The LA Beat

“Touch of Evil” (1958, Kino Lorber) Get past the idea of Charlton Heston as a Mexican cop and you’ll find an extraordinary American movie – ostensibly a crime thriller, but really director/star Orson Welles last go-round with his electric trains for the Hollywood studio system. Welles pulls out all the stops behind the camera and in front of it: with the aid of Russell Metty, his camera is endlessly prowling (that amazing opening shot, with Venice doubling as Mexico), casting impossible shadows and remarkable angles, while his border detective, a corrupt heel who somehow also plays as tragic, is as painfully honest an assessment of his own fall from grace as any of the film historians who sought to sum his career. With a baroque cast – Janet Leigh, Marlene Dietrich (“You’re a mess, honey”), Akim Tamiroff, a supremely creepy Dennis Weaver, Mercedes McCambridge, and Zsa Zsa Gabor, for crying out loud – and a great Henry Mancini score; “Evil” was, like so many of Welles’ films, badly banged up by Universal prior to release, and available only in truncated form until Walter Murch and others reconstructed the film from Welles’ famous 58-page memo to Universal; that version, along with the 1958 theatrical cut and a longer “Preview Version” discovered in 1975 are all featured on Kino’s Special Edition set, and all in 4K restored form. Multiple commentaries – Heston and Leigh, Tim Lucas, F.X. Feeney, Imogen Sara Smith, and Jonathan Rosenbaum and James Naremore – detail the film’s look and history, while featurettes explore the efforts to revive and restore “Evil” to Welles’ original vision.

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