The case is given to legendary police inspector Quinlan (Orson Welles), who solves cases with hunches and wins convictions through planted evidence. After seeing Heston at work, Heston is outraged, and threatens Welles' career. Welles responds by teaming up with stupid Grandi potentate Akim Tamiroff to set up Heston's wife, in the hopes that Heston will lay off on both Welles and the Grandi family.
Needless to say, the Production Code insures that our hero Heston will prevail. But not without passing through an absurd parade of characters, such as weird motel clerk Dennis Weaver, laconic fortune teller Marlene Dietrich, unhelpful nightclub manager Zsa Zsa Gabor, and jaded coroner Joseph Cotton.
Along the way, Welles as director gives up insights into the prejudice that Mexicans must endure. This begins with the educated Leigh calling a young Mexican man "Pancho." Later, Welles informs Heston that "he doesn't sound like" a Mexican. It's enough to make Heston really mad, particularly when his wife Leigh suffers nearly as much as she would two years later in Psycho.
How I felt about it. There are two versions of Touch of Evil. There is the version released to theaters, edited by Universal after Orson Welles completed filming. Welles objected to the editing, and wrote a lengthy, indignant letter specifying myriad small changes he wanted to make to the final print.
Universal ignored Welles' letter. The film was little promoted by the studio, and it was a box office flop, like most of Welles' films. Decades pass, and Touch of Evil gains notoriety, a cult following, and makes critics best-of lists. Welles dies, which allows his legend to mushroom, since there was no live Welles around to waste his talent lending his deep voice to commercials and 'B' movies.
Eventually, Universal allows the film to be re-edited per Welles' letter. And why not? The film can be then be released a second time, with attendant publicity. But a question remains. How much better is the re-edited version?
I can tell you this much. I saw the original version several times more than ten years ago, and graded it at that time. Now I have seen the re-edited version, billed as the one that the great Welles himself would have made. I graded it, then looked up the Clinton-era grade I had given to the original version.
Both were the same: 85. This shows how difficult it is to alter the basic quality of a movie simply through editing. You have the same story, actors, and script. When the most obvious change is the absence of opening credits, you have to admit the truth. The Universal film editors might not have been such hacks after all. No matter how many sequels of Francis the Talking Mule those unfortunate studio employees were paid to endure.