My Favorite Movies: TOUCH OF EVIL

Director: Orson Welles
Year: 1958

I think Orson Welles once described Touch of Evil as a B-movie. Indeed, this film is chock full of crime, sweat, intrigue, twisted characters and semi-naked people to make the folks at the grindhouse weep. But it's also a classic (no, the classic) American film noir crime flick. What I liked most about this movie is its manic energy (absent in most movies of the film noir genre) and the fact that you can almost smell the characters in every frame. Charlton Heston as a Mexican was quite a stretch, but Orson Welles as a corrupt cop was believable, and Marlene Dietrich's cameo memorable. An obvious influence to such classics as Chinatown, Goodfellas and Pulp Fiction, Touch of Evil is the badass granddaddy of cool crime films this side of James Cagney.

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