User Reviews

Orson Welles' "Touch of Evil" is a complex, ironic examination of the relationship between the law and justice... The film must stand beside the very best in detectives genre...

Its enormous confused tracking shots, its low angles, its tormented lighting, its obscure intelligent photography, its great use of the wide-angle lens, its hard complexity and complete fictional night-city word, all represent a brilliant essay of pure cinema establishing Welles as an alarming genius, one of the greatest filmmakers with movies years ahead of their time...

"Touch of Evil" is an outstanding achievement of a great cinematic mind, displaying a powerful range of Gothic expressionism... Welles' first appearance as a corrupt used-up Texas police captain (Hank Quinlan) is no less surprising...

A police car comes to a stop to the scene of a murder and unexpectedly there is Welles, sitting in the back seat: gross, unshaven, sweaty, and with a cigar clenched between his teeth... He seems a repellent person, with "intuition," manifesting that sensation of evil, as no crime movie has managed to do since, a suggestion of corruption that is the key to the fascinating and doubtful character he plays... Welles character will cheat, lie and murder in order to prevent the truth from emerging... One hates his toughness, yet one still understands him and feels pity for him than for his victims...

Joseph Calleia, his slightly more presentable assistant, is like Dana Andrews in Otto Preminger's "Where the Sidewalks Ends," a villain with unchanged methods: he waits, watches, leaves the police work to others, remains loyal to his profession and to his boss—but could not exist without him, or in another environment...

From that moment, we are caught between admiration of his brilliant directorial effects and fascination with his characterization of Quilan, a chief able to make a quick arrest by the simple expedient of framing the most likely suspects... He appears to have been using the techniques for years, but before this he has usually fitted the frame round the guilty party... It is a performance which frequently gives great energy to the screen...

Stanley Kubrick once said that the first shot of a movie should be the most captivating... Definitely, Welles' legendary opening shot satisfies one of the key requirements of the movie mystery... Of course, Russ Metty deserves a lot of credit...

The long traveling shot starts with a close-up of a time-bomb being placed in the trunk of a car by a shadowy figure, then, the richest man in town (Rudy Lanniker) and his mistress appearing from the background, getting into the car and driving away across the border from Mexico to the United States and through the border town... By this time the roving camera—that seems never to come to a standstill, has offered to us long view of the surroundings (crumbling arches, peeling walls, poor hotels and night clubs and a lot of trash) which will enclose the plot...

While the convertible stops at a crossroad, the camera descends swiftly to introduce a Mexican gentleman, an idealistic justice department lawyer Ramon Vargas (Charlton Heston) and his bride, the blonde American Susan (Janet Leigh) walking toward the frontier...

The superlative camera tracks the couple for some time, catching again the car as both Vargas and the automobile meet at the U.S. Customs post... We see and hear a conversation between Vargas, his wife and the border guard as the vehicle moves out of the frame... We proceed with the couple about to cross the border until the bomb goes off and the car explodes... The killing is the start of the conflict between policemen from both sides of the border...

"Touch of Evil" is great and memorable for the distinguished description of its scenes, its images, its acting and its sound track... Its importance lies entirely in how the event is told 'not' in the message or material...

In addition to its wonderful opening, the film contains other outstanding sequences:

• The deplorable ambiance of a closed nightclub where Marlene Dietrich wisely advises Welles to "lay off the candy bars." "Honey, you're a mess", she says when she finally recognizes Quinlan, and (at the end of the picture) when he asks "Come on, read my future for me," she replies: "You haven't got any. Your future is all used up. Why you don't go home."

• The single shot (in the murder suspect's apartment) where Welles handles his cast with great skill... There is much overlapping conversation as everyone talks at once, and half a dozen characters are brilliantly delineated...

• When the camera meets a group of three characters crossing the street across a hotel lobby and into a restricted elevator, and rides with them slowly up to the second floor until Vargas, who has left them in the lobby, reappears at the very moment the elevator door reopens...

• The horrifying siege of Leigh at the isolated Mirador Motel by a gang of young punks...

Perhaps the finest things about "Touch of Evil" is the cold, strange and unsympathetic atmosphere of its night city (narcotics, gang-rape, racism, prostitution) an almost universal corruption...

It's unlikely that there will ever be a more unpleasant or offensive or disgusting detective than Welles or a more fascinating one...

Watch for Mercedes McCambridge in it... but look quickly, or it will be too late.

Charlton Hesston playing a Mexican. I must admit, I was highly skeptical at first. Sure, he's played roles ranging from Moses to a British tea planter to the last human in a world filled with vampires. But in all those movies, he was clearly white. And yet, in this movie, casting Hesston in the role of a Mexican narcotics agent actually works. But on reflection, how could it not, considering that Touch of Evil was made by Orson Welles himself.

Welles is, after all, the man responsible for Citizen Cane. Hearing that he's connected with a project tends to raise expectations- especially when he both stars and directs. And Touch of Evil more than meets them. Here we have a web of lies and conspiracy that keeps you guessing, rapidly building tension in the second half, and two legendary actors giving some of the best performances of their careers.

Hesston plays Vargas, who along with his American wife is celebrating his success on his last case. Their border vacation is cut short when the car ahead of them explodes in a massive fireball. Every law enforcement officer in the county is soon on the scene, including Captain Quinlen (Welles). He makes it clear from the start that he doesn't want some Mexican getting involved in his affairs, but the bomb was planted in Mexico, probably by a Mexican. Plus, Vargas may have more personal reasons for sticking around, possibly involving the local crime boss. It's clear that these two will butt heads and work at cross purposes all through the case. But when Vargas that Quinlen may be planting evidence, the film takes a whole new direction. Both men's reputations are at stake, and there will be no holds barred.

I cannot fully express just how great Welles' screenplay is. Rarely, if ever, predictable, it keeps you guessing as to the characters' intentions, motivations, and connections to each other. Deals are made and loyalties shift, with the other characters- and the viewers- only gradually becoming aware of what's really happening. It also must be said that nothing, absolutely nothing happens that does not tie back in to the plot. There are no fillers here. And at the end, everything is explained, and all the loose ends tied up, without resorting to any Deos ex Machina devices.

Back to Charlton Hesston. If his name had not been in the opening credits, I would never have guessed that it was him. He looks nothing like himself; he looks Hispanic. This film must have had one hell of a head makeup artist. Of course, the fact that it's in black and white doesn't hurt. I doubt this would work nearly as well in color. And yet it's not just his appearance. He speaks Spanish like a native, and has the subtle hand gestures down pat. The only thing that leads one to suspect he's white is that he also speaks English like a native- that is to say without a noticeable accent. But as convincing in his portrayal as Hesston is, his is only the second-best performance in this picture. Warning! Major spoilers ahead!

Besides providing excellent writing and direction, Welles also gives us one of the most loathsome characters in the history of cinema. Physically he's overweight, with a homely visage. His movements are slow and plodding, and his voice a low growl mixed with a smoker's cough. From the moment we first meet him, it's obvious that he's a racist and a bigot. It also becomes clear as the movie progresses that he is seriously corrupt, to the point that his career and the reputation he's built for himself are based on blatantly illegal acts, acts which have led to the deaths of possibly innocent people. For Quinlen, his job isn't about seeing justice done OR following the letter of the law. It's only about clearing the books and seeing that someone is punished. And he will do anything, no matter how unspeakable to keep his sterling reputation intact. And it doesn't matter how long or how loyally you've served him, he only cares about himself.

The final scene, with the wiretap, is an absolute masterpiece of high tension. At every second, the hero is threatened with discovery. Quinlen is a smart man, even drunk. The conversation between him and the sergeant can only go on so long before he realizes he's being set up. We know this, and the question becomes "Can Vargas keep him in the dark long enough to get what he needs?" When this question is answered, the final confrontation is masterfully handled. It is upstaged only by the coda, in which the original case is solved, and we discover just how needless all of Quinlen's schemes were.

This should be a 5-6 but a sharper light shines on Orson Welles.

At this point in his Career, Welles had abandoned any attempt at storytelling in favor of atmosphere and meaning via oblique camera angles. If you love Welles you'll see the brilliance in the camera work and defend the genius, vision, breadth, greatness; you'll criticize others for not "getting" it; you'll discuss the real meanings with other cognoscenti.

Really though, it's an awful movie. I mean, just plain bad. The worst kind of Hollywood: a terrible jazz-like score; villains with all the cartoonish menace of Wild One, Rebel w/o Cause, or On the Waterfont (I kept waiting for Karl Malden to jump out in a priest outfit and punch someone); a meandering story that goes nowhere; and some of the worst acting imaginable. Acting so wincingly bad that it brings tears to your eyes.

Weaver's performance is clownishly painful - something out of bad theatre for children. Welles, as always, pontificates and overacts ponderously. Heston, as always, alternates between woodenness and overacting - he was a master at reacting to the wrong things; Leigh overacts and almost jumps out of the screen in places; the list goes on. There isn't an understated performance in it.

In case you haven't seen it: Heston plays a Mexican (no, I'm not kidding) DEA guy with no discernible ethnicity beyond some facepaint and a greased mustache.

There's also the wonderful technique of having 2-3 characters talk at once so that you can't possibly follow what's going on. Much like real life where the salesman in your group interrupts before you can begin to get to your point.

Dietrich is a fortune teller with heavy lines such as (to Welles) "Your future is all used up". This is often quoted as one of the important bits. Cotten is a coroner with his trademark simpering smile.

What happens in the end: Welles drowns in the physical, moral and spiritual garbage that he created for himself. Or did the world create it for all of? Why for that matter are we here? Of course he finds time before he goes for a self-pitying speech that questions the meaning of his own life and - yes - all of our lives. Yup, just like Kane and Third Man.

It's a shame about Welles really: he had some great ideas and some beautiful camera techniques. He just couldn't present anything without slamming it in your face over and over and over. He'd have been a good preacher or university professor where he could lecture without any questioning.

When Universal hired Orson Welles to appear in TOUCH OF EVIL, he had long been considered a Hollywood outcast due to his rebellious nature and disdain for the front office. In addition to acting, he also ended up being hired to write and direct TOUCH OF EVIL thanks to the insistence of star Charlton Heston, who was recently basking in the success of THE TEN COMMANDMENTS and therefore had enough clout to chose whoever he wanted for a director. Ever since appearing in THE THIRD MAN, Welles remained in Europe to continue his filmmaking away from Tinseltown's radar, fed up with executives re-editing his finished product against his wishes.

Contrary to legend, it wasn't TOUCH OF EVIL that brought Welles back to America. He'd already returned to New York in the mid Fifties to act on television and radio before getting the call from Universal. Welles wanted Janet Leigh to play Heston's wife and sent her a telegram thanking her for accepting.....before her agent had a chance to contact her!!! Welles also pulled off some casting coups that Universal execs didn't see coming. He convinced old friend Marlene Dietrich to appear as a Gypsy madam under near-heavy disguise and, during an advanced screening, the higher-ups were flabbergasted to see Frau Dietrich up there. They had no idea she was in the cast. Welles also persuaded former members of his old Mercury Theatre ~and CITIZEN KANE co-stars~ Joseph Cotten and Ray Collins to join. (Cotten's was an uncredited cameo.)

However, Welles must have been overcome with a sense of déjà vu during postproduction because, once again, he butted heads with the front office. Unhappy with his final cut, Universal proceeded to edit TOUCH OF EVIL against his wishes. Upon learning what was afoot, an impassioned Welles wrote a memo containing almost sixty pages of suggested revisions, all of which fell on deaf ears. When the film was finally released, it was written off as a B-movie with an A-list pedigree.

More than forty years later, Universal had the opportunity to right that wrong when Welles' memo was unearthed, containing all his suggestions for improvement. Using that memo as a guideline, famed editor Walter Murch was brought in to revise TOUCH OF EVIL according to Welles' wishes. The result was a masterpiece restored.

The first five minutes of TOUCH OF EVIL is a glorious, unbroken tracking shot beginning on the Mexican side of the border town Los Robles, in which a mysterious figure plants a time bomb in the trunk of a car. Getting into the car is a prominent American citizen accompanied by some lady of the evening, where they drive up the street to the customs station. Walking alongside them is Miguel "Mike" Vargas (played by the Caucasian Heston in a bit of casting that would raise eyebrows today), a vacationing Mexican narc enjoying his a honeymoon with American wife Susie (Leigh).

The famous tracking shot ends with a deafening explosion as the car detonates, killing both occupants. Heading the investigation is Chief Hank Quinlan (Welles), a grotesquely obese man whose mumbling makes Marlon Brando enunciate like Laurence Olivier. Quinlan is renowned among the community and beyond for his intuitive spot-on hunches, to which he attributes a gimpy leg from an old bullet injury. (In DOUBLE INDEMNITY, Edward G Robinson's sixth sense was brought on by indigestion).

A recovering alcoholic, Quinlan is admired by superiors and underlings alike for never having taken a dishonest dollar in his life. His poultry ranch seems to be the only thing keeping him from a vow of poverty. With attributes such as these, it would be tempting to vote Quinlan as lawman of the year..... except that he's an unapologetic racist! He's lived in a border town for probably most of his life, and has performed his duty on both sides, but has never bothered to learn or speak Spanish. He treats white suspects and witnesses with the appropriate decorum, but less so with their non-white counterparts.

Vargas himself has a stellar professional reputation on both sides as an oficial de narcóticos. Recently, he gained fame and respect for his arrest of a big time Mexican gangster named Vince Grandi, whose brother Joe fancies himself the unofficial godfather of Los Robles. Being a younger and Hispanic detective, plus being married to a white woman, Vargas unwittingly taps into the darkest recesses of Quinlan's psyche, since it's obvious the lawman is not the staunchest advocate for miscegenation.

However, it's the policing methods that really set the two men apart from one another. Vargas is a by-the-book cop who believes in due process, while Quinlan is not above using some....uh, primitive persuasion to obtain a confession. These differences will come to a head when Quinlan arrests the Mexican boyfriend of the dead man's daughter following the alleged discovery of two incriminating sticks of dynamite in the suspect's bathroom. Vargas doesn't see it so open and shut because he was just washing his hands in the bathroom prior to the search and never saw the evidence where Quinlan claimed it was! Vargas openly accuses him of framing the Hispanic, and vows to formally raise the matter with the proper authorities.

The stage is now set for the inevitable collision course as Quinlan, desperate to clear his name and slander Mike Vargas, forms an unholy alliance with Joe Grandi, who has his own reasons for wanting to discredit Vargas. Because the narco cannot be intimidated, Grandi believes that the best way to control Vargas is by involving Susie into their deadly cat and mouse game.

I've seen lots of black & white films noir that visually convey the danger element for every drop that can be squeezed. THE MALTESE FALCON, DOUBLE INDEMNITY, THE KILLERS, and THE BIG SLEEP, all moody crime tales set within the asphalt jungle, are among the greatest of the genre. TOUCH OF EVIL, taking place taking place in arid and rural surroundings, tops them all pictorially with its vivid illustrations of sheer decadence. Off the top of my head, an example of overwhelming atmosphere is a foreground of newspapers blowing across a windy street complemented by a background of endlessly pumping oil derricks. Oh, and Henry Mancini's offbeat Latino rock score contribute enormously to the sinful climate.

Welles' camera is more than just a camera; it's a window into the seedy soul of human nature: the brothels, the nearly topless bars, and hints of reefer madness. Welles pushed that envelope as far as he could in 1958. Like IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT a decade later, the murder investigation almost takes a back seat to the personality conflicts of its two leads who are different morally as they are racially.

Heston's later-in-life right-wing politics didn't produce an admirer in me, but complaints about his being cast as a Hispanic, pre-civil rights, should be answered with a resounding shout down. Yes, a Caucasian taking on a role like that would be politically incorrect today, but TOUCH OF EVIL was made in a far different era, a time before Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez became household names. Besides, any rational mind could see this casting wasn't anywhere on the same level as D. W. Griffith's notoriously racist BIRTH OF A NATION.

In Welles' lifetime even his enemies had to grudgingly admit he was a genius. Posthumously, as his films are routinely analyzed and re-analyzed, he's now regarded as one of the greatest and most misunderstood artists of the 20th century. For film noir lovers, their libraries will never be complete without TOUCH OF EVIL. 🔚

Charlton Heston, a Mexican-American lawyer, and his new wife, Janet Leigh, get mixed up in a gang murder in a border town. The chief detective is Orson Welles, full of his splendid self, excessively corpulent, and sporting a hawkish putty nose. He eats candy. ("It's either that or the booze," he rumbles in his commanding bass voice.) He dresses worse than Lieutenant Columbo. Oh, Heston may dash around a lot, seeking justice, and his wife may be threatened by pachucos and hypodermic-wielding lesbians, and there may be multiple uncredited cameos, and Dennis Weaver may turn in the performance of his life as an inn keeper with the animation of a jack-in-the-box but it's Welles' porcine presence that dominates in the film.

It's hard to know what to make of it. It's inexpensively made and, according to Heston, Welles could simply not bring himself to edit and put an end to it. The cinematic conventions of the 1950s were being deep sixed. The Nouvelle Vague was establishing itself in France. Welles' film, too, discards many of the triter movie conventions -- good hero, bad villain, coherent plot -- but it doesn't belong to any school of film, or even any genre. It's Welles' own.

There is a justifiably famous opening shot that shows us a bomb placed in car trunk. The camera then follows the car as it's driven around town, across the border, through crowded streets, until -- boom. The shot is a lengthy one and the camera rises up over rooftops and swoops slowly down for details.

Heston's alien lawyer is mostly ineffective. The law is in Welles' hands and he's an ambiguous figure. He's straight enough, for a small-town cop, but given to planting evidence without a qualm, and not above strangling a gangster who threatens to expose him.

Welles' "Citizen Kane" of seventeen years earlier was an undisputed masterpiece. How good is "Touch of Evil"? It's fascinating without being perfectly executed. It's the story of the downfall of a man who is gross and generally unpleasant, but whom we've come to know and even pity a little. It meanders all over the place and is often confusing as hell. Sometimes I didn't know which side of the border we were on. The dialog is functional but little of it is memorable. Welles grins slyly at Marlene Dietrich, an ex girl friend, and hints he might come back to "sample some more of her chili" sometime. ("You a mess, honey," she tells him.) Welles tells a suspect that after the explosion, "We found a shoe in the road. There was a foot in that shoe. We're going to make you pay for that, boy." If it had been made by someone else, a brand new director, it might have been hailed as an innovative first feature. Knowing it was made by Welles, who could add an enflourage to anything with his bag of tricks, it's a bit of a disappointment, despite its eccentricities and because of its longueurs.

I always enjoy watching it when it shows up on cable TV but I wouldn't enjoy multiple viewings too often. Compared to "Citizen Kane," which was prepared with infinite care, this looks like a pretty sloppy lash up. Maybe Orson Welles would have been better off if he hadn't made "Citizen Kane." Everything that came afterward seems a let down. And Welles, his apologists notwithstanding, didn't help matters much himself.

After sitting through almost 40 minutes of this unwatchable film, I just had to turn it off. The acting was poor, the screenplay was disjointed, and the storyline was illogical. Some examples: Charlton Heston is supposed to be a Mexican. They give him a Cisco Kid mustache but his accent is from Iowa. His new bride, Janet Leigh, and he are on their honeymoon in Tijuana. If you are taking Janet Leigh on a honeymoon, there are certainly much better places to take her than a scruffy border town. But catch more of this logic. Heston is a law officer in Mexico who is pursuing a drug gang. Right at the border, near where they are walking, a bomb blows up a convertible with two people inside. Heston is with his wife. Logic says that he would assume that this is a dangerous place, not only for him but his wife. But that does not stop him. He tells her to go by herself back to the fleabag hotel where they have chosen to spend their honeymoon. On the way, she is accosted by a bunch of toughs who say that they have a message for her husband. And she follows them! Later on, she is undressing in her hotel room, which has no shades and someone shines a flashlight on her from a window across the street. After she covers up, what does she do? Does she turn the light off in her room? Does she call the management? No, she climbs up and unscrews the hot light bulb in her room, (without a tinge of pain) and throws it across the street into the window where the light came from and she hits a bullseye. (Try throwing a light bulb once. It's like throwing a ping-pong ball.) Later Heston can't seem to find another hotel in the town so the takes her to a fleabag motel in the boondocks, where she is the only guest. (I half expected it to be the Bates Motel). She lounges around the room in a bustier, while a gang of toughs in hot cars arrive. She shows absolutely no fear or trepidation at this turn of events. Meanwhile, her husband still does not seem concerned over her safety, even though the motel is owned by the drug gang chief. At the point I turned it off, Heston was holding a meeting with a few American cops and takes them to his hotel room, which looked perfectly fine. Why then is she in the boondocks? Note that there are pointless cameos of Marlene Dietrich and Eva Gabor and even Dennis Weaver whose acting consists of looking back and forth nervously behind a set of overly large glasses. For those of you who view this film positively, you must have watched a different movie than the one I watched.