Touch of Evil

Touch of Evil is a film about a newly married couple, Susie and Mike Vargas, who are spending their honeymoon battling gang related crime while straddling the Mexico/U.S. border. Mike is a drug enforcement official, working for the Mexican government who is investigating the aftermath of a car explosion on the U.S. side of the border. Investigating alongside U.S. officials, Vargas realizes that something is not right out this investigation. A possible witness is charged with the murder of the couple inside the car when evidence is found inside a box in his bathroom, which Vargas had just knocked over and found nothing. His goal changes from finding who was responsible for the car bombing to who was responsible for planting the evidence to implicate this seemingly innocent man. Vargas’ wife Susie, has been patiently waiting by her husband’s side throughout this entire investigation. She gets lured to a hotel where she comes into contact with the Grande family, a gang who her husband is working to charge with illegal drug related activities. She is moved to another hotel in the middle of nowhere, only to again be apprehended by the Grande family and drugged, later to be accused of the murder of one of the U.S. officials. The rest of the film centers on Vargas and his ally within the U.S. government, Menzies, trying to find out who framed Susie and planted the evidence, and who is really responsible for all the violence and death that has taken place.

This film was distinctively a more unique representation of film noir. A lot of the typical genre conventions that are part of most film noir films were more difficult to define in Touch of Evil. There is the ever-present use of lighting to create the presence of good and evil, and to amplify the suspense of the narrative. The setting also played a big part in the creation of suspense within the narrative: Vargas getting acid thrown on him while in a dark alley, vacant hotels in the middle of nowhere, the emptiness of the town, everything portrayed to be dirty and run down. The structure and progression of the narrative was somewhat difficult to predict, and wasn’t as easy to identify and follow along with in comparison to other film noir’s. The character representations were also difficult to define. I thought it the beginning that Susie was going to be the heroine or the damsel in distress but it seemed like throughout the narrative, she was able to be identified as both. The protagonist and the antagonist were also not as easy to define. I thought that the police captain, Quinlan was going to be the hero of the narrative and it turned out that he was the exact opposite. Vargas was also not the only hero figure in the film, considering he had considerable help from Menzies in taking down Quinlan. Overall, I thought that this was a well made film and although I was completely confused at points I think that I would be able to appreciate Orson Welles’s narrative perspective more the second time around.