Product Description

Experience director Orson Welles’ masterpiece Touch of Evil like never before in an all-new 50th Anniversary Edition DVD! Starring Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh and Orson Welles himself, this exceptional film noir portrait of corruption and morally compromised obsessions tells the story of a crooked police chief who frames a Mexican youth as part of an intricate criminal plot.

Now for the first time ever, see all three versions of the film – the preview version, the theatrical version and the restored version based on Orson Welles’ vision. The Touch of Evil 50th Anniversary Edition commemorates a true cinematic achievement and is an essential addition to the very movie lover’s library!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8498 in DVD
• Brand: Universal Studios
• Released on: 2008-10-07
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Black & White, Dolby, DVD, Restored, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 95 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
Considered by many to be the greatest B movie ever made, the original-release version of Orson Welles's film noir masterpiece Touch of Evil was, ironically, never intended as a B movie at all--it merely suffered that fate after it was taken away from writer-director Welles, then reedited and released in 1958 as the second half of a double feature. Time and critical acclaim would eventually elevate the film to classic status (and Welles's original vision was meticulously followed for the film's 1998 restoration), but for four decades this original version stood as a testament to Welles's directorial genius. From its astonishing, miraculously choreographed opening shot (lasting over three minutes) to Marlene Dietrich's classic final line of dialogue, this sordid tale of murder and police corruption is like a valentine for the cinematic medium, with Welles as its love-struck suitor. As the corpulent cop who may be involved in a border-town murder, Welles faces opposition from a narcotics officer (Charlton Heston) whose wife (Janet Leigh) is abducted and held as the pawn in a struggle between Heston's quest for truth and Welles's control of carefully hidden secrets. The twisting plot is wildly entertaining (even though it's harder to follow in this original version), but even greater pleasure is found in the pulpy dialogue and the sheer exuberance of the dazzling directorial style. --Jeff Shannon

On the DVD
Universal gave cinephiles a real gift when they issued a restored version of Orson Welles' Touch of Evil in 1998 (since editor/sound designer Walter Murch worked his magic after Welles' demise, the phrase "director's cut" does not apply). In honor of the 50th anniversary of the master's final Hollywood hurrah, they've upped the ante. Not only does this box set include the 96-minute theatrical release and 111-minute restoration, but the 109-minute preview version, which materialized in the mid-1970s (the rough cut no longer exists). All three feature audio commentary--two tracks in the case of Murch's edit. Critic F.X. Feeney comments in a conversational, yet authoritative manner on the 1958 print, noting that he prefers the original opening since it preserves more of Henry Mancini's percussive score. He also describes the border noir as "deeper and wiser" than Citizen Kane. Welles scholars Jonathan Rosenbaum and Joseph Naremore converse about the preview, which incorporates additional material by the filmmaker and Harry Keller. They feel that the relationship between cops Quinlan (Welles) and Menzies (Joseph Calleia) now makes more sense and that Menzies appears more heroic with the deletion of a defeated close-up.

Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, and restoration producer Rick Schmidlin discuss the reconstruction, which Murch assembled according to Welles’ 58-page memo (the box includes a reproduction). To Heston, the old credit sequence was "grotesque." As Welles instructed, Murch moved it to the end. About the overhaul, Leigh enthuses, "I'm so grateful that his legacy will now be represented in the proper way." On the second track, Schmidlin offers a more detailed analysis. The package concludes with the trailer and a two-part oral history featuring Heston, Leigh, Murch, and others who helped Welles transform pulp material into a work that, in his own words, could prove to be "irresistibly interesting." --Kathleen C. Fennessy

From The New Yorker
There have been three subtly different versions of Orson Welles's ornate thriller since it first came out, in 1958. The fourth should be the last: working from a memo that Welles wrote at the time, after the studio had messed with his original cut, producer Rick Schmidlin and editor Walter Murch have come as close to honoring the director's intentions as anyone ever will. At first glance, little has changed; the titles (and Henry Mancini's brassy theme) have disappeared from the celebrated opening shot, but from then on the basic thrust of this Mexican border tale (filmed in Venice, California) remains intact. We still have the manly Vargas (Charlton Heston) struggling to solve the case of the car bomb while his wife (Janet Leigh) feels the heat from a gang of local hoods; we are still thrown by the freakish cameos by Zsa Zsa Gabor and Mercedes McCambridge, and the horrific slaying-a kind of jazz strangulation-of the fleshly Grandi (Akim Tamiroff); and, of course, we still see Welles himself as police chief Hank Quinlan, looming over the action like a Falstaff gone to seed. If anything, the cuts and repairs make the work more fluid and less flamboyant; it was sometimes the studio, rather than Welles himself, who liked to go over the top. His scenes with brothel-keeper Marlene Dietrich have nothing to do with the plot and everything to do with the rotting heart of this amazing fable: the apotheosis of pulp. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker