Posts

Showing posts with the label Charlton Heston

Return to Hollywood: Touch of Evil (1958)

Image
Marking Welles’s return to the U.S. as a director after a few movies produced in Europe, Touch of Evil was originally entitled Badge of Evil after the Whit Masterson novel from which it was adapted. Welles played the supporting role of Police Captain Hank Quinlan, while Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh starred as Mike and Susan Vargas. Along for the ride were Joseph Calleia and Akim Tamiroff. Welles wanted to shoot a large segment of Touch of Evil in Tijuana, but thinking of the debacle in Rio de Janeiro stemming from the shooting of the never-released It’s All True, Universal forbade it. As for the script, Charlton Heston says that Welles “took what was a very routine police story, the kind they do on television, on Hill Street Blues or something, and gave it what distinction it had. That was entirely his.” Welles had learned from shooting Citizen Kane that studios sometimes planted a spy or two among ostensible crew members, so he endeavored, in returning to stateside directi