Compulsion

In 1924 Chicago, two wealthy law students, Judd Steiner and Artie Straus, believe they are intellectually superior to ordinary people and beyond the rules that govern them. Acting on a distorted reading of Nietzsche's ideas about a superior man, they kidnap and kill a young boy for no clear motive, convinced they have committed a crime that cannot be traced back to them. A careless mistake at the scene puts investigators on their trail, and the two friends find themselves suspected, then arrested.

Their families hire Jonathan Wilk, a defense attorney known for opposing capital punishment, to represent them. Though he believes they are guilty, he works to spare them from execution during a trial that becomes a broader argument about the death penalty. The story draws on the Leopold and Loeb case.

Richard Fleischer directed the film, the seventh of the twenty-three features he made, following The Vikings and preceding Barabbas. Richard Murphy wrote the screenplay, with Richard D. Zanuck producing for 20th Century Fox. Dean Stockwell and Bradford Dillman play the two students, Orson Welles appears as Wilk, and E.G. Marshall, Diane Varsi and Martin Milner round out the cast.

Made for about a million dollars, the film returned roughly twice that worldwide. On IMDb it holds 7.4 from some 8,500 votes, while on TMDB it has 7.1 from about 173. A critics' rating of 7.8 from ten reviews places it slightly above both audience scores.