Touch of Evil (1958)

Tagline: The strangest vengeance ever planned!

Touch of Evil movie storyline. Mexican Narcotics officer Ramon Miguel ‘Mike’ Vargas has to interrupt his honeymoon on the Mexican-US border when an American building contractor is killed after someone places a bomb in his car. He’s killed on the US side of the border but it’s clear that the bomb was planted on the Mexican side. As a result, Vargas delays his return to Mexico City where he has been mounting a case against the Grandi family crime and narcotics syndicate.

Police Captain Hank Quinlan is in charge on the US side and he soon has a suspect, a Mexican named Manolo Sanchez. Vargas is soon onto Quinlan and his Sergeant, Pete Menzies, when he catches them planting evidence to convict Sanchez. With his new American wife, Susie, safely tucked away in a hotel on the US side of the border – or so he thinks – he starts to review Quinlan’s earlier cases. While concentrating on the corrupt policeman however, the Grandis have their own plans for Vargas and they start with his wife Susie.

Touch of Evil (1958) is a great American film noir crime thriller, dark mystery, and cult classic – another technical masterpiece from writer-director-actor Orson Welles. It was Orson Welles’ fifth Hollywood film – and it was his last American film. Touch of Evil was the last great film noir during the so-called ‘classic’ era of noirs, from the early 1940s to the late 1950s.

Although unappreciated in its time in the US, a box-office failure, and criticized as artsy, campy, sleazy pulp-fiction trash, the low-budget film – in retrospect – has been ranked as the classic B-movie of the silver screen. (It was met with rave reviews in Europe, and won Best Picture at the Brussels Film Festival). It was completely un-nominated for Academy Awards — bypassed by the Academy that instead gave Best Picture honors to the frothy, somewhat distasteful musical tale of Gigi (1958) (with a record nine Oscar wins), about a young woman trained to be a courtesan of a wealthy suitor.

This great noir was shot on location in Venice, California rather than in the film’s setting of Mexico (possibly the border town of Tijuana but called Los Robles in the film). The film’s script, written in about two weeks, was loosely based upon Whit Masterson’s (a pseudonym for Wade Miller – aka Robert Wade and William Miller) 1956 pulp novel, Badge of Evil.

Directed by: Orson Welles
Starring: Charlton Heston, Orson Welles, Janet Leigh, Joseph Calleia, Akim Tamiroff, Joanna Moore, Ray Collins, Dennis Weaver, Valentin de Vargas, Victor Millan, Michael Sargent, Phil Harvey
Screenplay by: Orson Welles
Production Design by:
Cinematography by: Russell Metty
Film Editing by: Walter Murch, Aaron Stell, Virgil W. Vogel, Edward Curtiss
Costume Design by: Bill Thomas
Set Decoration by: John P. Austin, Russell A. Gausman
Art Direction by: Robert Clatworthy, Alexander Golitzen
Music by: Henry Mancini
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some violence and drug content.
Distributed by: Universal-Pictures
Release Date: February 14, 1958