The three-minute-plus opening credits tracking shot is justly revered as the greatest single shot in film history, though Welles liked to point out that the arpartment evidence discovery scene is even more graceful and complicated. Revolutionary use of sound and music, and why not? Welles was about the only great film-maker to get his start in radio. The overlapping dialogue isn't merely naturalistic; there's a conscious counter-point at work.

Since CASABLANCA was a big movie and TOUCH OF EVIL was literally a B movie (the lesser half of a double bill), TOUCH deserves the sobriquet often misapplied to CASABLANCA: "Greatest B movie ever made."

Welles plays the racist Captain Hank Quinlan, a grotesque, troubled, and powerful figure who runs his small U.S. border town according to his own version of the law. Quinlan's brutishness and vulgarity contrast starkly with the idealism and playboy good looks of Charlton Heston as Mike Vargas, a Mexican detective trying to put away the leader of a dangerous family of drug dealers-the Grandis. Heston's turn as a Mexican is bizarre, including dark make-up that resembles black-face in certain scenes.

In the U.S. with his new bride, Susie (Janet Leigh), Vargas becomes consumed with exposing Quinlan and his highly questionable methods-too busy to see that his own beautiful blonde bride is in serious danger from both Quinlan and the Grandis. (She becomes trapped in an isolated hotel with a twitchy desk-clerk and a register full of weird Mexican reefer-crazed motorcycle toughs, prefiguring her motel adventures in PSYCHO two years later.)

In 1998, Welles' film was restored closer to its creator's original vision, and it is a joy to behold. Every shot is impeccably crafted, every word of dialogue concise and pointed. The camerawork (by Russell Metty and John Russell) is stunning. The supporting cast is led by Marlene Dietrich, Dennis Weaver (prefiguring Norman Bates), Akim Tamiroff, Mercedes MacCambridge and Joseph Calleia.