Compulsion

 

Compulsion is an enjoyable period thriller from 1959. It dramatises a famous 1920s crime which saw two rich law students trying to commit the perfect murder to prove their superior intellects. This basic story is overlaid with the trappings of a 1950s exploitation flick where psychological and existential terminology flows as freely as cigarettes are smoked and homosexual subtexts dare not speak their name. A young Dean Stockwell is effective as the repressed Judd, while Bradford Dillman is excellent as Artie, a live-wire sociopath with a wide smile that reveals some serious dental overcrowding. A lank-haired, bloated Orson Welles wanders into the last half hour of the film for a somnolent cameo as a crusading lawyer, only winding himself up at the very end to deliver a ten minute speech against capital punishment which leaves the courtroom stunned and the rest of the cast contemplating the crime of having a film stolen from under their noses. [Keir Roper-Caldbeck]