Touch Of Evil (1958)

In writer-director-actor Orson Welles' off-beat, twisted, dark and sweaty, frantic film noirish crime thriller, dark mystery, and expressionistic, complex cult classic (considered the last official film noir, and also Welles' last Hollywood film) - it was a great American technical masterpiece with the controversial themes of racism, murder, police corruption, kidnapping, betrayal of friends, sexual ambiguity, perversion, frame-ups, drugs, and police corruption of power.

The central character in a sleazy border town was played by Welles himself - an obsessed, driven, and bloated police captain ("a lousy cop") - a basically tragic, disheveled figure who had a "touch of evil" in his enforcement of the law during a car bombing incident. Its other unusual, grotesque and seedy characters included a sweaty Mexican drug dealer with a poorly-fitting wig, a nervous and sex-crazed motel manager, a terrorizing gang of juvenile delinquents, and an intensely upright and good cop - an international narcotics officer who was on his honeymoon but continually ignored his besieged newlywed wife.

Although unappreciated in its time in the US, a box-office failure, and criticized as artsy, campy, grubby pulp-fiction trash, the low-budget and over-the-top film - in retrospect - has been ranked as the classic B-movie of the silver screen. It was aided by Henry Mancini’s blistering musical score - mostly diagetic and provided by radios, street musicians, and a player piano. 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.

• the film's celebrated credits-opening was a continuous-action, spectacular 3-minute and 30 second tracking and panning crane shot - an audacious, incredible, breathtaking, uninterrupted view following a 1956 Chrysler New Yorker convertible with Texas plates (after a timed explosive dynamite device had been placed in its trunk as it was parked across the border in Mexico)

Closeup of Bomb with Timer Set to Explode in Minutes

Bomb Placed in Trunk of Convertible (with Texas plates)

• the vehicle crossed the US/Mexico border into the squalid Mexican-American border town of Los Robles (TX); the car was driven by wealthy local American industrialist-businessman involved in construction - Rudy Linnekar (Jeffrey Green) who was with his blonde mistress-girlfriend Zita (Joi Lansing) - a striptease dancer who he had just picked up in a strip-club

The Convertible With a Bomb in Trunk Driving Toward Border

Convertible Passing Couple

The Car and the Couple Simultaneously At the Border Crossing

• the vehicle's route was intertwined with views of a newly-married couple: Mexico City narcotics investigator Ramon Miguel "Mike" Vargas (Charlton Heston) and his blonde American bride Susan (Janet Leigh) walking to the border crossing; as the inter-racial newlyweds kissed, the sound of the sudden and violent explosion of the detonated car overlapped on the soundtrack, and they turned their faces toward the blast; the couple reacted by running toward the burning wreckage, joined by police, and other witnesses; Mike remarked to Susie that the incident was alarming: "This could be very bad for us....For Mexico, I mean"
• to keep Susan from any harm related to the car bombing, Vargas sent her back to their Mexican honeymoon hotel, the St. Marks Hotel, to wait for him, while he joined in the investigation; Linnekar's charred body was identified by his despising daughter Marcia Linnekar (Joanna Moore): "I guess that's my father"
• alone as she navigated the dark street toward her hotel, Susan attracted the attentions of Mexican males, including a young, leather-jacketed Mexican thug that she nicknamed "Pancho" (Valentin de Vargas); he delivered a note to her: ("Follow this boy at once. He has something very important for Mr. Vargas") and she unwisely agreed to follow after him - "Well, what have I got to lose?...Don't answer that!"
• back at the scene of the car bombing, a grotesque, cigar-smoking, candy-chewing bloated and obese local detective Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles) first appeared as he rolled out of his car, shown with a low-angled shot; as a narcotics commission expert, Vargas became snarled in the local investigation with the racist Quinlan, accompanied by Quinlan's loyal partner Police Sgt. Pete Menzies (Joseph Calleia), DA Adair (Ray Collins), and the DA's assistant Al Schwartz (Mort Mills)
• meanwhile, Vargas' young honeymooning bride, in a continuing series of sexual terrorizations, was first harrassed in a sleazy, dark Ritz Hotel by the brother of the corrupt drug-lord "Grandi" mentioned earlier - "Uncle Joe" Grandi (Akim Tamiroff); Susan wasn't intimidated by him and called him out: "You ridiculous, old-fashioned, jug-eared, lop-sided Little Caesar!"; Grandi pressured and advised that her husband should lay off the case against his brother in Mexico City who was awaiting trial, before he let her go; soon after, Vargas met up with Susan in the lobby of their Mexican honeymoon hotel, the St. Marks Hotel; to her dismay, he suggested sending her ahead to Mexico City, where he would soon follow for the Grandi drug trial
• meanwhile, Quinlan and other officers visited the Mexican strip joint where Linnekar had earlier picked up the blonde striptease dancer - his murdered companion; as Vargas ran to join them, one of Grandi's young gang members named Risto (Lalo Rios) (the son of Vic, the Grandi leader "in the pen") attacked him with a bottle of acid and then fled; the chemical acid missed Vargas' face and instead exploded and splashed onto a peeling poster on the crumbling wall of the victim-stripper performer Zita (an echo of her death in the burning car explosion); inside the strip club, Quinlan had a few words with the Madam/Owner (Zsa Zsa Gabor), who told him Zita had only been hired a few days earlier

Acid - Aimed at Vargas - Spashed Onto Zita's Poster

Quinlan Questioning Strip Club Madam/Owner (Zsa Zsa Gabor) About Zita

• after leaving the strip club, while Quinlan was on the Mexican side of the border during the case, he briefly visited with cigar-smoking, Mexican gypsy and brothel manager Tanya (Marlene Dietrich in a memorable cameo), a former lover-mistress and femme fatale; he was attracted by the tinkling sounds of a pianola coming from her familiar, local brothel; as he entered, she told him: "We're closed," but then she engaged in verbal foreplay with him: "I didn't recognize you. You should lay off those candy bars"; he responded: "Uh, it's either the candy or the hooch. I must say, I wish it was your chili I was gettin' fat on. Anyway, you're sure lookin' good"; she replied: "You're a mess, honey"
• as Vargas was walking back to their honeymoon Mexican-border hotel, Susan was in their room being harrassed by a peeping tom with a flashlight (one of the Grandi nephews) that shone on her as she removed her cashmere sweater; although she threatened her husband with leaving for the airport and immediately traveling to Mexico City, she decided to "stick close to" her husband, suggesting that she should stay in a safer, more comfortable motel "on the American side of the border; Susan was driven out to the out-of-the-way and remote motel on the outskirts of the Texas town (not knowing it was owned by Grandi), known as the Mirador Hotel; she was to be sequestered there, while her husband helped Quinlan investigate the car bombing incident

Susan Deciding to Stay Nearby With Her Husband

Susan's First Encounter With Texas Motel Manager

• at about 7 am in the morning, Susan was dropped off by Sgt. Menzies with her suitcase at the deserted Mirador Hotel, where she entered Room # 7; the isolated motel was managed by a skinny, bizarre, sex-crazed, nervous, hyperkinetic, beetle-like, immature night attendant (Dennis Weaver); when the spectacled receptionist first saw her, he was peeping through her motel window
• the officers (with Vargas) drove to the Linnekar Construction Company site where it was suspected that the dynamite for the car explosion originated; the foreman (Billy House) was asked questions about former young Mexican employee Manolo Sanchez (Victor Millan) and some stolen dynamite; he informed Quinlan: "He's been playin' around with the boss' daughter"; the police radio alerted them that Sanchez was already a "suspect now in custody" in Sanchez' own apartment - where the dead man's daughter Marcia Linnekar had been living for four months during an affair; Quinlan had an intuitive hunch that Manolo Sanchez was his suspect - now a shoe clerk who was having an affair with Marcia at the time of the car bombing murders; Vargas joined Quinlan and a team of police detectives-investigators
• in Manolo's tiny, cramped, claustrophobic "shoe-box size" apartment, the officers were greeted by Marcia, Manolo, and Marcia's expensive attorney Howard Frantz (William Tannen); a prejudiced, lengthy interrogation scene commenced against Manolo (with another long unedited single take, often unnoticed) after Marcia and her lawyer were allowed to leave; Quinlan surmised that Sanchez had been fired from his last job (at the construction site) working for Linnekar, and believed that Linnekar objected to having a "Mexican shoe clerk for a son-in-law"

In Cramped Apartment, Sanchez Interrogated by Quinlan (with Vargas)

• during the questioning, Vargas walked across the street to phone Susan in the motel, where she was reclining on her motel bed in sexy, silky lingerie; he told her "how very very much" he loved her; as he conversed, the blind woman shop owner eavesdropped and possibly fantasized about the loving words he whispered to his wife

		Blind Shop Owner Eavesdropping on Conversation
During Manolo's Questioning, Vargas Phoned Wife Susan in the Mirador Motel

• at the end of the visit, Quinlan had surreptitiously placed two sticks of dynamite in a shoe box in Sanchez' bathroom, although he let Menzies find the incriminating evidence [Note: during this and many other past investigations, the experienced, old-time cop Quinlan habitually fabricated or planted evidence to convict the guilty (even though his instincts were usually correct and he had a perfect arrest record)]; Menzies was heard proudly announcing his discovery of the evidence linking Sanchez to the bombing - two sticks of dynamite ("I found it!") in a shoebox in the bathroom; at the same time, Sanchez admitted that he was secretly married to Linnekar's daughter Marcia - revealing a motive to kill her father as he was about to change his will
• Vargas had noticed the empty box earlier and knew of the deception, putting him into direct conflict with Quinlan; he immediately realized that the boy had been framed and that Quinlan had planted the evidence to conclusively implicate his suspect in the murders; when he told Quinlan that the shoebox was empty ten minutes earlier, he threatened to expose Quinlan to authorities - determined to clear the innocent man and expose the detective's corrupt methods: "You framed that boy. FRAMED him!"; however, Sanchez was taken away to be booked at the station
• immediately and behind the scenes, Grandi plotted with Quinlan to discredit and destroy Vargas professionally and personally; at the same time, DA assistant Al Schwartz and Vargas began an official investigation of their own, determined to show how Quinlan planted the dynamite; soon after, it was discovered that Quinlan purchased sticks of dynamite at the hardware store in Los Robles - and could have easily planted two of the sticks in Sanchez' apartment; however, due to Quinlan's racist attitude and hatred of Vargas, he was able to convince the DA and the Chief of Police that he was being smeared by Vargas - and he also made the vicious, unproven counter-accusation that Vargas was using his position to supply his wife with narcotics
• meanwhile, Susan had opened her motel window to see the arrival of hot rods and a gang of punks; the menacing thugs were members of the Grandi gang, led by "Pancho"; they were there to victimize and persecute Susan, by playing loud music through her room's speaker; the group also took over the office switchboard, cut off her phone calls, and terrorized the night attendant who had returned; the black-jacketed gang members had been sent there by Grandi - under Quinlan's orders
• Uncle Joe Grandi's plan with Quinlan was to terrorize Vargas' pretty wife Susan by framing her in a sex/drug crime - to force him to withdraw from his brother's case ("maybe with our little deal, we can hurt him")
• a strange voice through her motel room's wall told Susan that her room was about to be entered with the master key and that the threatening gang might drug her with "marijuana," "Mary jane," and a "mainliner"; the psychopathic, manly/butch, lesbian gang leader (Mercedes McCambridge) promised: "The fun is only beginning"

Butch-Lesbian Gang Leader (Mercedes McCambridge): "The fun is only beginning"	Susan Continually Terrorized by Gang in the Mirador Motel
Susan Assaulted on a Motel Bed by the Gang

• she was attacked by the menacing thugs (members of the Grandi gang and other teens); in her room where she was surrounded, she was grabbed by her arms and legs as she cringed on the bed, struggling and screaming; when the door in the room was shut, it was presumed that she was either raped and/or shot up with drugs behind the door (but it was later revealed to be a scare tactic)
• in the Hall of Records where Vargas was examining records of all of Quinlan's old cases, Sgt. Menzies realized that his boss was a truly dishonest cop; Quinlan had framed suspects by repeatedly and ruthlessly planting evidence for Menzies to discover (e.g., an axe, dentures, a lead pipe): "It's all there in the record"; it was a revelatory moment for Menzies: "You can smear him. Ruin his whole life's work"
• Vargas visited the Mirador Motel and found it totally dark, with the tense night attendant describing a "terrible brawl" and "one of 'em wild parties" in Cabin No. 7, Susan's room; somewhat oblivious to what had happened, Vargas only became concerned when he found his briefcase with his gun missing; a leftover joint in the abandoned, cluttered room caused the night attendant to become hysterical, grab onto a bare, windblown tree, and confess to Vargas that the hotel belonged to Grandi and that the hot-rod gang could be located at the Rancho Grande night club
• meanwhile, the semi-unconscious Susan had been brought to a run-down room in Grandi's downtown Ritz Hotel - and left half-naked on a bed; it was made to appear like she had experienced a drug overdose; although she wasn't actually raped or drugged, Grandi hoped she would awaken and "think maybe something really did happen"; Quinlan entered the hotel room, put on black gloves, and forced Grandi to telephone the police station to notify Menzies that authorities could find the drugged-up Susan after a wild party in the Ritz Hotel: ("The way I hear it, things got a little outta control. Don't be surprised what they find")
• then, Quinlan chillingly strangled Uncle Joe Grandi to death with a stocking next to Susan, in an attempt to frame Susan for his murder; as he left the room after utilizing a "smart way to kill," Quinlan made a fatal mistake - tipped off by a closeup of the sign on the back of the door: Stop, Forget Anything, Leave Key at Desk; he left his cane at the scene of the crime (a subtle reference to Welles' own Citizen Kane character)

Grandi Pursued by Quinlan in Room 18 of the Ritz Hotel

Susan Awakening and Seeing the Dead Grandi Above Her

The Strangulation Death of Uncle Joe Grandi by Quinlan, to Frame Susan

• the almost-naked, heavily-sweating Susan lying on the bed looked up and saw the bloated face of the strangled Grandi (with his tongue hanging out) above her; she struggled onto the fire escape from the room where she was screaming for help as a crowd gathered; meanwhile, once Vargas had arrived in town, he entered the Rancho Grandi nightclub and attacked and beat up the Grandi gang members, unaware of Susan's predicament; Vargas was notified by Schwartz that his wife had been picked up by the vice squad and was held in jail; he also explained that Susan had been charged with drug possession: ("They found her at the Hotel Ritz, half-naked on one of the beds, drugged. There were reefer stubs and a heroin fix") - and for the murder of Grandi!
• Vargas was reunited with Susan in her jail cell, where the Coroner (a cameo by Joseph Cotten) explained how authorities found "evidence of a mixed party...articles of clothing, half-smoked reefers, needle marks"; lying on a jail cot, Susan begged her husband: "Take me home!" and "Don't go!" but again, Vargas deserted her
• as the film wound to its climactic conclusion, Sgt. Menzies revealed to Vargas that Quinlan was implicated when he found his cane at Grandi's murder scene; this evidence decisively proved the police detective was guilty of the crime; Menzies agreed to use Quinlan's dirty tactics - to wear a wire to try and entrap his partner into confessing
• meanwhile, the aging, weakened cop Quinlan had retreated to Tanya's brothel parlor with the pianola playing; he sat in a stupor in front of a defeated bull head on the wall - with toreadors' spears in him; when he asked for his fortune to be told through tarot cards, Tanya replied: "Your future is all used up. Why don't you go home?"
• in the gripping climax, as Quinlan and Menzies walked through the desolation and filth of a section of canals in the town, with oil derricks, rhythmically-pumping oil pumps, garbage heaps, seedy streets, and metallic tanks, Quinlan began to confess his wrong-doings - he was maneuvered into talking about the many convictions he had been responsible for over the years, asserting that all his suspects were guilty; he voiced his opinion that to him, "faking evidence" was equivalent to "aiding justice"
• but then Quinlan realized that Menzies was betraying him and recording him; he heard the echo of his own voice as it was recorded on a transmitter held by Vargas under a bridge, and realized he had been taped and everything about the frame-up had been revealed by his partner Menzies; learning of the betrayal, Quinlan found the hidden "bug"/microphone on Menzies; Menzies handed over Vargas' gun (heard on the recording apparatus' speaker) before Quinlan shot him with the weapon; as Menzies went down, Vargas was figuratively and literally revealed behind him

Vargas Recording Them Under the Bridge
Quinlan's Murder of Menzies With Vargas' Gun	Vargas Literally and Figuratively Revealed Behind the Falling Menzies

• Quinlan had angrily shot Menzies and lethally wounded him, and literally had blood on his hands; Quinlan stumbled over to the riverbank to vainly attempt to wash his blood-soaked hand in the filthy water
• Vargas told Quinlan he had finally been caught committing murder, but Quinlan expected to frame Vargas and blame him for Menzies' death; to protect the unarmed Vargas from also being shot by Quinlan, Menzies shot and lethally-wounded Quinlan from behind before dying; the corrupt police captain was finally brought down; Schwartz drove up in Vargas' convertible with Susan; as Quinlan expired, he listened as Schwartz played his own confession on tape
• Vargas was reunited with Susan, and he promised her: "It's all over, Susie. I'm taking you home. Home"; cleared of the drug charge, they sped away to a safer, more secure place
• the final image was of Quinlan staggering backwards and lying dead and floating whale-like in dark and stagnant gutter-canal water and garbage; Tanya arrived and watched Quinlan's body floating in the muddy water

The Slow Death of Hank Quinlan

Tanya's Epitaph for Quinlan

• Tanya was told by Schwartz that although Sanchez had been framed, he had also confessed to the car bombing crime - and that Quinlan was right after all: ("His famous intuition was right after all. He framed Sanchez. But he didn't even need to. The kid confessed about that bomb. So, it turns out Quinlan was right after all"); Schwartz described Quinlan as a good cop who often knew - through intuition - who was guilty; but the detective, acc. to Tanya, was also a "lousy cop" when he served as the law's judge, jury, and executioner
• as the film concluded, Tanya delivered Quinlan's epitaph in the film's final line: "He was some kind of a man. What does it matter what you say about people?...Adios!"