Compulsion

Compulsion (1959) is a crime drama worth watching online on iFILM. Judd Steiner and Artie Straus are two wealthy, brilliant university students who have talked themselves into a monstrous belief: that their intellect places them above ordinary morality and the law. To prove the point, they coldly murder a young boy — not for money, not for revenge, but as an experiment.

Their scheme was meticulous. What undoes it is almost nothing: a pair of distinctive eyeglasses dropped at the scene, a small slip that slowly reels the case back to them. Dean Stockwell and Bradford Dillman play the two killers, one cracking under the pressure while the other keeps his composure to the end. Then, in the final stretch, Orson Welles strides in as their defense attorney, and his long plea against the death penalty outweighs everything that came before it.

Director Richard Fleischer builds the film less on plot turns than on the chill of the idea itself — that a life could be taken to test a theory. It draws on a notorious 1924 American case that has been filmed more than once, yet here it plays as a genuine argument about conscience and punishment. Ideal for viewers who like thoughtful courtroom noir with weighty monologues. Stream Compulsion (1959) online on iFILM.