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Sociopath vs. Sociopath

Black, white and creepy all over: you need only watch the first four minutes of Compulsion to get a serious dose of disturbing behavior. Watch the whole thing and you'll be treated to a story that's so wildly whacked out and psychologically troubling that it's still intriguing and unsettling today, even though it was made in 1959. And - as if this intense psycho thriller could get any creepier - it's inspired by a true story.

Compulsion is based on the rather infamous 1924 Leopold Loeb murder case from Chicago. Since this is a movie where the audience knows whodunit all along, forgive me if I jump right into the details. Leopold and Loeb were wealthy, academically advanced teenagers enrolled in the University of Chicago who were convicted of killing a younger teenage boy and sentenced to life in prison after a widely publicized trial. Why did they do it? Why did they kidnap a random boy, bludgeon him to death, pour acid on him and stuff him in a culvert, and then send his family a ransom note, after stopping for a few hot dogs? Because, well, they wanted to try out murder. And they thought themselves so superior that they could commit the perfect crime.  

In some ways the true story this movie is based on is so weird and troubling, that you might argue that the filmmakers didn't have too much work to do. I mean, the real life Nathan Leopold (the guy on whom Dean Stockwell's character is based) really did pursue ornithology as a hobby - talk about freaky murderer pastimes. And the fact that his glasses were dropped at the scene where the body was dumped was in actuality a telling clue that blew up the real case, not just some movie mystery device. But, by using canted camera angles, heavy handed music cues, and parsing out details slowly, the film does manage to deliver on suspense and creepiness. In one scene the character based on Loeb has a conversation with a teddy bear. It's sinister and it's effective and it's the result of filmmaking creativity.

In keeping with what was acceptable for the time period in which it was made, the movie does avoid the brutality of the crime (it's not actually depicted) and it also avoids overtly delving into certain complexities of the boys' relationship, such as whether their entanglement was homosexual, and how that may have affected their motivations.  But sometimes leaving an audience to its own imagination can be a very effective movie trick. Since the kidnapping, the murder, the dumping of the body, and the moments after are not on screen, you almost can't stop thinking about how they did it. And it puts the viewer in the perspective of the everyman following the details of this salacious crime and show trial back in 1924, who would be wondering about those details himself.

Did I mention that none other than Orson Wells plays the boys' lawyer, a character based on Clarence Darrow, who actually defended the pair with remarkable eloquence? I know I didn't. I just can't get past the psychological weirdness and intensity of it this whole story. Watch Compulsion to get the entire experience yourself. And don't forget your glasses.