“They want Charlton Heston as a Mexican” is how a fictionalized Orson Welles described Touch of Evil in Tim Burton’s Ed Wood. That peculiar bit of casting might be amusing today, but one cannot argue with the fine film that Welles crafted. You could argue it until Welles’ cut was reassembled to his specifications.
Mike (Charlton Heston) and Susie Vargas (Janet Leigh) are newlyweds. Mike is a Mexican official with the United Nations and they’re about the walk across the border to go back into Mexico when a bomb explodes at the border crossing. Vargas realizes that since the bomb exploded on the border and could cause an international incident, so he inserts himself into the investigation.
Police Captain Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles), along with his partner Pete Menzies (Joseph Calleia) is in charge of tracking down the culprits. When they’re interrogating the prime suspect in the bombing, Vargas goes into the bathroom in his apartment. He knocks over an empty shoe box and puts it back where it was while he’s in there. Later when they search the apartment, Menzies brings the shoebox out of the bathroom and says he’s found two sticks of dynamite in it.
Vargas realizes that Quinlan has been planting evidence to secure convictions. While Vargas is trying to investigate Quinlan, the devilish police captain orders his thug Grande (Akim Tamiroff) to kidnap Susie and frame her for murder. So now Vargas has to prove Quinlan is a crooked cop and also find a way to get his wife cleared of the murder rap.
Touch of Evil was Orson Welles last stab at a studio film. Heston tells the tale that he suggested Welles direct the picture when he learned that Welles was cast as Quinlan. It wasn’t that Welles was a terrible director but it was more his reputation as a troublesome director as well as his annoyance at the studios interfering with his films.
The only film that didn’t have studio interference was probably Citizen Kane with his troubles beginning on the Magnificent Ambersons and ending with Touch of Evil. It’s not that Welles didn’t set himself up for it when after handing a rough cut to the studio he took off to secure funding for his planned film on Don Quixote and basically left the film open to the studios editing.
When he returned and screened the edited version he fired off a 58 page memo to make some changes to make the film work better. This memo was mostly ignored and the film was released in a studio cut in 1958.
In 1976, it was discovered that the studio had a longer version in their vaults, but it only had a few of Welles’ corrections made. Then in 1998 the film was restored to make the changes that Welles suggested as far as they were possible. That release finally made its way onto DVD in 1998 and was announced as a special edition with a commentary and documentary.
The documentary appeared on the Starz channel (methinks) and I watched it with delight. I could’ve popped in a videotape and recorded it but since I had the DVD on pre-order I didn’t bother. When the DVD came out it was missing both the commentary and the documentary and only had an electronic reproduction of the Welles memo.
It was most like due to the legal threats of Welles' daughter Beatrice who also succeeded in holding up the rerelease of the restored version for a time. I was disappointed in the lack of special features, especially regretful that I hadn’t recorded the excellent documentary, but also disappointed that the theatrical cut of the film wasn’t also included so we could do a compare and contrast to see what we missing.
This new edition corrects all those wrongs and adds even more. It has all three cuts of the film as well as a version of the missing documentary.
All three cuts of Touch of Evil are presented in anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1) and are enhanced for 16x9 televisions. The first disc offers the restored version with a commentary with restoration producer Rich Schmidlin and stars Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh, recorded at the time of the first DVD but was pulled off at the last minute. Since both stars have since died this track offers rare insight into the film.
A second commentary finds Schmidlin commenting solo about his restoration of the film. Next are the 20 minute “Bringing Evil to Life” and the 17 minute “Evil Lost and Found.” The first documentary is about the production and the second is about the restoration.
The version I watched on Starz was a combination of the two interspersed with clips from the film. My memory rarely serves, but it appears that it’s all here just not edited together as it was when I first saw it. It’s still excellent and again since it features Heston and Leigh it’s grand that it finally sees the light of day again. Disc one closes with the film’s 2-minute theatrical trailer.
Disc two features the theatrical version with a commentary by film critic F.X. Feeney and the preview version with commentary by Welles’ historians Jonathan Rosenbaum and James Naremore. Finally, the case contains a paper reproduction of the famous 58 page memo.
It took around forty years for Welles’ vision for the film to finally be seen, but it also took another ten years for the DVD version I was expecting to arrive. It’s a must have for fans of Welles or just of classic cinema. My highest recommendation. Amazon . As of yet, there is not a release date for this version of the DVD in the UK. Visit the DVD database for more information.
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