| Director | Richard Fleischer |
|---|---|
| Budget | $1.3 million |
| Box office | $1.8 million |
Close friends Judd Steiner and Artie Straus each believe they fit Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy of a "superman" (Übermensch), and thus are above the law. From wealthy, socially prominent families, both are graduate law students under age 20 at the University of Chicago (Artie tells investigators that he began undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan at age 14). Both believe themselves able to outsmart the "inferior" persons surrounding them.
Challenging Professor McKinnon's classroom lecture on "tribal codes," Judd asserts that Nietzsche claimed tribal leaders did not feel compelled to obey the laws they set:
McKinnon (in disagreement): "Did Moses consider himself above the laws that he laid?"
Judd: "He had a motley crew on his hands, and he had to get them through the desert somehow."
Sid Brooks, a classmate earning his way through college working at a newspaper, expresses wonder at Judd's interactions with the esteemed professor:
Sid: "Every time I stick my neck out, he chops my head off. You get away with murder. How come?"
Judd: "I don't know, he just doesn't seem to think very fast."
Sid: "He's supposed to be one of the brightest men in the faculty."
Judd: "I suppose he is."
To please Artie, to whom Judd is submissive, Judd goes along with Artie's increasingly criminal commands, such as stealing $67 and a typewriter from a campus fraternity house. When Artie commands Judd to run over a hitchhiking drunk they have run off the road with his car, Judd loses resolve and narrowly misses the drunk. Artie berates Judd for his lack of conviction, which proves he is not superior. To restore himself in Artie's regard, Judd proposes to demonstrate their "superior intellect" by killing a boy, demanding a ransom, and outwitting the police. Cruising in their car for a victim, they lure Paulie Kessler, a neighbor on his way home from school, and kill him. Artie believes they have committed the "perfect crime." When police question Paulie's neighbors, a cocky Artie "helpfully" engages with the investigators, spitefully giving them false leads. Asked about suspicious characters around the neighborhood; among others, Artie suggests a teacher at Paulie's school, which Judd and he had attended four years previously, who always told the kids they were spoiled brats who had too much money.
When assigned a beat about a drowned boy that was found in the park, Sid discovers the eyeglasses found near Paulie's body, assumed to be his, are too large to be Paulie's and are key evidence. The glasses have a distinctive hinge, with only three pairs purchased in the Chicago area, Judd having purchased one pair. Judd, whose glasses dropped out of his pocket at the scene of the crime, is unable to produce his. Questioned, Judd claims he dropped them a few days earlier when bird-watching with his group of ornithology students. It now becomes urgent to dump the typewriter stolen from the fraternity house that they used to type the ransom note sent to the Kesslers.
Needing to give each other alibis, Judd and Artie claim to have been out the evening of the murder with girls they picked up named May and Edna, whose full names they never learned. The alibi falls apart when the Steiner chauffeur unintentionally reveals he was working on repairs to Judd's car the entire evening that Judd and Artie claimed to be cruising in it with the girls (they had rented a car that could not be traced to them for the crime, but their alibi involved riding around in Judd's car). Eventually, the "superior" Artie cracks under interrogation and implicates Judd, who then confirms the details of Artie's confession, but insists that Artie committed the actual murder.
Famed attorney Jonathan Wilk takes their case, saving them from hanging by making an impassioned closing argument against capital punishment. Steiner and Straus are given life sentences, instead.