Charlton Heston

"Touch of Evil" (1958)

Boy in blue: Harry Quinlan (Orson Welles)

The case: "He was some kind of a man." So says Marlene Dietrich's cigar-smoking gypsy regarding Orson Welles' corpulent, corrupted, candy-bar-eating Hank Quinlan, a man who, like the director himself, had gone ... morethrough a lot in life. Directed by and starring Welles, "Touch of Evil" is a tough, sleazy, beautifully tawdry film noir that should be ranked equally with his universally acclaimed "Citizen Kane" -- especially when looking at Welles' wonderful creation of the lecherous American police chief Quinlan working a seedy Mexican border town. A locally adored but feared celebrity who's not below associating with shadowy figures for personal gain and crude enjoyment, Quinlan finds himself pitted against straight arrow Ramon Miguel "Mike" Vargas (Charlton Heston), a Mexican narcotics cop who becomes entangled in Quinlan's case after a car containing a local bigwig explodes right in front of his eyes (and on his honeymoon with wife Janet Leigh!). Viewing Vargas as an in-the-way do-gooder, Quinlan will stop at nothing to control his reign. And yet, he's sympathetic. Ever since his own wife was murdered long ago, he's lived in a state of moral decay, which only intensifies his hatred and demise. A picture that remains brilliantly stylistic and daring (thugs, drug dealers and a gang of butch lesbians are all featured in a story complete with bordellos, flophouses and other images of shabby, intoxicated decadence) "Touch of Evil" is, with Welles' performance especially, a touch of genius.

Final report: He's a bad cop. Spectacularly, brilliantly bad. (Everett Collection)