Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

Hottoceame The Age of Commercialism

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Peter Zullmmann I don't know why I'm so attracted to this vulnerable weirdos. From Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates in Psycho to Colin Firth as Adrian Leduc in Apartment Zero, darkness and a fragility that is part of the unbearable suspense. Maybe I'm in need of professional attention but I don't think so. What attracts me is by the undeniable innocence behind the horror and that has a lot, if not everything, to do with the actors playing them. Look at Anthony Perkins in Psycho! 57 years ago and it still looks and feels kind of revolutionary or Colin Firth in Apartment Zero, the character is so unique and real that you can see it a thousand times and always find some new extra something, then Dean Stockwell in Compulsion. He plays a monster, a sick, pathetic prince of a man. Yes all of that. The humanity of the actor makes the monster human and we can't dismiss him, he doesn't allow us. Orson Welles has a great entrance into the film and E.G Marshall is superb as per usual, it is the rest of the cast who seem a bit dated, specially when sharing the frame with the extraordinary Dean Stockwell

Jugu Abraham Deserved the acting awards for the three male actors that the Cannes festival bestowed. Orson Welles is amazing while delivering his lines--almost whispering and yet being heard. His performance makes Marlon Brando's famous roles look artificial and contrived. I liked the visual play of the director with the spectacles several times in the film, each time in a different manner. Director Fleischer who impressed me with his film "Barabbas" continues to impress me here. Probably, in this film it was the final line of theism versus atheism. Finally. this is an important example of a film that argues against the death penalty.

classicsoncall I had no prior knowledge of the Leopold-Loeb murder case when I watched the picture, so as in many cases involving my movie viewing pastime, I managed to learn something new today. I thought this was quite the compelling story, involving a pair of young delinquents who plan to commit the perfect crime. Judd Steiner (Dean Stockwell) is particularly cerebral in his approach, desiring to perform a totally non-emotional, well executed crime, something brilliant that would confound the authorities in it's execution. His partner Artie Strauss (Bradford Dillman) isn't as clinical in his approach, and takes particular delight in 'commanding' Judd to do his bidding. Artie was more of a monster of the two, taking special delight in explaining to Judd what a 'Judas' goat was, as he watches one lead a herd of sheep to slaughter. Artie was a creepy guy.It becomes clear fairly early in the story that their murder/kidnapping plot falls apart as soon as Judd discovers he must have dropped his pair of glasses at the location where their victim was disposed of. In true best friend fashion, Artie signals he'd throw Judd over in a minute when he dismisses his culpability by stating "So what, they're not my glasses". District Attorney Horn (E.G. Marshall) nails down the evidence against them in preparation for trial, going for the death penalty all the way.What raises the level of the film in my estimation is the defense outlined by the young men's attorney, Jonathan Wilke. Orson Welles' impassioned summation speech disavowing the death penalty is one of the best orations I've ever heard in a movie, and is worth viewing all by itself. It results in no small comfort for the youthful criminals however, they both wind up with concurrent life sentences for kidnapping and murder.As the movie progressed, it became more and more apparent to me that the theme of 'the perfect crime' held some resonance to a Hitchcock film that came out a decade earlier titled "Rope". That picture too it turns out, had some basis in the Leopold-Loeb case, and whether it was an intentional homage or not, there was a line in this picture that caught my attention when uttered by newspaper man Sid Brooks (Martin Milner), commenting to his fiancée Ruth (Diane Varsi) after he learns that Judd had assaulted her - "I hope he hangs till the rope rots".

kittyvista Orson Welles was known for pushing the envelope, and the movie Compulsion is no exception to this. Produced in the 1950s, the movie is the only representation made of the Leopold and Loeb case that correctly infers the relationship between the two protagonists was more than just friendly; in fact, Leopold and Loeb were gay lovers. It showed remarkable attention to detail as well, in that the dynamic between the two could have been written by an FBI criminal profiler whose expertise is in the pathology of sociopath pairings.Dean Stockwell does become the character the audience loves to hate - he drips of arrogance covered by a veneer of superficial charm. Dillman's character tends to be more pathetic in nature, but still not enough that the audience would see him as a "victim."E. G. Marshall is true to form as the district attorney intent on bringing these two to justice, and Orson Welles plays the atheistic and fairly cynical attorney hired to defend the pair. The touch of black humor in the end is when he states that if he believed in a God, he would say that Divine intervention was responsible for Sid Brooks finding the incriminating glasses (they had been partially buried in the sand) and for the police being able to trace them to Steiner.The movie is well worth viewing, especially for anyone who enjoys "true crime" stories - you'll get a charge comparing the real story to the way it is presented.