Rating: 
Summary: This is not the real thing!
Review: I am the Japanese who lives in Japan.
I am sorry to be poor at English. I looked forward to this DVD very much, and imported it. But, those contents were very disappointing.
It is because Welles of the truth was found nowhere there. This is not a wide screen!
They are the cruel remains that a head and a leg were cut off! Welles is supposed to feel sorry. @Then, we feel sorry beyond him.
It looks forward to an original work from far Japan. @It asks for it!
Rating: 
Summary: The Universal Globe Is Chopped Off....Isn't That Proof?
Review: I've NEVER seen a Universal film where they cropped off the top of the spinning globe logo. This movie was needlessly cropped at the top and bottom, and it should be clear to anyone with a discerning eye. There is even a scene in which a key piece of evidence (the shoebox with dynamite in it) was visible in the fullscreen version, but not in this "new" version. This isn't an attack on all matting jobs, as some seem to think it is. But it is an attack on matting jobs done on films that weren't supposed to have them!!! Citizen Kane wasn't cropped, and I'm convinced this wasn't supposed to be either. A [bad] DVD for a film that deserves much better treatment.
Rating:
Summary: Didn't work for me
Review: This picture has everything going for it: spectacular, atmospheric photography; stunning set pieces, striking characterizations, gritty performances' and yet, there's some vital ingredient missing, something that keeps it from coming to life. It's always interesting, but never really absorbing. Watching this film, I could easily have turned it off and picked up a book at any time. There was never a moment at which I was compelled to keep watching. Sure, I could look at the lighting and the camera angles and think, Wow! That's a great camera angle! But where's the story? I realize the film's many fans (including most critics) who revere this classic will be howling for my blood. Sorry, folks; this one just didn't grab me. Maybe it was the mood I was in. I guess I was hoping for something with a dash of James Ellroy, a soupcon of Chinatown, or James M. Cain. I love noir, I love stories of police corruption, and there's the beginnings of one in Touch of Evil, but we never get to know enough about Welles's cop; he's simply not on screen enough. It's a shame Universal didn't include the original version; it would be interesting to compare it with this "restored" cut to see if it had a bit more zip. Perhaps this was true to what Welles wanted, but it dragged.
Rating: 
Summary: A masterpiece
Review: I only use that term for, say, a couple dozen films or less - and Welles would claim three. In my opinion, this one, Citizen Kane of course, and Othello - with two more contenders banging on the door, Ambersons and his Falstaff movie. And they call this a failed career. In addition to its beautiful dusty-evening look, Touch of Evil features, at its core, marvelous acting against type. Welles, the unrepentant liberal, plays the corrupt sheriff pitted against Charlton Heston, the WASP conservative, playing an idealistic Mexican official. Likewise, all the characters are masterly balanced - Akim Tamiroff (in maybe the best performance of his long career) tries to stir everything up, sexy Janet Leigh wants it all to go away. Marlene Dietrich tries to stay uninvolved, Joseph Calleia (long typecast in Hollywood as a Mexican gigilo/bad guy, here an American cop) is forced to intervene. The borderlines that protect us from ourselves gone, each principle figure must confront their negation, the side of humanity they would most like to avoid. They spar around issues of truth, justice, love, and the ego - leading to the telling finale in the oil fields of Mexico, one man claiming justice to clear his name, the other the law. And, in the end, a confession that tells us nothing. Film noir at its best - but then, what does it matter what you say about movies? A note about the DVD version - the film was orginally shot in widescreen, and the DVD version reproduces this faithfully. Complaints have been raised about the VHS (fullscreen) version showing more image at the top and bottom - this is true because to make the fullscreen version they reduced the widescreen image to fit more side to side on the screen, and in the process brought the matting into the frame at the top and bottom. A comparison of the two formats shows more horizontal information in the widescreen as you would expect if it was shot as such, and futhermore the fullscreen version is obviously scanned. The DVD image is shown as Welles intended.
Rating: 
Summary: TOUCH OF [MESS]-UP FROM UNIVERSAL STUDIOS
Review: Right off the bat I'm going to tell you that I hate this movie. As far as I am concerned the plot, involving Charlton Heston playing a 'Mexican' (oh, please) and Janet Leigh pulling a dumb blond more stupid than anything Marilyn Monroe ever did (eg. when a car blows up, Leigh's response is - "Blew up?!? How can a car do that?!?") is really not my cut of tea. Marlene Dietrich's cameo is about the best performance in the film. Akim Tamaroff, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Mercedes McCambridge co-star. The plot concerns a frame up of an innocent young man by a corrupt police chief and the righteous determination of a Mexican detective to set the record straight. Along the way there's murder, rape and a touch of lesbianism - whatever! The script is so bad that nearly every line breeds a chuckle from the audience - and this from a film that's playing it serious!
I can't deny that Universal Studios has done a pristine job on the transfer of this film. They've also gone back and altered the version we've been seeing in theaters all these years, as per Orson Welle's original specs. But what really steams me here is the absence of HBO's brilliant documentary that celebrates this film in great detail and with wonderful interviews from the surviving cast members. Sadly, there are no extras on this disc. My 4 star rating for this title strictly refers to the quality of the film transfer to DVD - not the film itself. BOTTOM LINE: If you are a fan of this film (which means you haven't seen enough good noir to know what's really good)then you are in for an amazing treat. If I were you though I'd move on to one of Welle's better known and more aptly put together film noirs.
Rating:
Summary: Movie enthusiasts may find the following interesting
Review: Okay, here's the deal. When a studio puts a widescreen film on DVD or video and wants your entire television screen to be filled, one of two things are done. The first, and most common thing, is the PAN & SCAN method. This is when lots of image on the sides of the film spill over past the edge of your TV screen (can't fit a rectangular movie image perfectly into your more-square TV screen, after all), with the video/DVD producers doing their best to try to retain the stuff you need to see to follow the story. This is usually done by panning left and right, and sometimes by adding artificial cuts (when, for instance, a conversation is taking place in a car between someone on the far left and the far right sides of the screen, and both people have to be seen). The other method to make the rectangular movie image fit onto the more-square TV screen is the OPEN MATTE method. This approach RETAINS all the information on the sides of the movie image, but ADDS picture information on the top and bottom of the screen to make the movie image more square, to fit your TV. Usually, this extra information amounts to some extra head room on the upper portion of the screen and more of an actor's body below, things like that. However, it is important to note that this extra picture information was never really meant for the viewer to see. Movie projectors, in fact, use masking devices to cut off this extra picture information, as per the director's framing guidelines, when you see a movie in a theater. A quick aside: ever laugh at a movie's "ineptitude" when the boom microphone clearly hovers above an actor's head, when you go to the movies sometimes? Well, that isn't the director's fault. It's the fault of the projectionist, because he or she didn't follow the framing guidelines sent along with the movie. You were seeing information you weren't MEANT to see. So, what is going on with this "Touch of Evil" DVD is this: for years on TV, and for years on VHS, EXTRA information was added on the top and bottom of the TV image to fill out your square television screen. I imagine this was seen as a lesser evil than panning & scanning, which would have resulted in lots of picture on the sides being lost at any given time. So, for this new DVD, the manufacturers did indeed (as many have pointed out here) covered up picture information you may have seen before on TV or home video. Though I can see how this may seem frustrating at first ("They're trying to trick us with this [simulated]widescreen!" or "They're COVERING UP part of the picture!"), you really needn't be angry. No one is trying to trick you, or cut corners, or anything like that. It's just one of those weird situations where, to retain the original vision of the director, the black bars at the top and bottom of your screen are being used in a different way than they usually are: instead of using them to assure the retention of information on the sides of the picture (not necessary in this case, as that info was never lost on TV, VHS, etc.), the bars are being used to mask information you were never meant to see in the first place. Hope all this meandering helped a bit to shed light on this often complicated issue. Oh, by the way, I really enjoyed the new re-edit of this movie, as well as the nice crystal clear DVD image. Welles' famous 58-page memo about the movie is also included, happily in a font big enough so one doesn't have to squint or sit two feet from the TV to read it.
Rating:
Summary: Suave & the tormenter
Review: The noir genre begins with The Maltese Falcon and ends with Touch of Evil. This restored version stays true to Orson Welles' original vision and has much better pacing than the studio version. Charlton Heston is tall, dark and handsome. The suave leading man gives a great performance as an honest investigator. Orson Welles gives his best performance as a brutal and corrupt police chief. The film will keep you on the edge of your seat. Without question Hitchcock was greatly influenced by the motel scenes of this film. Hitchcock used the same actress Janet Leigh for his film Psycho.
Rating:
Summary: Great Filmmaking
Review: Every generation has its special people--its geniuses. The 20th century was fortunate enough to have had the genius of Orson Wells. Actor, writer, director, producer, and artist--there was nothing creative he couldn't do and do it to near perfection!
Touch of Evil is a wonderful film noir. It was Orson Welles' fifth Hollywood film--and his last American film. The script, completely re-written by Welles in about two weeks, was loosely based upon the 1956 Whit Masterson pulp novel, Badge of Evil. Bizarre and outrageously exaggerated, the film includes controversial themes such as racism, betrayal of friends, sexual ambiguity, frame-ups, drugs, and police corruption of power. Its central character is an obsessed, driven, and bloated police captain--a tragic figure who has a "touch of evil" in his enforcement of the law. Innovative in its approach, this film has obviously been an inspiration for many modern film noirs that followed.
As the film opens, we are led into an investigation surrounding the death of local big shot, Rudy Linnekar, killed by a bomb planted in the trunk of his car, in the seedy American town on the Mexican border. A Mexican narcotics investigator, Miguel "Mike" Vargas (Charlton Heston), and his wife Susan (Janet Leigh), become involved after witnessing the explosion. Meanwhile, the couple faces threats and violence because Vargas is in the midst of prosecuting a drug case against a crime family, the Grandis, that operate on both sides of the border. Vargas, an honest man, goes against the efforts of a policeman on the American side, Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles) to bully the Mexican son-in-law of the murdered man. Infuriated and threatened by Vargas, Quinlan joins forces with "Uncle Joe" Grandi (Akim Tamiroff) to discredit the Mexican official by framing his wife on drug charges and accusing them both of being drug addicts.
We hear Quinlan before we actually get a chance to see him. He is legendary in the town--"our local police celebrity," as they like to call him. His car tears up to the scene of the crime. We first view him from below as he struggles to pull himself out of the backseat. He immediately exhibits his intuitive genius. More than that, he dominates every scene. And yet, Quinlan is filthy, a monster and a murderer. Welles has made himself ugly, bloated, and malevolent. He plays a scum if there ever was one, much like the character he portrayed in another film a few years earlier. The film benefits from its deliciously striking and gorgeous black and white photography and brilliant cinematography, not to mention the bravura performance of Orson Welles as Hank Quinlan.
This is the definititive classic film noirs and an obvious inspiration to many other films which followed. A genius at his best!
Rating:
Summary: they buggered a classic film
Review: For some reason, the jerks who made this DVD decided to change the movie, editing and deleting scenes, deleting/changing music, all according to some notes of Orson Welles'. Well, one of the greatest films now conforms to Orson Welles' alleged desires. This film was great for the past forty-something years because it was great, not because Orson Welles made it, and to change it now in the way they have does it a great disservice. I can't sit through it now. Now the Touch of Evil I love only exists on video tape, and that's a shame.
Rating:
Summary: A truly great film by one of America's great directors
Review: By any standard, this is a great film masterpiece. In fact, I consider this to be the third greatest film in Welles's career, following only CITIZEN KANE and the first three-quarters of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS. It features some of the finest photography of any film ever made in America, a deeply troubling screenplay touching on moral ambiguity, and one of the greatest yet unflattering performances in Welles great career. The opening shot that begins this film is one of the most spectacular in the history of film. It is a joy to watch and rewatch that shot, which takes around three minutes ot screen time, to figure out how it was managed. I imagine that a crane on the back of a truck was required, given the enormous distance from the ground the camera was able to travel. It reminded me of similar shots in films by Alfred Hitchcock (I believe in YOUNG AND INNOCENT) and the end of Sergio Leone's ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. Such shots are rare because they depend upon a huge number of individuals getting everything right, and because coordinating such a shot can be a nightmare. It is one of the most virtuosic moments in the career of one of cinema's greatest virtuosos. Orson Welles's physical appearance in the film is shocking, and provides the foundation for an astounding performance. He was only 43 when he played the part, but looked not just much older, but used up. Quite appropriately, in one scene a former paramous played by Marlene Dietrich doesn't recognize him at all. It doesn't seem possible that he could be the same actor who played Harry Lime in THE THIRD MAN only nine years earlier. It wasn't just the enormous weight gain during that time. They did a great deal to accentuate the changes in his physique. Although much heavier, they also apparently padded his midsection to make him appear more immense than he actually was. Other steps were taken to increase the appearance of great size. For instance, in his first encounter with Charlton Heston, Welles mysterious was taller than Heston by a few inches, whereas Heston was, in fact, a few inches taller than Welles. In his performance, Welles manages to convey complete physical and moral decay, as if evil had touched him and caused his demise. On thing that did bother me in the film was the casting of Charlton Heston as a Mexican. He is a fine actor, and he did a good job, but he was simply not convincing as a Mexican. He looks like a gringo with dark mark up on and with his hair dyed black. It is an all too common problem with films shot in the thirties to the sixties, even. Only in the 1970s did Native Americans, for instance, actually start playing Native Americans. I hope at some time in the future, a new DVD of this film is released that includes both the original release version of the film as well as the restored version. While the reedited version is clearly the one to see, it would be interesting to contrast the version that represents Welles's own conception with the way in which the studio altered it.
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