Borderline Justice/States of Emergency: Orson Welles' Touch of Evil

Abstract

Three different versions of Orson Welles's noir classic, Touch of Evil, have been distributed internationally over a 40-year period. (A "director's cut" of the film was produced in 1998 out of the 50-page memo Welles had written to Universal executives after viewing Harry Keller's remake of several key scenes). 1 But the film, which recounts Miguel Vargas's decision to interrupt his honeymoon in the imaginary border town of Los Robles, with his American wife Susan, in order to investigate and thereafter to prosecute the corrupt policing practices of Hank Quinlan, has enjoyed almost no commercial success. Universal refused Welles editorial control over the first release and produced a 93-minute version of the film with little distribution. After a showing at Brussels World Fair in 1958 and a two-year run in Paris, Touch of Evil virtually went out of circulation.

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