I could see nominations for Best Screenplay, Best Direction, Best Actor (Dean Stockwell and Bradford Dillman) and Best Supporting Actor (Orson Welles).<\/p>\nAlfred Hitchcock did his own loose adaption of the Leopold-Loeb murder with his film Rope<\/em>.<\/p>\nCompulsion (1959) <\/strong><\/em>rates 5 of 5 stars<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/stallonezone.com\/zone\/logo\/zview_a.png\")
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/stallonezone.com\/zone\/2025\/z051925zview_compulsion2.png\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Compulsion (1959) Director:\u00a0 Richard Fleischer Screenplay: Richard Murphy; based on COMPULSION by Meyer Levin Stars: Orson Welles, Dean Stockwell, Diane<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17,51,72,54,65,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebs","category-crime","category-history","category-movies","category-trivia","category-z-view"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38968"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38968\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38969,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38968\/revisions\/38969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/stallonezone.com\/zone\/2025\/z051925zview_compulsion.png\")
<\/p>\n