Touch of Evil

Roberto_4.0

why didn't anyone ever tell janet leigh to stay away from motels?

Egg5.0

Touch of Evil might be the Citizen Kane of Orson Welles filmography.

Josh Lewis5.0

"A policeman's job is only easy in a police state."An incredible back-and-forth between seedy, pulpy B-noir good cop-bad cop philosophical clash/conspiracy thriller material and one of the all-time genius stylists who through sheer technical mastery and baroque expressionism (lots of distorted and voyeuristic perspective imagery, cavernous deep-focus wide and low angles, elaborately and anxiously choreographed cranes/dolly's, incredibly grimy and decayed location work of Venice California, creepily tightening cross-cutting momentum, some all-timer shadows and reflections) was able to turn it into a genuinely unnerving and tragic film about the disturbing corruption of power, the uncomfortable crossing of boundaries, and the not just moral compromise and corrosion of a dirty, unjust lawman but the absolute stinking rot inherent to actually briefly living in their corrupt world with them, feeling their seductive drive towards madness as their infection spreads into their surroundings/environment.At the time this had to have been one of the more intensely filthy, scuzzy visions of the noir detective, played by Welles himself as an obese, swaggering racist murderer-tyrant; cruel and drunk and in a perpetual lumbering state of hothouse flop sweat sickness in the pungent gutters of a rundown industrial border town he sadistically traverses with his "gut" impulse. A character deliberately, ironically, and provocatively designed to feel wrong and icky even when he's "right", and for us to helplessly watch his awful reign come to a funeral end. And though the ticking time-bomb oner that opens the film is accurately recognized as one of the greatest openings to any film (especially the layering of diegetic ambiance that fluidly moves alongside the camera), just as accomplished is the evidence-planting sequence framed for maximum dramatic effect of us sitting and realizing with Heston just how monumentally corrupt this man he's been tasked with working with is, as well as the frightening strangulation murder that is just as much proto-slasher/giallo in terms of visual design as Psycho and Peeping Tom are frequently credited with (and also features Janet Leigh in a motel room!) and of course the mournful oil derrick carcass finale. Everyone by this point knows Welles was run out of Hollywood for being ahead of his time both politically and artistically, but it's still insane that due to Universal's tampering it took 40 years for anyone to see this how it was meant to be, and that it's clear in retrospect to be one of the defining, artfully sleazy genre films of its era. That it was deemed and failure and the last film he was ever allowed to make in America is a travesty.Full discussion on ep 304 of my podcast SLEAZOIDS.